North Carolina Republican Representative Virginia Foxx was fuming after Arizona Democratic Representative Yassamin Ansari welcomed her back from the GOP's "vacation" after House Speaker Mike Johnson kept the House out of session for eight weeks.
Johnson adjourned the House after September 19, following the passage of a short-term spending bill to avert a government shutdown.
The Senate, however, failed to pass its own version as Democrats and Republicans deadlocked over whether to extend health care subsidies. They couldn't agree before the deadline on September 30 at 11:59 p.m. ET, ultimately triggering the shutdown.
Now that President Donald Trump has signed a bill to fund the government, things are moving again—and Foxx wasn't happy when Ansari greeted her with the following after she was given the floor:
“Thank you, Madam Chair. Welcome back from your eight weeks of taxpayer-funded vacation.”
Foxx interjected:
“I’m gonna interrupt you! I’m sick and tired of hearing you all say we had an eight-week vacation.”
When Ansari said "That's exactly what happened," Foxx said:
"I worked every day. I don't know about you. I don’t want to hear another soul say that!”
But Ansari continued:
“I hope that you all enjoyed themselves, while American families looked at their letters from their health insurance companies, terrified that their insurance premiums were going to double or triple while the House was out of session for 53 days. That is unacceptable.”
You can watch what happened in the video below.
Foxx was criticized after footage of the interaction went viral.
Now that the government has reopened, federal employees are set to return to work as early as today, though it remains uncertain how quickly full government operations will resume.
Roughly 670,000 civil servants were furloughed during the shutdown, while a similar number continued working without pay. All will now receive back pay.
The end of the shutdown offers a reprieve for sectors strained by the closure—particularly the nation’s air travel industry, which now has a narrow window to recover ahead of the Thanksgiving travel surge in two weeks. The restoration of food assistance programs for millions of American families before Christmas could also free up household budgets for holiday spending.
However, the deal leaves unresolved one of the shutdown’s central disputes: health insurance subsidies for 24 million Americans under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which the Trump administration has said it will allow to expire at year’s end. The Senate is expected to vote on the subsidy issue by December.
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