Today, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) joined CNBC’s Squawk Box to discuss the Democrat Shutdown coming to an end, despite many in their party wanting Americans to continue suffering. Leader Scalise highlighted House Democrats’ efforts to gut the $50 billion rural hospital fund while claiming the shutdown is about health care. 
 
Excerpts from Leader Scalise’s interview:

On the need to end the shutdown and end the pain Democrats are inflicting on Americans:

“We've been trying to end the shutdown for over a month now. I think some Democrats still want to play games and inflict pain on families across America, but we've got enough, luckily, eight in the Senate. We may get a few more than that in the House who want to end this madness and just let people get back to their lives, stop holding hostages. We still have differences we need to negotiate. That's going to go on, but don't hold the American people hostage. It's been a ridiculous shutdown. It's time to end.

“[Democrats] know that this is inflicting pain on millions of Americans. Are they not listening to those people? These aren't the millionaires and the billionaires that they love deriding every day. This is the least amongst us. SNAP recipients, low-income families who really need those food stamps. It's going to be our men and women in uniform, air traffic controllers who work incredibly stressful jobs, and now have to also go drive an Uber shift just to make ends meet because the bills are still due, just because Democrats shut the government down, and they don't care that they're inflicting pain on people. It's madness. But it's going to end today, hopefully, and let's move on.

“Well, it's going to be work because you still see the Democrat leadership digging in against this thing. Again, last night, they were in the Rules Committee until 1:30 in the morning, trying to bring amendments to do things like gut the $50 billion rural hospital fund. What does that have to do with any of these fights? How is that going to help any family to hurt rural hospitals? They are a rudderless ship of a party right now. They don't know what they want. All they know is they want to wreak havoc on the American economy and hold Americans hostage. I think the American people are sick of it, and it's going to end today.”

On House Republicans lowering premiums for hardworking families:

“Those COVID health benefits, the subsidies they're talking about, that go to insurance companies, were set up by Democrats, not Republicans, to be temporary. Democrats are the ones who set them up to expire. They never wanted them to go on beyond COVID. And yet now they're saying that's what the shutdown is about. Well, then why were they trying to gut the $50 billion rural hospital fund last night?

“I think the one thing that all of this is exposed is that Obamacare is deeply broken. It was Democrats who created it. Everybody knows Democrats only passed Obamacare. We said it was going to create problems, raise costs for families, limit options, limit the doctor-patient relationship. It's done all of those things, unfortunately. Now we're at a place, do you keep shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money into insurance companies while your premiums keep going up? Or do we actually focus on lowering premiums? That's what Republicans have been focusing on.

“In fact, in our One Big Beautiful Bill, we had a provision called the CSR, Cost Share Reduction, that would have lowered premiums for families by 13% on their health insurance premiums, and it was Democrats who blocked it. Democrats have always been against lowering premiums because they want to push everybody into Obamacare, even though they admit it's failed and it's costing families unbelievably more money, 80% more you're paying for Obamacare than just 10 years ago. Why won't they work with us to lower premiums on families?”

On House Republicans hitting the ground running after Democrats held the government hostage:

“Look, we're ready to go. We're going to get this thing back on track, and then we have a lot of work that we're going to make up. Next week is going to be a very busy week in the House. We're going to be moving policy agenda items…

“There are a lot of other good ideas. We're looking at permitting reform. We want to do a number of other things to help energy production in America, lowering crime. We got a very busy agenda the rest of this year.”

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