Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Sunday said there was “no end in sight” for the partial government shutdown that has shuttered the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for 36 days.
“Let’s not play games with the security of our homeland. But we don’t have that. So, President Trump is being forced to do something to reduce those airports. Again, it’s just unconscionable what Democrats are doing. But because the media is on their side, they’re not holding them accountable,” Johnson said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill Sunday.”
“I mean, if their tables were turned, we would have been excoriated in the media weeks ago. We would have caved. DHS would have been funded,” he added.
Johnson continued, “But here we are a month into this, and DHS is still not funded and there’s really no end in sight.”
The shutdown has rocked airports across the country as Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents work without pay for the second time in six months.
Senate Democrats have refused to back a funding bill that includes money for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) without reforms to the current policies in place. The party is pushing to see masks removed from immigration agents, the use of judicial warrants and body-worn cameras.
The Democratic caucus blocked a House-passed bill to fund ICE and TSA on Friday, blocking the DHS appropriations bill for the fifth time.
Johnson said Democrats’ defiance is going to “harm” the economy.
“The last shutdown shaved, I don’t know what, 1 or 2 percent away from GDP,” he told host Chris Stirewalt.
The Wisconsin senator added that partially funding agencies leads to a “slippery slope.”
“That’s a slippery slope to go down because now you start carving out any kind of funding they don’t like. The reason we’re $39 trillion in debt is you have the bipartisan deals … ‘We’ll fund your priorities. You fund ours,’” Johnson said.
“The minute you start breaking that, the thing completely collapses. And I’m not one that’s, you know, I’m not going to defend Congress. It is horribly broken. The Senate is horribly broken,” he added.
Johnson continued, “We need a paradigm shift in terms of how we govern this country.”
