Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said Thursday on Newsmax that Congress must return to "the hard work" of balancing the federal budget, warning that the ongoing government shutdown exposes deep fiscal and political dysfunction in Washington.
"When I watch that video along with all of America, you know, what is going on in our federal capital, it's just unbelievable, the fighting that's going on," the Republican governor told Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
He added that the American people want the government funded, so the situation is "very frustrating."
"States like Oklahoma, we're going to be fine for the next month or two," he said. "I just encourage Congress to go back to doing the hard work of actually debating where the funds go instead of these continuing resolutions."
Oklahoma can weather a temporary lapse in federal funding, but both parties are at fault for allowing the budget process to devolve into recurring stopgap spending fights, the governor said.
"We can't just every three months be in these fighting situations where the Democrats are trying to throw in more spending and the Republicans are trying to just have the flat budgets," he said.
"They've got to get back to the hard work of debating how do we get back to a balanced budget, and we're so far from that. It's just so disappointing," Stitt added.
The governor also addressed Democrats’ focus on healthcare spending as the shutdown continued, arguing that federal Medicaid growth has become "unsustainable" and praising President Donald Trump’s administration for attempting to curb waste and fraud in the system.
"Healthcare has grown at like 50% over the last several years," Stitt said. "Medicaid is out of control. The federal government funds our states at like 90% reimbursement rates. It's unsustainable ... we can’t provide healthcare for 100% of Americans, and that seems to be what the Democrats want to do."
Turning to border enforcement and public safety, Stitt said Oklahoma has moved to ensure commercial truck drivers are properly licensed after discovering widespread abuse in other states.
Oklahoma has passed a law requiring drivers to be able to read English to have a CDL license, and at a checkpoint where 500 vehicles were stopped, 125 people were determined to be driving illegally, said Stitt.
"They had CDL licenses from other states and ICE detainers, so we turned them over to ICE," he explained.
Stitt added that Oklahoma’s review of commercial driver licensing revealed some out-of-state credentials that listed "no name given" — an example, he said, of lax enforcement in the wake of the Biden administration’s border policies.
"The whole idea with Real ID was to protect America post-9/11 and make sure we know who’s on our roads," Stitt said. "We encourage other governors to look at this. About 20% of the CDLs we checked were driving illegally."
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