Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is enjoying a victory lap after the GOP-led House narrowly passed a stopgap bill to prevent a partial government shutdown by week’s end. Appearing on “The Ben Shapiro Show,” Johnson touted a unified Republican front—a sharp contrast to the Democrats, who are now turning on each other after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) announced he would not vote to block the counting resolution (CR) ahead of Friday’s midnight deadline.
“It’s a team effort. It really is. We do a lot of work to keep everybody on the same page and it pays off when we do that. This is another example of that — when the Republican Party sticks together, we can get big things done, and this is a big thing,” Johnson told Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.
“It’s a relatively clean CR except that it has a couple of innovations,” the speaker said. “We plussed up defense spending and we reduced non-defense spending in small amounts, but it was important. That’s exactly what the Trump administration needed to give them flexibility to do what they need to do. We are freezing funding — this is a year-over-year decrease in funding, Ben, and that’s the first time anybody can remember that that’s happened.”
The GOP-led House passed a 99-page continuing resolution on Tuesday, funding various federal agencies and programs through September 30 with a 217-213 vote. Just a few months ago in December, lawmakers had used a previous continuing resolution to extend funding through mid-March.
Every Republican except one, along with a single Democrat—Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME)—supported the new measure. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who criticized the bill for extending what he described as the “fraud and abuse” uncovered by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) overseen by Elon Musk, joined the Democrats in opposing the funding patch. Johnson explained that he consistently uses the same analogy to emphasize why the continuing resolution is vital to the GOP’s broader strategy for curbing government spending and eventually returning to the process of passing individual appropriations bills in the next fiscal year.
“We have an aircraft carrier — that’s what the federal budget is, right? — and it’s taken decades to get into the situation we’re in. We’re going to turn it but you don’t turn an aircraft carrier on a dime. It takes miles of open ocean, so this is an important turn and then when we get to the next FY 26, the next fiscal year budget, which we’re about to immediately after FY 25 is done, then it gets real because then the DOGE cuts are included, the new revenue streams that the president and the administration are bringing about become a part of that, and we’re going to be in a totally different situation,” Johnson said. “So we’re excited. It’s a good day for America and I certainly hope the Senate does the right thing here.”
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