Congressman August Pfluger of Texas’ 11th district appeared on 107.1 KWEL’s The Morning Show with Craig Anderson, joined by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana. The discussion focused on the ongoing government shutdown, which both lawmakers attributed to actions by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic Party.
During the broadcast, Rep. Pfluger stated, “Good morning to everybody in the Permian Basin. It’s always good to be with you. Obviously, the circumstances right now are that we’re several weeks into this Schumer-led shutdown. Democrats have literally no respect for the American public as they’re doing, you know, political theater. It really is disappointing. It’s very, very simple. We’ve done our job. We voted to fund the military. We’ve voted to fund the VA. We voted to fund the rest of the government, and they just need to come to the table and vote yes. But I’m happy to introduce my good friend, the Majority Leader Steve Scalise, from Louisiana, a champion for oil and gas, a mentor to me, and somebody who leads our Republican Conference very, very well. Really happy to have Steve joining us today to give us an update.”
Scalise echoed these concerns, saying, “Hello, everybody in Midland, Texas, and all other parts around that are listening. You know, we’re in really the second week, kind of beginning of the third week, of this government shutdown. And it never needed to happen. If you look at why the Democrats are shutting the government down and you ask them, you’ll get all kinds of different answers. They’ll talk about health care. They’ll talk about Donald Trump. But it’s really for Chuck Schumer to appease his most radical left base. And you know, I think for a guy like me from Louisiana, for August, you know, who’s a leader in our conference, from Texas, we came to Washington to fix this country, to get this country back on track. But if you look at Chuck Schumer, who’s leading the Senate, who’s led this shutdown, Chuck Schumer is representing the state of New York that is about to elect an avowed socialist as their mayor of New York City. He is afraid of AOC running against him in a primary and beating him. All the polling in New York says that AOC would beat Chuck Schumer in a primary. And so Chuck Schumer is scared to death of the people on the most radical far left, and he wants to look to them like he’s fighting Donald Trump in Washington. And so the whole country’s collateral damage. The whole country is being held hostage.”
Pfluger also discussed his perspective as a military reservist: “Being a reservist myself, and having served for now 25 years, this President goes above and beyond every single time. And by the way, he’s out there solving world peace and dealing with a Middle East peace deal that is absolutely historic. So he doesn’t stop, he’s not deterred. They can’t stop him. He’s going to continue on, and thank goodness he came up with a good solution for our military so that they don’t have to go unpaid. That they can continue to focus on the mission, instead of having to focus on what they’re going to put on the table for dinner each night.”
Scalise further contrasted the actions of President Trump with those of Senate Democrats: “If you look at yesterday, yesterday is probably as sharp a contrast to what you can see in Washington between the two sides. Here you have President Trump, a day off from what August just mentioned. I mean, one of the most historic things for world peace in decades… where he signed historic peace deals, where hostages, the remaining living hostages, all came home and were reunited with their families, and just an unbelievable emotional moment. And you know, I was at the White House yesterday with President Trump, where we paid tribute to Charlie Kirk and President Trump posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Freedom to Charlie, and his widow, Erika, was there to receive it. She was just incredibly gracious. And this is President Trump, who had just flown 30 hours around the world delivering world peace, came back to the White House and was at this ceremony as vibrant as anybody. And then the contrast is Chuck Schumer and Democrats in the Senate at the same time, at like 5:30 pm when we were at the White House for that ceremony, the Senate was voting down for the eighth time, a basic bill just to keep the lights on.”
August Pfluger has represented Texas’s 11th District in Congress since 2021, after succeeding Mike Conaway. He won his seat in 2020 by a significant margin over Jon Mark Hogg.
