Mike Johnson attracts publicity during government shutdown | National Politics

WASHINGTON — U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson got an earful when he fielded calls on C-SPAN recently.

Samantha, a military wife from Virginia, complained about Johnson’s decision in mid-September not to convene the House until Senate Democrats agreed with Republicans to reopen government.

“I am very disappointed in my party and I’m very disappointed in you because you do have the power to call the House back,” Samantha told Johnson. “You refused to do that just for a show.”

Johnson, R-Benton, repeated what he’s often said lately: the House did its job by passing a resolution continuing government operations when spending authority expired Oct. 1. It’s Democratic senators who have refused 10 times, as of Thursday, to approve the resolution that has kept government closed for the past two weeks and probably for the next couple.

The shutdown has thrust Johnson into his highest profile in the public’s eye during a two-year leadership tenure as the behind-closed-doors Republican whisperer on Capitol Hill who gets bills passed.

Usually calm, even taciturn, Johnson now calls himself “Mad Mike.”

He holds daily news conferences and goes on television often to hammer the GOP theme that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, is being bullied by socialists bent on picking a fight with President Donald Trump.

Schumer’s “got to get permission from Bernie and AOC, I think, before he can ever vote to open the government again,” Johnson said Thursday on Fox News, referring to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and New York City Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — two leaders of the Democratic progressive wing.

“We have a lot of things to do, but they’ve turned the lights off and real people are hurting,” Johnson added.

Little negotiation progress has been made with the House gone and the Senate stalled.

Noting congressional Republicans have allowed Trump to rescind congressionally approved appropriations, Democrats say they don’t trust the GOP and argue the shutdown is their only leverage to delay the expiration of tax credits that will cause the price of insurance policies to double for many lower income Americans who buy their health care coverage on the Affordable Care Act marketplace.

Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-South Dakota, have hinted they’re open to an extension for the ACA subsidies. Thune went on the liberal MSNBC Thursday to say he’d consider a vote on the tax credits, which if passed, would need House approval, along with a vote to reopen government.

The empty halls of the U.S. Capitol are now the stage for pop-up political theater, such as when Democratic Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego confronted Johnson outside his office, with a troop of reporters, to complain that Adelita Grijalva had not received the oath of office.

Arizona elected Grijalva, a Democrat, on Sept. 23 while the House was out of session. She filled the seat of her father Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Arizona, who died earlier this year.

Grijalva would be the last signature necessary on the bipartisan petition requiring Johnson to hold a vote on forcing the Trump administration to release the files on Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier accused of trafficking underaged girls and friend to the elite.

Johnson called “absurd” the Arizona senators’ complaints that he was delaying Grijalva’s oath to keep the Epstein vote from happening. Once the House reconvenes, Johnson said, he would swear in Grijalva.

He pointed out on CNN Thursday that Rep. Julia Letlow, R-Start, had to wait 25 days for her oath.

“We didn’t have news conferences to go banging on doors and make a big thing of it, because we understood that is the regular process and tradition,” Johnson said.

It’s still too early to tell if Democratic and Republican gambits to place the blame on the other for the shutdown is working.

A poll released Thursday spread the blame for the shutdown about equally, with 58% of the 1,289 Americans surveyed saying congressional Republicans were at fault and 54% pointing to the Democrats. The Associated Press-NORC Center at the University of Chicago results are pretty much in line with other recent surveys.

But that’s in Washington.

Back home in Louisiana, the political drama is largely unnoticed, said G. Pearson Cross, a Johnson constituent and a political science professor at University of Louisiana Monroe.

The effects of the federal shutdown haven’t really been felt yet in Louisiana, so Johnson’s actions haven’t been noticed, Cross said. “Johnson generally gets a pass from his constituents.”

But that may be tested if the government closure starts impacting Louisiana.