'Said it out loud': Johnson ripped for admitting he's holding food stamp funding hostage
As Republican leaders appear to grow increasingly frustrated with the shutdown of the federal government, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson admitted on Thursday that he is refusing to allow legislation to fund food stamps because he wants to keep “pressure” on the Democratic Party.
The federal government has been shut down for 30 days, with little end in sight. Republicans continue to block Democratic attempts to reinstate funding for the Obamacare health insurance premium subsidies and programs like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). Democrats refuse to vote to open the government without the Obamacare subsidies funding.
CNN’s Dana Bash told Speaker Johnson on Thursday afternoon that the “reality is that this has been a stalemate for 30 days, and it’s not just Democrats — you also have one of the most conservative Republican senators, Josh Hawley, who says, at least, please, move money around to feed people.”
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Asked why he would not consider funding SNAP, Johnson replied: “Because if you deviate from the goal of reopening the entire government, Chuck Schumer and the radicals over there will continue to play games with people’s paychecks, their livelihoods.”
He added, “if you do just part of this, it will reduce the pressure for them to do all of it, to do their basic job, and that is reopen the government.”
“This is very real and very serious, and they can end it today,” Johnson insisted. “They can do it right now. All they have to do is, we just need five more Democrats in the Senate to help us reach the 60 vote threshold.”
“We don’t have enough Republicans to do the right thing on our own. We need them to do the right thing,” he said.
Critics say that Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune could go “nuclear” and drop the threshold from 60 votes to 50 votes to pass a clean continuing resolution and reopen the government.
Others criticized Johnson for using programs that aid low-income Americans as political leverage.
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U.S. Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA), responding to Johnson’s remarks, posted what he said is the law establishing the contingency fund that experts say should be used during the shutdown to fund SNAP.
“At least Johnson made clear that it is Republicans who want people to go hungry from their shutdown,” remarked Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.
“Mike Johnson now admitting that Republicans [are] using SNAP as leverage and to ‘pressure’ Democrats!” commented Matt Rein, director of influencer and creative partnerships at the DNC.
“This is the Speaker of the House making two things clear: They could feed poor children if they chose. They are choosing to starve poor children as a tactic,” wrote Bill Prady, co-creator of “The Big Bang Theory.”
“Mike Johnson f– up on CNN just now and admitted they’re defunding SNAP as leverage to get Democrats to fold on the shutdown. Letting 40 million Americans go hungry just to try to win a political fight is disturbing—I can’t believe he said it out loud,” remarked Democratic strategist Mike Nellis.
