Introducing The Isabel Brown Show: Inside the Shutdown with Speaker Mike Johnson

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You're about to hear Isabel Brown with Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, on the government shutdown.

What happened, who's really responsible, and what comes next.

This is the Isabel Brown Show.

Speaker Johnson, thank you so much for taking a few minutes out of your very, very busy schedule.

For young people today, the media is very much twisting the narrative of what a government shutdown even is and how we got here.

So for our viewers who might be the average 18-year-old that didn't get the world's best civics education, can you explain what's going on this week?

I don't blame anybody for not understanding all that.

It's kind of complicated.

But let me make it really simple.

Go back to the 1974 Budget Control Act.

There's a federal law that says the way that Congress is supposed to spend taxpayer dollars is very

with great stewardship.

You're supposed to do 12 separate appropriations bills every year.

And why is that important?

Because if you divide all the federal funding into 12 separate categories, then you can accurately debate it and have dialogue and have thoughtful conversation.

Gee, what is the best use of taxpayer dollars?

We want to spend it efficiently and effectively, right?

So you divide all the government into 12 different categories and you do that.

Here's the problem.

Congress hasn't done that for a long, long time, okay?

Because Congress has a tendency to not do its duty and responsibility because it's hard work.

So what they do instead is they kick the can down the road till the end of the year, usually right about Christmas time, and there's a giant omnibus omnibus spending bill.

You heard the term omnibus, right?

And that's where they just cram everything in all at once.

The bill is sometimes 2,000 pages long.

No one's read it, understood it, not debated it.

And it's massive amounts of money, trillions of dollars all at once.

That is bad stewardship, okay?

So I became Speaker almost two years ago in October of 23.

I was not expecting to have the job.

And I was one of, I'm a fiscal conservative, and I'm worried about Congress being irresponsible of taxpayer funds.

And so I made it a commitment after I became Speaker that I would force the muscle memory back to Congress to make them do what we call regular order.

And that is 12 separate appropriations bills going through both chambers and working through it.

It's taken a long time to do that because it's like pushing a boulder up a hill and trying to force people into this job.

But the good news is we did it.

And this year, the House Appropriations Committee, in a bipartisan fashion, using our Republican majority, we got 12 separate appropriations bills done through committee.

We got three of them passed off the floor.

The Senate, for the first time in years, passed three separate bills off the floor on their side.

The problem is those three bills don't match up exactly.

So what happens in our process is that if there's a difference between the two chambers, then you have a subset of members of both chambers who go to what's called a conference committee to work out the differences.

That's it.

They've finished that up.

They send it to the president for signature.

We're in the middle of that process, okay?

And it's a big thing, a big achievement to get Congress back to it, but we ran out of time because the end of the fiscal year is September 30th, not the end of of the calendar year.

So here we are on the eve of that.

So what do we do?

Well, we have the majority in both chambers.

Republicans are in charge.

We're sensible.

We're responsible.

We're efficient, effective government people.

So we said, let's do a short-term stopgap funding measure called a CR.

We call it a continuing resolution to keep the government open for seven more weeks to November 21st.

Why?

We're just trying to buy time.

We just want to have a little more time for the appropriators to finish this process and get it done, get the bills to President Trump's desk and get them done.

And that's a simple thing.

Chuck Schumer and all the Democrats here have given speeches for decades about how you can't shut the government down.

You've got to keep it open.

Suddenly, he just changed his tune, though.

And so they voted against it.

Now, they've done that a few times.

Leader Thune in the Senate is going to continue to put the House's bill because we passed it in the House two weeks ago.

We had one Democrat join us.

The rest of them voted to shut the government down.

But we got it done.

We sent it to the Senate and that's where it sits.

So here's the problem.

The clock ran out September 30th.

So at midnight on October 1, you know, today we shut the government down.

Now, what's the problem?

That's a serious problem because there are real Americans affected by this nonsense.

Two questions that ought to be answered there.

Number one, why is Chuck Schumer doing this?

Why did he change his tune?

The guy's been in Washington like longer than you and I, almost longer than I've been alive, okay?

And he's always been against this.

He said it was dangerous and we'd be derelict in our duty and how could you crush the American people when suddenly he's doing it?

Here's the answer.

J.D.

Vance Vance said it today.

I've said it.

We've all pointed it out.

It's a good question and the answer is simple.

Chuck Schumer is running scared of the far-left base of his party.

He's up for reelection in a couple of years and he's afraid that AOC is going to challenge him because the Marxists are taking over the party.

Now, Chuck Schumer is a far-left legislator, but he's not quite liberal enough for all of them.

So he's got to show a fight.

He's got to show that he's fighting Trump.

So he's decided to shut the government down.

Here's what happens.

Real people get hurt.

I mean, you're talking about the WIC program, right?

Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Supplemental Program.

It's not funded anymore because we don't have the ability to send the money because they just dried it up.

You've got soldiers, TSA agents, Border Patrol agents who do have to go to work, but they're not going to get paid.

It's a real problem.

I mean, if somebody's, let's say there's a young soldier who's deployed overseas right now, left his young wife and two small children at home, they're not going to get their monthly paycheck.

They don't get it until all this is resolved.

You have real problems with FEMA, for example.

We're in the middle of hurricane season.

I'm I'm from Louisiana.

This is serious business.

As we sit here today, there are two hurricanes off the eastern seaboard of the United States.

If your flood insurance lapses, or if you buy a new home and you need a new insurance policy, you can't get that right now because FEMA just got shut down for those services.

All sorts of veterans' healthcare.

Yep.

We run the suicide prevention programs every day through this.

They just got shut down.

I mean, this is

real stuff.

People get harmed, and it's totally unnecessary.

And Chuck Schumer's doing it for politics.

Aaron Powell, this idea of gravitating towards Marxism, what specifically are some of these initiatives that Chuck Schumer's pushing for?

Well, when we say big government liberals, I mean, these guys are taking to the next level, okay?

Marxism, of course, you know, communism and socialism are sort of branches of that underlying philosophy, right?

Socialism is you just want the government to take over everything, basically, and all means of production and control and everything.

That's what they're moving towards.

So instead of the simple seven-week stopgap funding measure, a clean continuing resolution, clean by, we said we didn't add any of our Republican or conservative priorities to it.

We just status quo for seven more weeks, really just buying time.

And instead of just voting on that, which he always has through his whole career, and they did 13 times during the Biden administration, okay, over the last previous four years,

Chuck Schamer votes no.

And instead, he sends us a counterproposal.

Well, guess what's in that?

He wants to add $1.5 trillion with a T dollar in new spending on a seven-week stopgap funding measure.

And included in that, they want to make sure they give health care to illegal aliens again

who just stop.

And they want to claw back

$50 billion that we put into a rural hospital fund to prop those up because many of them are

in real financial straits.

And people say, why would he do that?

Well, you think about it, a lot of those rural counties and areas are in red states.

I mean,

you have to wonder what kind of thought went into this.

They just completely completely overplayed their hand, and it's absurd.

Right before I walked into here, I was talking to the president.

I've been on the phone with the president for the last hour, and he and I were talking.

He said, Mike,

I can't believe how crazy this is.

There's nothing for us to negotiate because the president likes to make a deal, right?

Yep.

Mr.

President, there's nothing to make a deal with.

There's nothing we can get.

We didn't put any of our priorities.

There's nothing I can take back to sweeten the deal.

He goes, I can't believe Schumer did that.

I can't either.

But he painted himself into a corner.

That's the part that I think is so fascinating to me is I keep trying to ask myself and give the benefit of the doubt here to the left on any sort of political legitimacy to this game whatsoever.

And yet I don't think they're aware of where the average American, particularly young Americans, are at right now, especially critical of big government policies.

You know, I'm a very close friend of Charlie Kirk and the last few weeks has been incredibly fascinating, obviously heartbreaking as well, but so stirring to see how young people are responding to this and becoming more generally conservative and skeptical of big government.

And yet they seem completely unaware of of that from the left side of the aisle here.

Trevor Burrus: Well, two things explain it.

Trump derangement syndrome is very real.

They can't countenance him.

And everything he says or does, they're instinctively for the opposite, no matter how crazy, right?

And then you had the woke progressive left that effectively took over the party a few years back.

And they're driving that party right off a cliff.

This is not your grandfather's Democratic Party, right?

This is a...

far different

they actually are marxists in fact they're literally going to elect a marxist as the mayor of america's largest city in a few weeks.

It's a stunning development.

And we've been mourning Charlie's loss.

He was a friend of mine as well, as you know.

And I think I spoke at four vigils for him over the last couple weeks.

I was speaking at the Kennedy Center, which is the one we did here in D.C.

forum.

And there and at all the vigils I spoke at, and of course at the event in Arizona, I know, Emmy, you were there.

It's amazing.

The numbers of people that turned out and the numbers of young people who are both so broken because they feel so close to Charlie, you know, his voice is ubiquitous and his

image, they're all involved in Turning Point and many more want to be now.

So they're mourning that, but at the same time, they feel like there's this sort of burning desire to just get engaged and get involved, right?

The Charlie Kirk effect, we're calling it, and it's real.

And what I said, I summarized in all the comments that I made, I said, you know, if we're going to honor the life and legacy of Charlie, the best thing we can do is live like Charlie did, right?

In two things, you advance his principles and you adopt his approach.

The approach was one in love.

He's trying to win over hearts and minds, and he was never hateful.

Charlie was like me.

Mike Huckabee said one time, he's running for governor of Arkansas many years ago.

He said, You know, I'm a conservative, but I'm not mad at anybody.

I mean, that's our approach, right?

We're going to be winsome warriors, but you have to be prepared to give an answer for the hope that you have, as scripture says, and be ready for those debates.

And Charlie was, but he never hated anybody on the other side of the table.

That kind of message, the hopeful message, the things that he articulated, faith, family, freedom, patriotism, American exceptionalism.

People respond to that.

And it's in one sense, in my view,

it's a response to the woke progressive nihilism that just leads to emptiness and despair and hopelessness.

It's an offer of hope and eternity and real truth, and that's what people are yearning for, you know?

But if we present that in a political context and we show how those things connect, which Charlie was an expert at doing, now you're really cooking.

And people get engaged for that.

We're starting to see that generational shift in the Charlie Kirk effect here on the Hill.

I know there's one turning point USA alum who's a member of Congress, Representative Luna, who's quite remarkable.

And we go way back to see her journey has been absolutely incredible.

How do you think that's going to impact the future of the party here on the Hill?

I know generationally, young people are all about big government sucks and socialism sucks.

So you're seeing that tug of war happen even on the right side of the political aisle today.

How do you think that impacts the shutdown and your agenda moving forward?

There's an old saying, if the people will lead, the leaders will follow.

Right.

And so what you'll see is, and you've already seen it,

it inspires more backbone and confidence in people who actually believe those things were reluctant to talk about it.

I became speaker a couple years ago.

The first thing I did was I did an interview.

Well, I did my floor speech and I did an interview with Hannity.

And we just go live that night.

And I mean, this is unrehearsed and unprepared because I wasn't expecting to get the job.

And he says, what, people don't know anything about Mike Johnson?

He said,

what could you say?

How could you summarize what you believe, your philosophy?

And I said, I didn't think.

I just, I didn't have talking points prepared.

I said, well, Sean, I don't know.

It's pretty simple for me.

If you want to know what I think about anything, go dust off the Bible on your shelf.

That's pretty, you know, I'm a Bible-believing Christian.

You know, I had no idea what a landmine that was.

And they came after me with sharp knives, you know, but

some of us have always spoken like that.

We've been trying to bring back those principles.

Charlie was a bit, what I loved about our friend was he liked the temporal policy debates.

He was about the temporal things, but he was much more about the eternal things, the permanent things, you know.

And I try to, and I have always tried to weave that into everything we do.

And now, more and more people are seeing it that way.

And you've heard people as high-ranked as the vice president say in the last few days, I've spoken more about my faith in Christ over the last two weeks than I had, you know, he's ever before.

Yeah, and everybody's doing that now.

So it's so refreshing to us because we're walking around like, wow, we're not the freaks anymore.

Like, oh, this is the thing.

Everybody, welcome to the party.

And more, more people are more, I think, you know, open about what they really believe.

And

what is the core foundational principle behind the policies that we're advancing?

That's what wins over the hearts and minds.

And we have a real opportunity to do that now.

Last question for you.

If you're giving a message to the next generation for what to expect out of this shutdown and, in general, what to expect out of this Congress, what can we expect to see in the next few days and months?

Well, you can make an argument, really objectively.

The first six months of this Congress was the most productive, successful of any in memory, maybe of all time, going back to the American Revolution.

Why?

Because we had unified government.

So we had President Trump in the White House and you have Republicans in charge of Senate and the House because we got a mandate in the election in 24 and we acted on that.

So we did the big, beautiful bill and this marquee legislative achievements with the smallest margin in U.S.

history.

It had a one-vote margin for 90 of the first 100 days.

We have defied expectation because the Republicans stayed unified.

And my message to all my colleagues is as long as we can do that, we are unlimited in the potential of what we can achieve.

So we're planning more of those big marquee pieces of legislation.

The big beautiful bill, the Working Families Tax Cuts Bill, we call it,

was a reconciliation bill, which you can do.

You don't need 60 votes in the Senate, which is the normal case.

You can do it with a bare majority.

So we're planning Reconciliation 2.0 right now for the fall.

I'd like to do a third one in the spring before we're done with this Congress.

And then we have some other marquee things that we're doing in addition to all the things the President's done with executive orders that we're codifying, putting into written law.

So regulatory reform, tax cuts, and pro-growth policies for the economy, but then also changing the size and shape and scope of government all at once.

I mean,

this is something that many of us have been working on for our whole lives, you know, and we have marquee achievements for all these things, but there's more to come.

And then we go into an election year, the midterm election next year.

I just literally got off the phone with the president and he said, Mike, I can't believe.

Sorry, I'm doing his voice.

You're pretty good at it.

So we'll keep myself.

Only twice in 90 years, you know, where the president's picked up seats in the fist method.

And I said, but you're going to do it, sir.

We're going to defy history.

Lots of reasons for that.

But we had a demographic shift in 2024.

We'll keep a lot of those voters.

We have a favorable election map.

There's way more House Democrats sitting right now, as we're talking, in districts that President Trump won than that Harris won, Republicans and Harris seats.

And we've got a favorable map.

The Democrats are in free fall.

And the fourth factor that none of us saw coming is the aftermath of Charlie's passing.

And the energy that that puts in the hearts and minds of people, young people who want to be engaged, they understand what's happening.

They want to take their country back.

And we're presenting to them an opportunity to do that.

I think that has a big effect in the midterms that nobody saw coming.

God has a way of working all things together for good.

Charlie used to preach that and he believed it and we do.

His passing was so untimely and tragic and unspeakable.

To me, in some ways, it still doesn't seem real.

But God is going to use that.

He already is.

And there's such great hope in that.

And Charlie is watching all this and he knows.

And that's a great comfort to all of us.

Well, as you know, we've been the apologists over here on our show for the fact that Gen Z will save America.

And we are incredibly excited to keep cheering you on and supporting everything you're doing to serve the American people.

Thank you for your service to our country and for bringing back home the message that big government sucks.

Congrats for all your success.

It's well earned and we're excited.

Keep going.

Thank you again to Speaker Johnson for taking the the time to join us.

And make sure you guys are subscribed to the channel to get tomorrow's episode and every episode thereafter.

We can't wait to be spending some more time here on Capitol Hill to unveil all of the great plans to serve the American people the best way our elected officials know how.