Biden blames ‘extreme’ House GOP members for potential shutdown
President Joe Biden calls out a “small group of extreme House Republicans” for pushing the government towards a shutdown.
Ryan Ross, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – The House voted to approve an amendment from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., to cut Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s salary to $1 on Wednesday – a move that comes amid the growing tension in the House to avert a government shutdown.
“Secretary Austin has not fulfilled his job duties,” Greene said on the House floor Wednesday. “As a matter of fact, he’s destroying our military.”
She criticized Austin for his handling of military recruitment and the withdrawal of Afghanistan on the House floor and said in a video on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, after the House vote that “there’s a loss in confidence in Lloyd Austin’s leadership and he deserves to be fired.”
Austin, the first Black Secretary of Defense, makes more than $221,000 annually, according to Defense News. For her amendment, Greene said that she used the Holman rule, which “allows amendments to appropriations legislation that would reduce the salary of or fire specific federal employees, or cut a specific program,” according to the House Rules Committee.
In this case, her amendment would be part of the defense spending bill. But despite its inclusion, she told the Washington Examiner that she will still vote against the bill because of its additional aid to Ukraine, which other conservative lawmakers have also opposed.
Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, told The New York Times that Austin “is focused on leading the Department of Defense and ensuring our service members worldwide have the resources and support the U.S. military needs to conduct our mission to defend the nation.”