Speaker Johnson confirmed that the Schumer Shutdown allows Congress to shift authority to the Executive Branch:

"When Congress decides to turn off the lights, to shut the government down, it shifts the authority to the Executive Branch. That’s how the process works. The person who has decided to put the White House in that situation is Chuck Schumer, who leads the Democrats, the 44 who keep voting to keep the government from opening up, they're voting to shut it down. So, what happens in that situation? Whoever is the President, whoever's sitting in the White House, and their staffs at the Office of Management and Budget are given an unenviable task. It’s a regretful situation. They have to then determine, since the spigots have been effectively turned off and there’s no more money coming in, they have to then prioritize—triage, effectively—federal spending. They have to look at all of that and say, you know, which things are deemed essential and which are non-essential, which priorities, policies, and personnel must be kept to keep the government operating and which are less of a priority.

So, whomever is sitting in the White House gets to then apply their lenses of review. We happen to have a Republican, a conservative administration. We’re very grateful for that. We’re limited government conservatives. We think the government's too big, we think the federal government is too big, it does too many things and it does almost nothing well. So it serves the taxpayers to send less of their hard-earned money to Washington and keep more in their pockets. That’s what we’re advancing through the one big beautiful bill and all the legislative priorities that we achieve. But see sometimes Democrats—not sometimes, all the time—Democrats don’t agree with that because they love big government. Listen to them—they want the government to control every aspect of your lives and they need all of your hard-earned dollars to do that. In fact, they’d like to take them all. That’s what the socialists are arguing for. That’s what the Marxists believe. We believe the opposite.

So here’s this situation. Here’s the President, the current occupant of the White House, that's been given this opportunity by Chuck Schumer, and he’s a limited government conservative. He’s looking at that and saying, "Gee, you know, this is inefficient, this is ineffective, and we’d never get Democrat votes to limit that cause they never vote to limit government. Ever. It’s against their religion." But he has that opportunity now to say, "This is a program that would serve the American people if it were not funded," because government would be more efficient and effective and that serves everyone. So they’re going to make those decisions. Now, are they taking great pleasure in that? No. Is he trolling the Democrats? Yes. I mean, yes, because that’s what President Trump does and people are having fun with this. But at the end of the day, the decisions are tough ones.

And I’ve met with him. I talked yesterday at length with Russ Vought, who’s the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Russ takes no pleasure in this. Russ wants to see a smaller, more efficient, more lean effective federal government as we do. But he doesn’t want people to lose jobs, he doesn’t want to do that. That’s his responsibility. So he’s very carefully, methodically, very deliberately looking through that to see which decisions can be made in the best interest of the American people. That’s his obligation and that’s his real desire. The President takes no pleasure in this. But if Chuck Schumer’s going to give Donald Trump the opportunity to determine what the priorities are, he’s going to exercise that opportunity, and that’s where we are."