WASHINGTON – On Friday, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) took to the Senate floor in an attempt to circumvent a government shutdown with the passage of a one-time 14-day Continuing Resolution (C.R.) to fund government at the previous year’s appropriation levels. When speaking, the senator continued his support for the bipartisan Prevent Government Shutdowns Act of 2023 which would effectively end government shutdowns altogether by enacting rolling 14-day C.R.s until Congress passes all 12 appropriations bills.

Senate Democrats blocked the common-sense solution, illustrating the dysfunction in Washington which the senator discussed in-depth Sunday on Fox News’ Life, Liberty, and Levin.

Listen to his full speech here.

On Washington’s broken appropriations process

“By the time I arrived in 2011, Congresses’ appropriations process was completely broken, it still is. The U.S. has since, this is again as of September 2019, the U.S. has since had three government shutdowns, passed 34 Continuing Resolutions to avoid shutdowns, raised or suspended the debt ceiling nine times, and again, this was just four years ago, increased the federal debt $8.5 trillion. So here we are, a couple days before the end of the fiscal year, four years later: our debt by the way has more than doubled, stands at $33 trillion now, and we’re facing a shutdown. Isn’t this ridiculous? There’s no reason for this.”

On the plan to halt future shutdowns

“The Hassan-Lankford bill did what we do in Wisconsin. You don’t shut the agency down, you don’t shut the government down, you just keep spending at last year’s level until the legislature can get its act together and appropriate the funds. So that bill that I chose, that we passed by the way, on a bipartisan basis, I believe every Democratic senator on the committee voted for it because Senator Hassan and Senator Lankford did a good job of coming together in a bipartisan fashion. They put some disciplines in there, but what it does, it just creates rolling 14-day C.R.s, with those disciplines, members can’t travel back on the government dime, you only have a 24 hour shutdown I believe, there are other disciplines there that put pressure on the process. To get our act together and start appropriating bills. If you don’t get it done in the first 14 days, you have another 14-day C.R., and another 14-day C.R. until we create the appropriations process.”

On mortgaging our children’s future

“As dysfunctional as Washington, D.C. is and it is grotesquely dysfunctional, I come from the private sector. This would not happen in the private sector. You wouldn't take 72-73% of what you spend in your private sector budget and say that's on automatic pilot. We're never going to look at that. We're really going to look at 27% of the budget and try and control that. And that's what we're doing here with discretionary spending. This year, 27%. We'll focus on that and we'll ignore 73% and let it grow out-of-control. But again, this is a well-honed process. It’s dysfunctional, but the process is in place, and it's a well-honed process to mortgage our children's future.”

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