California Reps. Scott Peters (D) and Kevin Kiley (R) are pressing House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to call lawmakers back to Washington as the government shutdown persists into a second month — leaving legislative business largely on hold.
“We need to be talking,” Peters said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “The Hill” with host Chris Stirewalt. “I’ve been through three long shutdowns. This is the first time Congress has shut down.”
“In previous shutdowns, we had to be in Washington, D.C. We couldn’t go home. They would call votes to keep us there,” he continued. “They wouldn’t let us fly home on our government ticket,” Peters continued. “We’d have to pay out of our pockets.”
“So, that created an atmosphere where we were talking every day about how to end this,” Peters added. “Speaker Johnson sent us all home.”
Johnson pledged last month that he would not call the House back into session until government is reopened. He has kept that promise, despite pushback from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The Senate failed for a 13th time earlier this week to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the stopgap funding bill. On Friday, the Speaker canceled another week of votes, declaring a “district work period” for the sixth time.
Kiley, in a separate appearance on “The Hill,” aired his frustration over the decision.
“I don’t think it was ever justified to cancel our legislative session days,” he told Stirewalt. “And so, it was just announced that next week, for the sixth consecutive week, the House was supposed to be in session and is not going to be in session.”
The California Republican said the six-week break has limited lawmakers’ “ability to do whatever it takes to get the country out of this mess or to even pass bills.”
Kelly specifically criticized the lack of oversight hearings, legislative markups and ordinary business during the shutdown and said it’s not a matter of “maximizing leverage.”
“I think that’s a matter of just not taking advantage of the opportunities we have to legislate on behalf of the people,” he said.
Concerns over the lack of action in the lower chamber of Congress spilled out into the open on a House GOP conference call earlier this week as lawmakers question how they will make up for lost time.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has been openly critical of Johnson’s handle on the shutdown, has echoed Kiley’s concerns.
“I don’t think anybody is winning here, and I think it’s failure, and I personally don’t like it,” she told CNN during the second week of the shutdown.
