Johnson says GOP won’t shut down government over border spending, despite Roy threat

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the House GOP won’t shut down the government over border spending following a threat by fellow member Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas).

Johnson appeared to try to cool fears over Roy’s recent threat to withhold government funding legislation until Democrats and President Biden agree to border security and asylum reforms in H.R. 2.

When asked about Roy’s threat, Johnson responded that Roy wasn’t threatening to shut down the government.

“Chip’s one of my closest friends and colleagues. I talked to him last night, that’s not what he intended to say,” Johnson said in a clip of CBS’s “Face the Nation” posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter Friday. 

In a letter from Tuesday, Roy said he and his colleagues “must make funding for federal government operations contingent on the president signing H.R. 2, or its functional equivalent, into law and stopping the flow across our border.”

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Roy isn’t the only Congress member to threaten to withhold government funding over the border.

“I will not vote to fund the government until our border is secure,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) wrote in a post on X.

The Senate adjourned last month without a deal on funding for Ukraine or border security, ending a historically unproductive legislative session. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) attributed the absence of achievements to the influence of former President Trump on the Republican-majority House.

“Under a Republican House majority this year, we saw a year marked by chaos, extremism and paralysis. There’s no question that divided government and MAGA extremism made legislating in 2023 very difficult,” Schumer said in floor remarks.