Johnson claims Democratic colleagues aren’t ‘reasonable’ on CR

Congress is looking at a March 14 deadline when a government shutdown is set to take place based on the last continuing resolution from the previous fiscal year. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, blamed Republicans for “walking away from bipartisan negotiations to fund the government and raising the risk of a shutdown in so doing.” Johnson disagreed while on NBC News’s Meet the Press Sunday.

“We are working hard to do our responsibility to keep the government open. Democrats have to help negotiate this and to this point shown no interest in finding a reasonable solution for that,” Johnson said. “We are looking to pass a clean CR to freeze funding at current levels to make sure the government stays open while we incorporate all these savings that we’re finding through the DOGE effort and the sources of revenue that President Trump’s policies are bringing to the table.”

The last continuing resolution put forward by Johnson was supported by all Democratic lawmakers. Still, 34 Republican representatives and 11 senators voted against the legislation. Johnson claimed that ” government funding is always bipartisan.”

“You have to have partners on both sides of the aisle to do it, and we need our Democrat colleagues to come to the table and be reasonable about that. They want to use government funding as some sort of weapon against President Trump and his administration, and this is not the way this is supposed to work,” Johnson said.

JOHNSON LAUGHS AT IDEA OF DEMOCRATS BEING PARTY OF DEMOCRACY

The speaker implied there will be “a very different process” for fiscal year 2026 — one that will be “a lot more efficient.”

Johnson last met with Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday evening for an update on negotiations.