House Republicans will likely avoid a government shutdown, even with members voting down Speaker Mike Johnson's stopgap bill to keep the government open while combining legislation on voting, Rep. Glenn Grothman told Newsmax on Sunday.
"I talked to a couple of the Republican congressmen in close districts," the Wisconsin Republican told Newsmax's "Sunday Report." "They feel that if we do shut down the government, it will hurt Republicans."
Grothman pointed out that he was in office during the last shutdown in 2018-2019, and at that time, then-President Donald Trump said the government should remain open.
"Unfortunately, a lot of Republicans, the clear majority of Republicans, ignored President Trump behind the scenes," he said. "They said [they wanted] to shut it down immediately, and it turned out disastrous for the Republican Party, and many of the loudest voices saying that we had to shut down were screaming back, Oh, we've got to reopen, just four weeks later."
The bill also did not pass because Democrats opposed the SAVE Act, legislation requiring citizenship to vote.
"You'd think on a bill that requires you to be a citizen to vote, everybody in both parties would be onboard," said Grothman. "I think there were some who voted no on the Republican side because obviously, they got more press, more publicity, but I think more of the focus should be on the fact that all but three Democrats did not see the need to make sure we had citizens voting."
It is becoming easier for noncitizens to vote, he added, as they're getting false identification cards, and some states are allowing them to have driver's licenses.
"The Democrats will say this is not that big of a deal but this is a big deal," said Grothman. "When you look at the sheer volume, when you have months in which over 300,000 people are coming here and you look at how close some of these states are, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin, we cannot afford, to allow people who aren't citizens to vote," he added. "It'll be very difficult, I think, in some of these states for the clerks even to determine whether or not they are citizens."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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