Get Rid of Drama and Eliminate Shutdowns: Sen. Johnson

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00:00Are you actively lobbying your Democratic colleagues to vote yes on this, or are you

00:06assuming that this debate is over? Well, first of all, let me ask you and your listeners,

00:11aren't you sick and tired of this? Now, I'll be going to the Senate floor before we take a vote

00:15on the Eliminated Shutdowns Act. Now, it's the same question. I mean, this is so completely

00:20unnecessary. You know, we generally know how these things end. You know, a deal's done to

00:25spend more money than the nation can afford. But the result of that is we've gone from $14 trillion

00:30in debt since I entered Congress in 2011 to $37 trillion. It certainly doesn't put pressure

00:36on passing appropriation bills. Here's a little factoid I had my staff look. I've been here 15

00:41years. We should have passed 180 appropriation bills prior to the end of the fiscal year.

00:46We've passed a whopping six. 3.3% success rate. That means a 96.7% failure rate. So obviously,

00:54the shutdown showdown, this charade doesn't create pressure to actually pass appropriation

01:00bills, but creates an awful lot of pressure to spend more than we can actually afford. So

01:04again, I hope Democrats come to their senses. This is completely unnecessary. We should stop

01:10playing partisan games with people's lives and with our economy. So again, the solution is eliminate

01:16Shutdowns Act. It just sets up rolling four-day continuing appropriations for any account that

01:22hasn't been appropriated for. Appropriators still doesn't diminish their power. They can still do

01:27deals on things they agree on, negotiate on things they disagree on. It just gets rid of all the drama,

01:32all the angst, all the trauma for coming out from these shutdown showdowns.

01:41All right, Senator. So you're floating a plan that would make 14-day CRs automatic. There is reporting

01:46that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is floating a plan that potentially could keep

01:51the government open for seven to 10 days, a very short CR. But if there are negotiations

01:57on making permanent those expiring Obamacare tax subsidies, is this something that you could get

02:02on board with if it means keeping the government open long enough so at least the discussions on the

02:08future of this program could be had? Well, listen to what you just said. The temporary Obamacare

02:15COVID enhanced subsidies. Now, again, the reason people are paying such enormous premiums on the

02:23Obamacare exchanges is because of Obamacare's faulty design. So what we did during, what Democrats did

02:29during COVID is they increased the subsidies so millions didn't even have to chip in a dollar

02:34for their health care. As a result, you had unscrupulous agents and brokers sign people up using their

02:40name and the birth date. There's literally six million people at least who don't even know they have

02:44insurance companies. We paid the insurance companies billions of dollars. Nobody used the policy. I mean,

02:49that's massive fraud. Tens of billions of dollars worth of fraud. So increasing or continuing those Obamacare

02:55temporary subsidies, which Democrats could have done. They never voted for that, would simply perpetuate

03:01that massive fraud on the part of, you know, on the part of the insurance companies. Again, whether

03:06they know it or not, the agents certainly do. We can't, we can't extend that fraud.

03:12Your Eliminate Shutdowns Act that you referenced, Senator, is something we talked about earlier with

03:18your House colleague, Dusty Johnson. He's got the House component on this. It would automatically trigger

03:22a 14-day continuing resolution in the event of a lapse in appropriations. And it's a clever idea.

03:28Explain to us, though, what would happen if you remove the prospect of a deadline? What's the

03:34incentive to come to the table and actually craft a proposal? I know you've told us it's not happening

03:38already, but what would make it start in this case? Yeah. Could it literally get any worse?

03:44Six out of 180? Maybe not. Anyway, there's always going to be pressure to spend more money.

03:49You've got defense hawk wanting to increase defense spending. You've got Democrats wanting to ramp up

03:54and some Republicans' domestic spending. So there's always going to be pressure. If you just hold

03:58spending flat, there'll probably be coalitions put together to increase spending and come to some

04:03sort of deal. We passed a minibus here in the Senate for Veterans Administration, military construction.

04:08So there are areas of agreement. Focus on those. There are areas of disagreement. Work out some

04:13compromises. But again, it really couldn't be any worse than it is right now.

04:16So there's a lot of people.

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