House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday said the increasing pain from the government shutdown — now in its 29th day — would end immediately if Senate Democrats wanted it to.
“For Democrats, there’s a much easier option on the table: Just go do your job and fully fund all these programs and all these categories of people by voting for the CR,” he said.
The House last month passed a temporary spending bill, known as a continuing resolution or “CR,” and Senate Democrats have filibustered it to keep the federal government shut down.
The bill would fund the government through Nov. 21.
One of the programs now running out of money is food stamps, which will no longer be available beginning Saturday, according to the Department of Agriculture.
“On Saturday, this gets very real,” he said.
Food stamps, officially known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, provide food benefits to roughly 42 million people per month.
The number of Americans collecting food stamps has doubled in the past two decades as the program has gradually expanded to cover more people.
Twenty-five states and the District of Columbia, most of which are run by Democrats, have sued the Trump administration to force it to fund food stamps despite the ongoing government shutdown. They want the administration to tap into contingency funds, but the administration said that the money isn’t authorized and wouldn’t cover the entire program.
“And what’s lazy, I’ll share with you what’s lazy, is Democrats refusing to do their job and blaming everyone else for the problems which they created,” Lisa McClain, Michigan Republican.
