Summary
- A
military mom begged Mike Johnson on C-SPAN: “My kids could die.” - Shutdown
halts military pay, risking families’ medical needs. - Johnson
blamed Senate Democrats for the shutdown deadlock.
In a particularly dramatic interaction, a woman identifying
herself as a military wife begged the speaker to pass funds or reopen the
government so that military families would not be deprived of their salary on
October 15.
If Congress does nothing, around 1.3 million military
personnel will not be paid. The woman informed Johnson she was
“begging.” She stated her name was Samantha and her family lived in
northern Virginia, close to Fort Belvoir.
Her two children, who suffer from serious illnesses,
“may die,” she claimed. She clarified that the family is living
paycheck to paycheck and that without the money, they might not be able to pay
for her children’s medical bills and medication.
Johnson has not backed
a stand-alone bill to keep paying service personnel during the shutdown,
despite President Donald Trump’s indications to the contrary. Rather, he has
maintained that when the House of Representatives passed a short-term
government budget extension, it attempted to vote to pay the troops, something
it hasn’t done since late September. Since then, the Senate has rejected the
bill more than five times.
“The Democrats are the ones that are preventing you from
getting a check,”
he said.
At a press conference later that morning, he doubled down.
“We have already voted to pay the troops,”
Johnson
said.
“We did it three weeks ago.”
Johnson claimed that circumstances similar to hers keep him
awake at night. Nevertheless, he held Democrats accountable for her current
state of uncertainty.
When the enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire at the end of
the year, millions of Americans’ health insurance rates will increase. Another
caller from Colorado asked Johnson if he would be in favor of extending the
subsidies for another year.
As he took calls, the speaker pointed at House Minority
Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, who this week rejected a one-year extension
of Obamacare subsidies as a “laughable proposition.”
“You have to ask him why he said that. I’m not
sure,”
Johnson said.
“But he and I both know that we have a lot of
work to do within our respective caucuses to build consensus around that.”
How media outlets summarized the most impactful calls?
Calls made by military spouses were featured in the media,
including one mother who said she was scared because the shutdown would
negatively impact her care for her medically fragile children. These calls
brought a human element to the consequences of the shutdown.
The calls displayed anger and anxiety about federal workers
being furloughed without pay, as well as how long the government might remain
shut down. News outlets indicated that these hardships are testing public
patience.
Coverage portrayed the phone calls as an unusual chance for
everyday people to go directly to congressional leadership and to push publicly
on Speaker Johnson to end the shutdown.
