Chairman Aguilar: House Republicans are jamming Trump’s Project 2025 into the spending bill
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar and Vice Chair Ted Lieu held a press conference on how Extreme MAGA Republicans are jeopardizing military readiness and veterans’ health care by forcing Trump’s Project 2025 into a continuing resolution.
CHAIRMAN AGUILAR: Good morning. Pleased to be joined with Vice Chair Ted Lieu.
I wanted to start out by thanking the extraordinary group of local, state and federal first responders back in my home county in San Bernardino County. The Line Fire broke out late last week there, and the brave men and women, who are first responders, are working around the clock to keep property and people safe, and I appreciate their work. I spent some time out with them at the Incident Command Center, at the Emergency Operations Center, as well as the local shelter, evacuation shelter, that has been stood up, and I'm thinking about them as we're doing our work here.
Congress is back in session, and once again, House Republicans are leading us toward a government shutdown. The so-called reasonable Republicans are nowhere to be seen as Speaker Johnson tries to jam Trump's Project 2025 agenda into government funding legislation. Extreme Republicans know that this bill has no chance of becoming law, and yet they want to force a vote that jeopardizes military readiness and veterans' health care.
We've seen how this ends. The only way to pass a government funding bill is to pass it on a bipartisan basis. Even their own members admit it.
The American people are sick and tired of the chaos, the dysfunction and the extremism that they see from House Republicans and their failure to govern in a responsible way. House Democrats are ready to extend the hand of bipartisanship whenever possible, and we will push back against the continued efforts of MAGA extremism whenever necessary.
VICE CHAIR LIEU: Thank you, Chairman Aguilar. We are back from August recess, and it feels like Groundhog Day over again. As Chairman Aguilar has said, we are now facing yet another government shutdown.
So, let's just review what's been happening ever since Republicans took control of the House last year. The House has had difficulty trying to keep our lights on. We started last year facing down a threat to default on our nation's debts, which would have been catastrophic. We then had to face multiple government shutdown attempts by the Republicans, who were in control. They also took out their own Speaker, and now we are yet facing another threat to shut down our government.
And this particular CR, I find deeply offensive. I'm a veteran. There was a $12 billion shortfall in this Republican CR for veterans’ health care, and I don't see how this CR passes. It’s not a serious attempt to avert a government shutdown, and that's why you have a number of Republicans who already publicly come out saying they are not going to vote for this CR.
So, I urge the Republican leadership to get serious, to put a serious CR on the table and then we can do what the American people need us to do, which is to get rid of the chaos and dysfunction and make government run.
Video of the full press conference and Q&A can be viewed here.
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