CNN host Kaitlan Collins and Rep. Kevin Kiley

One Republican member of the House of Representatives is now directly calling out House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for his continued refusal to gavel the House back in session.

On Friday, the Clerk of the House of Representatives read an announcement from Johnson that the period between October 20th and October 23rd would be designated as a "district work period," meaning the House would be conducting no official business for the fourth consecutive week. The soonest the House would gavel back into session would be October 27. The lower chamber of Congress hasn't been in session since September 19.

The House remaining closed for another week irked Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.), who told CNN host Kaitlan Collins in a Friday night segment that he "would love for the House to be in session."

"I don't think there's any justification for the House being out of session," Kiley said. "... It's important to to note that this is a decision that's been made independently of the decision for the government to shut down. And I am very much against the government being shut down."

Kiley went on to attack Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) for not agreeing to the Republican-written government funding bill the House passed in late September before gaveling out of session (which notably does not include an extension in Affordable Care Act tax credits expiring at the end of the year). However, he maintained that the impasse in the Senate is no excuse to keep the House closed.

"That's a decision that the speaker has made," Kiley said. "And in addition to all of the things we're supposed to be doing in terms of marking up legislation, in terms of oversight, it also makes it a lot harder for us to reach the sort of bipartisan agreement that's going to be necessary to open the government, again, if the House of Representatives isn't even there and is apparently just out indefinitely."

The California Republican told Collins that he had brought up his concerns with Johnson directly on several calls, and noted that "various members" had also made similar arguments to the speaker. He added that despite his public calls for the House to gavel back into session, it "really isn't even something that we should have to advocate for."

"I mean, the House was supposed to be in session each of the last three weeks. It's supposed to be in session next week," he said. "We have scheduled district work weeks, which are very important. But that's not what these several weeks were. We had important things to take care of. Give you one example: I'm the chair of the K-12 Education Subcommittee. We had a hearing that was supposed to happen a couple of days ago on an important topic career, technical education, I think would have been a great hearing. Didn't happen because we weren't there. And you can talk to any member on any committee. The House has ordinary business of the people it should be carrying out. And the fact that there's a government shutdown is not a reason to suddenly neglect all of that."

Watch the full segment below:

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