The Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have been lying through their teeth about the government shutdown and their ridiculous demands to reopen the government.
This week, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., joins “The Signal Sitdown” to debunk the Left’s chosen narratives about the government shutdown.
”They’re big mad about Donald Trump,” Johnson tells The Daily Signal. “That’s the ‘A’ answer. The ‘B’ answer is that [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer has a base problem, and this is a base management exercise for him.”
Johnson went on to explain why Schumer’s base pressured him into shutting down the government when the measures that the Senate is currently considering to end the shutdown are essentially appropriations levels set during the Biden administration, levels Congress voted to continue in March. “Chuck Schumer got rolled,” in that March funding battle, Johnson says.
“Republicans remain unified and we got just enough Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, to overcome the filibuster in the Senate,” Johnson tells The Daily Signal. “His base lost their d–n minds. His much younger, much more progressive, much angrier base wanted him to fight, fight, fight.”
“He lost more capital on that vote than anything else he’s ever done,” Johnson later adds.
The polling data bears out Johnson’s point, as well. When Schumer went against his base and many in his own Senate Democrat conference by keeping the government open in March 2025, he took a 20-point hit in his net favorability.
But petty partisan politics alone does not explain the absurdity of the current shutdown. Democrats are demanding $1.5 trillion to keep the government open simply for a matter of weeks and want to scrap crucial elements of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Republicans are now calling the Working Families Tax Cut Act.
“That’s the absurdity of it,” Johnson says, becoming noticeably exercised about Democrat demands. “You’re telling me that you think Republicans are going to give you $1.5 trillion of entitlement for a six-week, a seven-week [continuing resolution]? There’s never been that kind of shakedown before, and it simply will not work.”
While Democrats claim the shakedown is about providing health care to working Americans, their demands would provide American taxpayer dollars to fund illegal immigrants’ health care.
Johnson debunks Democrats’ denials about tax dollars funding illegal immigrants’ health care in two different ways.
“Number one, we know from the CBO there were 1.4 million illegals that were covered, not through the ACA [commonly known as ‘Obamacare’], but through Medicaid, because we just weren’t checking citizenship,” Johnson explains. “So the Working Families Tax Cut Act, the reconciliation package, meant that we were now going to go check the citizenship, so we’re going to reduce the number of people who are covered accidentally who should not be covered.”
“The other [part] is that you’ve got states like California that are covering illegal immigrants with Medicaid,” Johnson adds. “They don’t deny it. That is a part of their program, that is designed, that is in the rules of their program.”
“Now, they don’t use federal funds,” Johnson added, “but all of the infrastructure that runs Medi-Cal, their Medicaid program, of course… those are federal dollars in the mix. And so it is the infrastructure that is covering illegals.”
“To sum up in the Working Families Tax Cut Act, we said you are no longer able to cover illegal immigrants with your state Medicaid program,” Johnson continued. “The Democrats were incensed by that and they want to roll that back. And so there is absolutely an illegal immigrants getting government funded health care part of this debate.”
To prove Johnson’s point, look no further than the Democrat version of the continuing resolution in the Senate, which would strip away all of these provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Nevertheless, Democrats are maintaining their ransom demands, which is a nonstarter for Johnson and company:
If we teach you and the rest of the political marketplace that shutdowns work—even a six-week [continuing resolution] is a leverage point to secure $1.5 trillion—we will have 10 times as many shutdowns in the next 20 years than we’ve had in the last 20 years.
“We simply cannot have a government that does business that way,” Johnson says.
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