This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
SDPB's Lee Strubinger spoke with U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson about the potential government shutdown looming on the horizon. Legislators need to reach a deal on the budget by midnight on Saturday.
Rep. Johnson says a shutdown is getting more and more likely. That means that the harm the shutdown does to federal employees and Americans who need government programs and services also becomes more and more likely.
The representative discusses what still needs to happen to avoid a shutdown, who would get hurt by a shutdown and where the blame may lie.
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Cara Hetland:
This morning, U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson spoke with SDPB's Lee Strubinger about the looming government shutdown. Take a listen.
Lee Strubinger:
The United States government is poised to shut down at 12:01 a.m. on Sunday, Oct. 1. All eyes are on House Republicans as legislators seek to iron out a deal.
U.S. Rep. Dusty Johnson is one of the loudest voices calling for getting the country's fiscal house in order.
He joins me now by phone to dissect the situation and his priorities going forward. Rep. Johnson, thanks for joining me on In the Moment.
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Lee Strubinger:
Where do we sit right now for the potential of a government shutdown?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
I think a government shutdown is growing a little bit more likely. I'm certainly not giving up hope. I think the big boys and the big girls in the room need to keep working.
Government shutdowns are dumb. They don't do anything for anybody. They do not save us any money, and they deny American citizens access to services they need and, frankly, they deserve.
Lee Strubinger:
What are some of the tensions and the flashpoints right now that you see occurring when it comes to piecing together this budget?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
Obviously, when you're talking about these appropriations bills, it's about spending money, and there are big, big differences between how the Senate and the House want to spend money.
In general, the Senate would like to spend a little more money and frankly, a lot more money on disaster relief and Ukraine.
The House is more concerned about the national debt, $33 trillion. That's increased by 50% in just the last three-and-a-half years, so really a very aggressive hockey stick increase. There are House members who'd like to cut non-defense discretionary spending by 25% or 30%. That's a non-starter with the Senate, and we're having a hard time figuring out how do you get the votes needed? How does anything get the votes needed to pass both the House and the Senate?
Lee Strubinger:
Yeah. What are your concerns, I guess, and priorities in this debate? What would you like to see happen?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
Number one, I'd like us to not shut down the government on Saturday night. Later today, we're going to be voting on my plan that I developed with the five other conservatives in Congress.
It would keep the government open. It would reduce spending, pretty dramatically during the next 30 days, so that we have an incentive to get our work done. And it would also secure the border by putting into place policies that we know work. It is gaining a lot of steam on the Republican side of the aisle in the House.
To be honest, it faces an uphill battle to get to 218 votes. That's what you need to pass a bill out of the House. There are only 220 Republicans here right now. We have a vacancy, and we have an absence because a mother just gave birth. Anna Paulina Luna gave birth to a beautiful child, and it's really hard to get 218 votes out of 220 Republicans. And the border security measures are, I think, a little too much to bring the Democrats on board.
Lee Strubinger:
Yeah, I was going to say, because then it has to go over to the Senate.
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
Yeah. The hope is that the Senate, understanding that the border has started to become an issue or not started to become an issue it is an issue that has really unified Americans. There's broad consensus; it's an 80-20 issue. You have Democratic governors of New York and Massachusetts and Democratic mayors in Chicago and a number, dozens and dozens of Democratic elected officials that have really started to be public with the Biden administration about the fact that 233,000 illegal crossings last month is just not something that our country can bear right now.
And I've talked with Lori before about legal immigration is just a beautiful gift to this country. But it is too easy to get here illegally and too hard to get here legally. We need to be grown up enough to address both halves of that equation.
Lee Strubinger:
There's a faction of House Republicans who really wouldn't like to see Speaker McCarthy work with Democrats to pass a budget. Is that realistic?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
Well, the Senate is in Democratic control, and the House is in Republican control. And so it's literally impossible, and I'm using literally in a literal sense, it's literally impossible to pass any bill without votes from both parties.
So to the extent that we are going to fund this government, of course eventually we're going to fund the government. That's part of the reason that I think shutdowns are so mind-numbingly terrible is that they don't change the dynamic in any positive way.
They don't save any money. They don't help anybody out. People imagine that it might provide them more leverage in a negotiation, but that never really has been the case during the last five shutdowns over 40 years. To the extent that we are going to have a deal to fund the government, that end deal is going to require, literally, votes from both parties.
Lee Strubinger:
What are you hearing from folks back in South Dakota about the potential for a government shutdown? In western South Dakota, there's a lot of federal government workers out here, between the Park Service, Forest Service and the Air Force base.
What are you hearing?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
They say, and they're right, that shutdowns are an embarrassment. Can you just imagine dedicating your career to the United States Military, to the defense of your nation? You're a Marine, you work hard to try to feed your two kids and to serve your nation. And then your country is going to deny you a paycheck. That is just hard to stomach. It's hard to imagine that any of my colleagues could allege that that's okay to do because it's a negotiating tactic.
And then you look at people who, listen, they have questions they want answered. They want to be able to pick up the phone and talk to the IRS. They want to be able to talk to the Forest Service about an issue in their backyard. They want to be able to talk to the Indian Health Service. They want to call the Farm Service Agency. We are paying for those services. The American people are paying for those services.
Every once in a while I'll run into a South Dakotan who will say, "Shut it all down. Government doesn't do anything. Shut it all down." And I just don't think they have thought through the second and third step. "So sir, how do we get out of that shutdown? And how does that shutdown that you are so excited about help anyone?"
We do need to reduce spending. I've got a pretty aggressive plan to do it, but you can't get that done by burning everything to the ground.
Lee Strubinger:
Is this tactic a real winning formula to showcase to the American people what Republican leadership would look like in 2024?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
I think the track record for the Republican House the last nine months has been much stronger than the media narrative. And because we're in such a highly divided era, you're always going to have the other party now spend a tremendous amount of capital attacking the other side's failures. But I think the data here is important to focus on. There have been more bills signed into law by the president that have originated out of the Republican House than were signed into law by the president in the last Congress, under Nancy Pelosi and with Joe Biden as president.
The Republican House has passed H.R. 1 and H.R. 2. Those bills unlock American energy, which we absolutely need to do, all forms of American energy, and then also secure the border. We brokered a bipartisan deal with the president.
I don't think he liked the deal very much, but it had a tremendous number of conservative wins. It cut $2 trillion of spending over the course of the next five years. It unlocked American energy by reforming our siting and permitting processes, and it had the biggest reform to welfare in 30 years.
I get it. Sometimes people like to focus a little bit on the clown show, on the anger, the fight between Matt Gaetz and Speaker McCarthy. But I think if you actually look at the legislative work product, it's been a lot better than people sometimes understand.
Lee Strubinger:
House Republicans have opened a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden. We're facing a looming government shutdown. Are we entering this kind of brave new world where, when we have divided chambers or Congresses or different parties between the White House and Congress, where this is becoming the norm?
Rep. Dusty Johnson:
I do think we are in a different era. I think we have been for five or 10 years, maybe longer than that. I think these trends build over time. I think we're angrier at one another. Public opinion surveys indicate that we Americans are now more likely to view someone in the other party as an enemy rather than as a fellow American. Now, that has not been the case for most of our 247 years. So this is a new era.
Now, I would not call it a "brave new era," and I know you didn't pick that phrase to try to indicate that this is a good period of time, but I would search on, I would seize on that word "brave" because there are times that my colleagues will go to the House floor, and they will yell, and they will scream, and they will talk about working with the other side as though it is some sort of sin against our country. And I would say that is not brave. That is pandering.
I understand so many of the primary electorate in both parties really are so angry that they want their members of Congress to channel that anger. That anger is not productive. That anger does not employ one soldier. It does not reduce $1 of spending. That anger does not make sure that our safety net for America's poor is more efficient, more effective. That anger does not do anything. Anger cannot be the foundation for a marriage, for a nonprofit, for a business. It cannot be the foundation for an effective government.
And so I would just ask people who are excited about this "brave new world," that finally we have fighters, the people in Congress who are the loudest and who are the angriest, they pass nothing. They contribute nothing to the legislation of this country. And it makes them more popular to be filled with outrage. They do indeed get more Twitter followers.
But my oath of office is not to my own political comfort. My oath of office is to the Constitution of the United States and our nation deserves a government that is functional. Anger is an impediment to that.
