TRANSCRIPT: President Trump Signs Legislation to End the Government Shutdown - 11.12.25
[Video]
President Donald Trump: Well, thank you very much. This is a big day, big night. Uh, it's very, uh, important what has taken place because we've seen how good government can be and how bad government can be if people don't know what they're doing. For the past 43 days, Democrats in Congress shut down the government of the United States in an attempt to extort American taxpayers for hundreds of billions of dollars for illegal aliens and people that came into our country illegally, uh, from gangs, from prisons, from mental institutions. They wanted to pay them $1.5 trillion, which would've really hurt our healthcare businesses and our recipients at levels never seen before. Today, we're sending a clear message that we will never give into extortion 'cause that's what it was, that they tried to extort, the Democrats tried to extort our country. In just a moment, I'll sign a bill exactly like we asked Democrats to send us all along many days ago. This cost the country $1.5 trillion, this little excursion that they took us on. Republicans never wanted a shutdown and voted 15 times for a clean continuation of funding. Uh, there's never been a time when one or the other party ever didn't sign a continuation. It's just a continuation. Not a big deal. It's a continuation and we'll talk later. Yet, the extremists and the other party insisted on creating the longest government shutdown in American history, and they did it purely for political reasons. I wanna thank Speaker Mike Johnson, Senator Majority leader John Thune, as well as House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, Majority Whip Tom Emmer and numerous other great Republican leaders and congressmen and senators who are here, who frankly spent a long time in Washington getting this thing to go away.
I also wanna thank the Broad Coalition of Americans that stood with us in this fight to reopen government, including the Teamsters, the American Federation of Government Employees, the Fraternal Order of Police, AMVETS, the National Small Business Association, the American Farm Bureau, the American Trucking Association. These are all incredible patriots. The Airlines for America, the Allied Pilots Association, the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, and many, many of these unions and non-unions. Over the past seven weeks, the Democrats shut down has inflicted massive harm. They caused 20,000 flights to be canceled or delayed. They departed so many times so, so late. People were hurt so badly. Nobody's ever seen anything like this one. This was a no-brainer. This was an easy extension, but they didn't wanna do it the easy way. They had to do it the hard way. And they looked very bad, the Democrats do. They deprived more than 1 million government workers from their paychecks and cut off food stamp benefits for millions and millions more Americans in need.
They caused tens of thousands of federal contractors and small businesses to go unpaid. And the total effect of the damage here, antics caused will take weeks and probably months to really calculate accurately, including the serious harm that they did to our economy and to people and to families. So I just want to tell the American people, you should not forget this. When we come up to midterms and other things, don't forget what they've done to our country. I also wanna call for a termination to the filibuster so that this can never happen again. If we had the filibuster terminated, this would never happen again. And don't forget, we have another date coming up in the not-too-distant future. We can never let this happen again, and we should be able to pass great, really great legislation. So I say terminate the filibuster because by the way, the Democrats will do it immediately if they ever assumed office, which hopefully, they won't. Today, we had the highest stock market price ever in all of the different markets.
We set a record. It's the 48th time in the nine months that I've been in office that we had this record set. So think of that, 48 times we had a record set, but today is the highest of 'em all. We're gonna be, we're gonna break new grounds. Nobody would've thought I have with us not only the great political leaders, but the great business leaders of our country. They're standing right behind me and right really alongside of me. And if we would've told them a year ago that we'd be having stock prices this side, none of them -- in fact, I just asked them that question, none of them would've believed it. And that enures to jobs and very importantly to 401(k)s, which have also set a record today, a record high for the people that have 401(k)s. And also, I wanna thank Walmart because they came up with a fantastic study. It was the cost of Thanksgiving coming up and the cost of Thanksgiving from a year ago under Sleepy Joy Biden. And we're 25% lower this year than we were a year ago. And it's a very inclusive report. So I wanna thank Walmart. They've done it for many years, but we believe in that, we believe in that company.
I wanna also thank the eight Senate Democrats who finally did the right thing in voting to end this craziness, this madness. But unfortunately, the vast majority of congressional Democrats were happy for millions of Americans to suffer. They really did suffer too. And the Democrats admitted, they said, "Well, no, we finally have a point. Even though people have to suffer, we finally have a point." And that didn't work out too well for them. But they really, uh, went out and they could appease the fringe benefits of their far-left base. But that didn't work out because now they're far-left base is angrier than ever before. We actually, uh, elected a mayor of New York City who happens to be a communist. When was that going to happen? Remember I said all the time during my campaign, "We will never be a socialist country"? And that's right. We turned out to have a communist in New York City. And if you look at his views, those are the views of a communist, not a socialist. So this is no way to run a country.
I hope we can all agree that the government should never be shut down again. Again, ended the filibuster, terminate the filibuster. It'll never happen again. So with my signature, the federal government will now resume normal operations and my administration and our partners in Congress will continue our work to lower the cost of living, restore public safety, grow our economy, and make America affordable again for all Americans. Again, costs are way down. Energy is way down. Gasoline is at $2.50 cents a gallon versus $4.70 for the Democrats. And we think we're gonna hit pretty close to $2 a gallon. That's like a really massive tax cut. It's the equivalent of that. And speaking of tax cuts, our Great Big Beautiful Bill is giving everybody in our economy, middle income workers, low income, everybody, the biggest tax cut in the history of our country. And there's no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, and very importantly, no tax on overtime. You work overtime, there's no tax. That's, uh, among the things that add up to the biggest tax cut in history. One other thing, you know, you hear about rich people with deductions. Well, when you buy your car and you borrow money, you're allowed to now deduct the interest on that loan.
So you can take that interest deduction and what you can take is that interest payment and deduct it for income tax purposes. That's a tremendous tax cut right there. But it all includes fixing the healthcare system the Democrats broke with the disaster known as Obamacare. Obamacare was a disaster from day one. It's done nothing but go up. And if you remember, President Barack Hussein Obama, when he came up with this crazy idea, he said, "Everything's gonna be great. Rates are gonna go down. Payments are gonna go down. Everything's gonna go down." It went the exact opposite with the biggest increase of any, of healthcare in any country. It's a disaster. And I'm calling today for insurance companies not to be paid, but for the money, this massive amount of money, to be paid directly to the people of our country so that they can buy their own healthcare, which will be far better and far less expensive than the disaster known as Obamacare.
And I've had, I think, great support. I've even had Democrat support. So we want the money that would be going to the insurance company, which is hundreds of billions of dollars. You know, their stock prices have gone up by 1000%, in many cases, 1000% over a short period of time because our country stupidly pays them so much money with this Obamacare scandal. So I want the money to go directly to you, the people, and you'll go out and you'll buy your own health insurance and you'll negotiate different plans and you'll get much better insurance. And you will be an entrepreneur for yourself. So I'm always willing to work with anyone including the other party. We'll work on something having to do with healthcare. We can do a lot better. We can do great. So much money is involved and we're willing to pay so much money to the people. So we're gonna pay a lot of money to the people. They're gonna go out and buy their own healthcare and we're gonna forget this Obamacare madness. So with all of that, I just want to tell you, the country has never been in better shape.
We went through this, uh, short-term disaster with the Democrats because they thought it would be good politically. And it's an honor now to sign this incredible bill and get our country working again. Thank you.
Note: [The bill is signed.]
Trump: Okay, thank you very much. I don't know if you have questions. I think -- [Laughter]
Note: [Crosstalk]
Trump: I think we really, I think we really have a really great situation. Uh, we have a country that we love and we have a country that's in great shape. Uh, as you know, we have over, now it's over $18 trillion invested in our country by other people and countries. Uh, that's a record. There's never been a country that's had so much. And that money's going into also building new auto plants, new AI plants, new everything. Uh, we've never had a time like this. Thank you very much, everybody. Appreciate it.
Note: [Crosstalk]
Aides: Thank you press.
Trump: Thank you very much.
Aides: Thank you, guys.
Unidentified: What a great day.
Trump: It's a great, it's a great day.
Unidentified: Thank you.
Trump: It's a great, it's a great day.
Unidentified: Thank you.
Unidentified: Well done, Mr. President.
Unidentified: Great job.
Note: [Crosstalk]