Florida Parish News

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) spoke in Washington, D.C., alongside Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and Conference Chairwoman Lisa McClain (R-Mich.), addressing the ongoing government shutdown and criticizing Democrats for their role in the situation.

Scalise accused Senate Democrats and Senator Chuck Schumer of preventing a resolution to the shutdown by not passing a continuing resolution that had already cleared the House. He stated, “As we mark day 2 of Chuck Schumer's shutdown, we know that there is a very straightforward way out of this, and that is for Senate Democrats to join with Senate Republicans and vote for the bill that opens up the government and allows negotiations to continue. Surely, by opening up the government again, it doesn't resolve all of our differences, but it allows us to negotiate without Chuck Schumer holding the American people hostage. That's really what's going on here. We had a vote on this House floor two weeks ago, and 99% of House Democrats voted to shut the government down, led by their leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who whipped their members to vote to shut the government down.”

He further criticized House Democrats for shifting blame after voting against keeping the government open. “And so, they're running around this town right now doing podcasts and trying to be commentators. They're doing everything but being legislators. When they had an opportunity to actually govern, House Democrats voted to shut the government down. And now that the government shut down, they're trying to blame somebody else for what they did. They voted to do this. They can get bailed out by Senate Democrats. The bill is still sitting over in the Senate. And so rather than trying to figure out who to assign blame to, what they should do is go over to the Senate, talk to their Senate Democrat counterparts, and say, Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer, open up the government again. And then let's have a negotiation over our differences. President Trump, you saw Vice President Vance as well, saying, ‘We will negotiate, but not while you're holding hostages of the American people.’”

Scalise also addressed Democratic demands related to healthcare funding for undocumented immigrants: “Throwing hundreds of billions of new taxpayer dollars to things like funding illegal alien healthcare is not the answer to that problem. And it surely is not the reason for Democrats to be shutting down the government. And yet that's what they're doing. Some of their own leaders have confirmed that's why they're shutting down the government. And it's unacceptable to most American people who just want the government to work for them and deserve that. And we had a vote on the House floor. You can go look at that vote and see that over 99% of Democrats voted to shut the government down. It's a real vote that we held, and that bill is still sitting in the Senate.”

Discussing Republican efforts in Congress during budget negotiations, Scalise said: “We stand ready to negotiate on a lot of differences. We are in a conference committee right now on three of the appropriations bills, and Tom Cole and his appropriators have passed all 12 of the bills out of committee. John Thune, to his credit, changed course from the old days of Chuck Schumer when Chuck Schumer ran the Senate and didn't bring any of the appropriations bills out of committee.

“They're now moving those bills in the Senate. And so we can have a broader negotiation on how to properly fund government; how to properly set priorities over funding government—which by the way shouldn't be complicated...Washington needs to do the same thing...That means House Democrats and Senate Democrats need to stop holding temper tantrums...and vote to open up the government...and let's go get back into negotiation over what priorities this country really should be.”

Steve Scalise has represented Louisiana’s 1st district in Congress since 2008 after succeeding Bobby Jindal [source]. Prior roles include serving in both chambers of Louisiana’s state legislature before joining Congress [source]. Born in New Orleans in 1965 and currently residing in Jefferson Parish [source], Scalise earned his bachelor’s degree from Louisiana State University.