Rep. David Schweikert discusses government shutdown, Arizona governor race

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — Arizona’s gubernatorial race is taking shape as three Republican candidates are in the running to become the GOP candidate.

The Republican candidates include businesswoman Karrin Taylor Robson, Congressman David Schweikert and Congressman Andy Biggs. Robson and Biggs were endorsed by President Donald Trump to unseat Gov. Katie Hobbs. Schweikert is the newcomer, having recently joined the race.

Arizona’s Family previously invited Biggs and Gov. Hobbs to talk about the highly-anticipated race. On Friday, Schweikert joined Good Morning Arizona to speak about his push for candidacy and the ongoing government shutdown.

Schweikert said he believed the shutdown would only last two days and described the stalemate in Washington, calling it “political theater.”

“What we’re talking about is during COVID, there was a plus up. Here’s all the subsidies that are mandatory spending. There was this additional spending, which would cost $450 billion over 10 years. Let’s call it $40 billion next year. But this was for much higher income folks, and it was to help during COVID,” he explained.

“It was the Democrats that set it up to expire at the beginning of next year. We can work on it, but you can’t work on it in an extortion fashion. So it breaks my heart because we’re doing political theater instead of quality finance,” Schweikert added.

The congressman also apologized to Americans who have been affected by the shutdown.

“I’m so sorry because this is absurd. It’s horrible economics, it’s horrible government policy, and you start to understand how dysfunctional the process is,” he said. “You have a country that borrows $70,000 every second. And we’re incapable of even just keeping the government open, let alone taking on our incredible debt demographics.”

Schweikert then spoke about bills he’s introduced in Congress, but they’ve failed to garner support from both Republicans and Democrats.

“I have introduced, right now, I have $3.3 trillion in bills that would save. I can’t even get a single co-sponsor on the Republican side or Democrat side,” he explained. “We do really good work, and I can’t move anything in Congress. It is absolutely intellectually frozen. If you can’t save Congress, maybe you can save Arizona.”

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