House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday dismissed any stand-alone bills seeking to pay federal workers or fund assistance programs during the government shutdown.
These bills stretch from providing federal workers with their salaries to funding the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), with no benefits issued starting Nov. 1.
“We voted Sept. 19 to fund every one of those priorities, and every Democrat in the House except one voted to not fund them,” Johnson said during a press conference Tuesday. “The Democrats are playing games. They put a few of the one-off bills on the floor, as you’ve seen in the last week or so. They put a bill to pay the troops, pay essential workers, and Democrats voted it down.”
“So it’d be a futile legislative effort for us to do this again, repetitively in the House, and send it over there so Chuck’s here,” Johnson continued, referring to the Democratic Senate Minority Leader from New York. “We’re in the game. So Chuck Schumer can play games and spike it. It’s a waste of our time.”
More cracks have formed as the shutdown, now the second-longest in U.S. history, reached its 28th day on Tuesday. The Senate failed for the 13th time to reopen the government in a vote Tuesday.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) called on Republicans to use the “nuclear option” to bring an end to the shutdown. Greene also named Johnson and said despite having ideas on how to end the shutdown, she has not seen any options presented to her and their fellow Republicans.
“I said I have no respect for the House not being in session passing our bills and the President’s executive orders,” she wrote in a post on social platform X. “And I demanded to know from Speaker Johnson what the Republican plan for healthcare is to build the off-ramp off Obamacare and the [Affordable Care Act] tax credits to make health insurance affordable for Americans.”
As millions of Americans could go without their SNAP benefits later this week, Democratic officials across 25 states sued the Trump administration as a means to prevent the program from drying up.
“The agency cannot simply suspend all benefits indefinitely, while refusing to spend funds from available appropriations for SNAP benefits for eligible households,” the lawsuit stated.
