Speaker Mike Johnson met with Trump for hours late Sunday afternoon, but it was not to discuss the second assassination attempt on Trump earlier that day. Johnson was surely there to talk about how the federal government will run out of money at 12:00 a.m. on October 1st, unless the GOP-majority House passes a Democrat-favored continuing resolution to keep the money flowing.
Last week Johnson declared that “Congress has a lot of responsibilities, but two primary obligations: responsibly fund the government and make sure that our elections are free and fair and secure, and that’s what we’re working on.” The need to ensure fair and secure elections is clear after what happened in 2020, but it is baffling why a conservative thinks there is a duty to continue funding the morally bankrupt and fiscally irresponsible federal government.
Although Johnson referred to the feds as “the” government, the most valuable governmental services are actually performed by state and local governments. More funding of the federal government has meant throwing good money after bad, such as sending hundreds of billions of dollars to continue endless bloodshed in Ukraine.
Funding the federal government has fueled the weaponized prosecutions of Trump and thousands of his supporters, locking many of them up for years under inhumane conditions in the “DC Gulag.” Continued funding of the federal government has meant more enforcement of onerous regulations that have choked off job growth in our country.
Notably, Trump did not announce that Johnson’s visit was productive, presumably because Trump does not have an enamored view of the D.C. elite as many congressmen and their spouses have. Trump has emphasized that he’d prefer to shut it all down if there is no provision for election integrity in continued funding, and he’s right.
“If Republicans in the House, and Senate, don’t get absolute assurances on Election Security, THEY SHOULD, IN NO WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM, GO FORWARD WITH A CONTINUING RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET,” Trump posted on Truth Social a few hours before his debate with Kalifornia Kamala Harris on September 10.
“THE DEMOCRATS ARE TRYING TO ‘STUFF’ VOTER REGISTRATIONS WITH ILLEGAL ALIENS. DON’T LET IT HAPPEN – CLOSE IT DOWN!!!” Trump added.
Most Republican congressmen agree with Trump, although some have grown to like the luxurious trappings of their positions in D.C., and want to extend that gravy train forever. Some falsely claim that a shutdown would hurt only Republicans in the upcoming election, when the opposite may be true.
Elon Musk, many on his popular platform X, and thousands of influencers on the internet are against unlimited federal spending. Most enlisted service members would support Trump despite a temporary interruption in their pay, which Trump would fully restore.
If Trump promises to restore back pay to everyone except civilian federal workers, cheers would be heard nationwide. Farmers and manufacturing workers in pivotal swing states would likely rejoice if D.C. bureaucrats and regulators were laid off.
Johnson’s initial plan for continued funding of the government failed last week amid opposition by more than a dozen Republicans, such that he could pass it only if he dropped election integrity to obtain Democrat support. Trump properly insists that election integrity be part of any continued funding, so Johnson would lose Trump's support if Johnson tries to pass a “clean” funding bill without it.
Called the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, the election integrity provision would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections. Reports abound of illegal aliens registering to vote in multiple states, because most states make no effort to verify the citizenship of registered voters.
Without proof of citizenship, there is no meaningful enforcement preventing hordes of illegals from casting ballots, and thereby tilting the election results. Studies show that the Biden-Harris administration has been relocating the hundreds of thousands of Haitian migrants to predominantly Republican states, presumably in the hope of turning them to the Democrat side.
As a separate bill, the SAVE Act passed in the House in July. But Democrats in the Senate have refused to allow a vote on it.
Elon Musk repeatedly posts on X how this has been the Democrat strategy all along, to bring in millions of illegals so that they can eventually vote overwhelmingly for the Democrat Party. Now is the time to require election integrity as a part of any continuing resolution to keep the federal government funded.
Democrats were hopeful that Taylor Swift’s recent endorsement of her fellow “childless cat lady” would yield an enormous surge in voter registrations for the Democrats, but a new ABC/Ipsos poll suggests that her endorsement may have backfired. Meanwhile, a grassroots effort by @EarlyVoteAction continues to increase Republican voter registrations, and has sharply narrowed the gap that Democrats have long enjoyed in crucial Pennsylvania.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
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