Congressional Leaders on Trying to End the Shutdown

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Transcript

00:00Now, thankfully, President Trump is trying to mitigate the damage as much as possible.

00:05His administration is working to limit the harm to the American people.

00:09But the longer this goes on, the more pain will be inflicted because it is inevitable when the government shuts down.

00:17The sad thing about it is that every single bit of this was entirely avoidable.

00:23Democrats could have worked with us in a bipartisan manner to avert this unnecessary and very harmful shutdown.

00:29But instead, they did something that is rather shocking to us.

00:33They prioritized taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens over keeping the government open for American citizens.

00:41They themselves positioned that as a binary choice, and it's patently absurd.

00:46Listen to what the Democrats are demanding.

00:48They demanded in exchange for our simple, clean, 24-page bipartisan continuing resolution,

00:55the same one that Chuck Schumer and the Democrats voted for just a few months back in March.

01:01In exchange for that, they rejected it, and they demanded something else.

01:05They wanted us to add over $1.5 trillion in new federal spending,

01:10paid for, of course, by hardworking American taxpayers,

01:14simply for funding the government at current Biden-level spending levels.

01:19We are not going to do that.

01:20We can't do that.

01:20We won't do it.

01:21This could have been avoided.

01:23It's totally unavoidable.

01:24And everybody's now asking the question, how does this end?

01:28Well, it ends when the Senate Democrats pick this bill up,

01:33passed by the House of Representatives, and vote for it.

01:37It's on the floor of the Senate.

01:39We're going to vote later this morning on this, 24 pages.

01:42Does this look partisan?

01:46Does this look dirty to you?

01:4924 pages to fund the government.

01:52Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.

01:55The House kept it simple.

01:57We kept it simple in the Senate.

01:59This is something, as the Speaker noted, that 13 times in the past,

02:02Senate Democrats have done when they were in the majority and Joe Biden was in the White House.

02:06This is a very straightforward issue.

02:09It's not complicated.

02:10They want it to end, vote with us, to open up the government by voting this out of the Senate today,

02:19putting it on President Trump's desk, and he will sign into law.

02:23This isn't about policy priorities for them.

02:27They want to send a message.

02:29And if it means hurting people in the meantime, if it means laying people off,

02:34if it means congressionally authorized and designated projects don't continue,

02:40it's clear that that's what they mean.