Sen. Mark Warner on Trump’s Role in the Government Shutdown

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: We made it, we made it. And I highly recommend it. You can watch “Mr. Scorsese” on Apple TV starting from tomorrow. Now, in the United States, the government remains shut down for a third consecutive week. Why? Because Republicans and Democrats are still at an impasse over a key funding bill. Today, it failed to advance in the Senate for a 10th time and the stalemate is already having reverberations on the economy, travel, museums, and the payroll of federal workers. The Trump administration has now been temporarily blocked from laying off thousands of government employees. A judge called it politically motivated. Democratic senator from Virginia, Mark Warner, joins Michel Martin now to discuss how mass layoffs are impacting his state, and about his fears of a looming healthcare crisis.

 

MICHEL MARTIN:  Thanks Christiane. Senator Mark Warner, thank you so much for joining us.

 

SEN. MARK WARNER: Thank you.

 

MARTIN: Well, obviously we called you, one of the reasons that we called you is that this is, we’re into, I guess, the third week of the government shutdown by now. The president is threatening to lay off federal workers. It appears that there seems to be some arrangement to pay military personnel, at least. Virginia is disproportionately affected by this. I mean, you have a significant percentage of the workforce, the non-farm workforce are federal employees. And you have the second largest number of military personnel of any state in the country after California. So, the first thing I wanted to ask you is, what are your constituents telling you about this? What are you hearing from them?

 

WARNER: Well, first of all I’m glad the military is getting paid. But remarkably, at least at this stage of this process, I’m hearing from federal workers pretty consistently, that they feel like they have been traumatized by the Trump administration. They feel that Russ Vought, the OMB director, who seems to be – who Trump himself has called the grim reaper, you know, is really coming after federal workers on an unfair basis. Matter of fact, the president has no greater ability during a shutdown to fire workers than in traditional times. So they feel very much victimized. They want us to push back. We also believe very strongly that, you know, the idea of the healthcare cliff that’s not gonna come at the end of the year. That literally comes November 1st when people get their increased healthcare costs and will have to buy in the marketplace. We don’t have the luxury of waiting till the end of the year. 

 

Put on that, on top of the fact that, you know, the president of the United States has only sat down with the democratic leadership one time on this whole issue. I know the president’s been running around the world and some of these things he’s done have have been successful. I commend him on that. But, but the idea that he is not taking this shutdown seriously and sitting down and trying to work this out, I think is a great failure of leadership. And we could actually do both. We could deal with the healthcare crisis, get the workforce back in, and frankly, at the end of the day, the president continuing to ratchet up threats if anything I think makes not only the Democrats, but it makes the federal workforce more angry and more frustrated.

 

MARTIN: Do you think that this sends, it creates a wedge actually between civilians and military personnel. Military personnel getting paid and civilians are not.

 

WARNER: I hope not. I hope that the president of the United States would recognize that all of these federal workers contribute to the safety of our country. And whether it’s in putting their lives on the line, or for that matter, inspecting the milk and, and the food that we drink or eat, that protects Americans as well. And, and having those folks not paid isn’t fair or right. We have said for some time this was not – this was an imminently preventable crisis. We knew the healthcare costs were going up. The administration knew. We’ve got clinics closing already in my state because of this fear of this healthcare cliff. Let’s do these together and let’s, there is a lack of trust because so far we’ve seen, even when we reach agreement with this administration, we’ve seen the OMB director arbitrarily come in after the fact and arbitrarily choose which program to fund or not to fund. That’s just not the way the law ought to operate.

 

MARTIN: So let’s talk about the substance of this for people ’cause everybody isn’t following this as closely as, as you are, and it certainly, as people who are closely connected to the federal workforce are. The immediate issue, the Republicans argue that the Democrats are being recalcitrant in not passing what they call a clean continuing resolution, which keeps funding at the same levels as the previous budget. The Democrats say that the issue here is the expiration of these subsidies for people who buy healthcare on the Affordable Care Act marketplace. Without these subsidies, the cost to the buyer is going to increase precipitously. And that, as you pointed out, the timeline is coming up to, for these, these insurance premiums to be priced out. People are gonna have to make decisions for their sort of budget. In essence, both sides are sort of pointing <crosstalk>

 

WARNER: Lemme just there – Michel, one of the things you just said, I, I gotta take issue with. 

 

MARTIN: Go ahead. 

 

WARNER: The idea that this is a normal CR just isn’t the case. Historically, and we’ve passed a bunch of these, you know, the Democrats and the Republicans sit down together, work out their deal, and then say, we’re gonna take a time out to finish ’em. None of that took place. Usually it involves the White House as well, that the, the Republicans felt like, we don’t need Democrats at all, so we’re gonna box them out, number one. Number two, we’ve seen in the past, when we’ve gotten close to these kind of shutdown circumstances, which are always an awful option. The president of the United States engaged. Biden engaged repeatedly actually when McCarthy was the, the speaker. He used the speakership very much to his advantage in getting Biden to the table.

 

Trump has had one meeting and then kind of blown it off. And the immediacy of the healthcare bite is, is such that people are already getting these notices. My fear is the Republicans want to not acknowledge the cost going up. They’re afraid as Americans see these notices coming out, which will happen more in late October than in early October Americans are gonna across the country revolt. And part, the issue here again, is it’s not just the 24 million Americans who buy their health insurance through these marketplaces, but if we drive, you know, millions of Americans out of the healthcare system, and our healthcare system isn’t perfect to start with, and drive them all back into the emergency room that is gonna collapse the healthcare system, everybody’s healthcare rates are gonna go up. We wanna avoid that. We can avoid that. But you gotta get in the room and talk about these things. I don’t think it’s an unreasonable ask to say, let’s sit down. And frankly, at this stage of the game, the one thing we do know is the Republican leadership has no say in this. End of the day, this is all going to be decided, at least on the Republican side by Donald Trump. So we need the President’s engagement. We need to sit down. Reasonable people can work this out, particularly the President coming off of a very successful effort in the Middle East. Let’s see those make a deal skills work back here at home and avert, avoid this healthcare crisis and get off federal workforce back and get them paid. 

 

MARTIN: So you, so you’ve just, you’ve laid out the substance of the argument – the politic – you have to assume that the White House and the Republicans believe that the politics are on their side in this, that they are willing to risk people either being unable to afford health insurance, dropping outta the system altogether, et cetera. Why are they wrong?

 

WARNER: Well, all of the data I’ve seen so far indicates that Americans overwhelmingly don’t want the healthcare system to explode. Now, again, that’s today. Who knows in a few weeks. But I think in a few weeks, the circumstance gets worse for the President because people, these hypothetical price increases, people are gonna get the letters and go, holy crap, my rates went from $800 a month to $2,100 a month, which a couple in Roanoke in my state would receive if they make, you know, roughly $80,000 a year. That is a dramatic increase. And I don’t know how that improves for the President and his party, other than the fact that it’s gonna make more people say, Hey, we cannot, we cannot afford this dramatic increase.

 

MARTIN: The argument that the Republicans are making is that voting for this CR, the continuing resolution, is a way to buy time to have those kinds of conversations. Why are they wrong?

 

WARNER: They’re wrong because we’ve gone through CRs already. We knew this cliff was coming and there was no engagement. You know, we’re operating right now under a CR, well actually it expired at the end of the fiscal year. But we passed a CR back in March. There was plenty of time to negotiate this. I, I feel like there is this sense that the President feels so emboldened that he basically can blow off Congress. And one of the things that I’ve been surprised that my Republican colleagues haven’t written, haven’t risen up and said, Hey, we actually gotta have a say on this as well. But, but frankly, there’s not much of a Republican party. There’s a Trump party. And if there was real interest in negotiating on this, why didn’t it happen before September 30th? And so, taking a, a promise from somebody who hasn’t kept their word so far, even when there was a, the CR in place and they’ve arbitrarily picked which programs to fund how you go into that circumstance where people, you know, fool me once it’s my fault. Fool me twice. You know, I, I I’m a, I’m a fool. And we’ve seen that kind of activity from this OMB and from this president in terms of cutting back on programs that were actually agreed on. 

 

This isn’t, there’s not a lot of trust as we know. Let’s get the president in the room, let’s make this deal. And I think you get a handshake in a single day. The details on how you extend the ACA subsidies will take some time. But I think you could get to a deal and get this government reopened right away. But it’s not going to be based on some future promise to negotiate when we’ve seen a lack of trust, a lack of follow through from the president on so many items.

 

MARTIN: The irony being that according to an analysis by the KFF Health news, the majority of, of, of, of buyers of these policies under the Affordable Care Act are actually in Republican states.

 

WARNER: Absolutely. They’re all from states that didn’t expand Medicaid. And, and again, this is just on the Affordable Care Act. We’ve already seen the trillion dollar hit that has been taken to Medicaid, which again, curiously enough, our Republican friends didn’t have kick in until after next year’s midterm elections where, again, about 11 million additional Americans will lose their healthcare coverage.

 

MARTIN: You all have private conversations, I understand that publicly, there are no sort of discussions going on. But I assume you have side conversations. You’ve people you’ve known for years, you’ve served, this is like your third term. You’ve served with people for years. Private conversations, any private conversations going on? You point this out –

 

WARNER: I’ve been part of, I’ve been part of every bipartisan group in the Senate in the last decade. You know, I have you know, I have great Republican friends who I know, you know, want to get this resolved. But in today’s Washington, no Republican senator or congressman with the exception of one or two will go against the President. They are not going to move in any serious way unless the President says so. So the idea that we could, you know, in the classic way the Senate would work its wheel with Republicans and Democrats coming to a conclusion and then go to the President. That’s just not the reality of the world we live in today. Donald Trump controls every action of the Republican Senate. There is no independent actors, there are no independent actors. So no matter what good faith conversations are taking place without the President’s involvement, I don’t know how we get this resolved.

 

MARTIN: But you, the other, I guess I’m curious – I I, here’s where I’m asking you to speculate. President Trump is very attentive to people in his constituencies that he perceive as, as being part of his constituencies, his his base as it were. So I guess the question becomes why would he be willing to allow people to go without health insurance or see these premiums rise, at least the, the cost to the buyer rise as precipitously as it is projected they will? Do you, do you have a theory about that?

 

WARNER: I, I only know what was reported from the one meeting where the Democrats met with President Trump. And it seemed, at least at that point, the President was not aware of how dramatic this cliff would be at the end of October. I think he’s probably gotta be more informed now, but he’s obviously been focused on the circumstances in the Middle East and Gaza. He had been focused on other items. I hope and pray he comes back focused on, on this crisis at hand here at home, not gonna make America great if we destroy an already challenged healthcare system. But so far that hasn’t come to pass. I mean, if they, if the president sat down and had two or three sessions and didn’t get to a deal, I think his position would be strengthened, not urging him to come in and be a, to be, you know, adamant about not opening negotiation. But the ask that’s being made is, let’s sit down in a room and try to work this out. Isn’t that a reasonable approach? Aren’t you Mr. Trump supposedly the world’s best deal maker? And his refusal to do so, I, I agree with you, I don’t get it.

 

MARTIN:  The Republicans up to and including the Vice President, have been arguing that what Democrats are really after is to subsidize healthcare for illegal immigrants

 

WARNER: That is factually wrong.

 

MARTIN: What, what <crosstalk>

 

WARNER: Lemme just finish, lemme finish. That is factually wrong. I would hope the vice president would know the law. I know he didn’t spend much time in the Senate, but the law prohibits any federal dollars going in Medicaid, in the Affordable Care Act, in any other program to undocumented people in this country. He should know it. The state otherwise is a lie. And it is, I think, frankly disrespectful to the 24 million Americans who are about to lose their healthcare coverage.

 

MARTIN: And the basis of that is, is what? As I understand it, the basis of that is that emergency rooms, as you just pointed out, have to treat all comers. Is that the, is that the basis of that, the logic of that?

 

WARNER: Right. That is a law called EMTALA that, that says if you show up at the emergency room, even if you don’t have coverage, even if we don’t know who you are, we’re not gonna let you bleed out on the floor in the emergency room. I think that is the law of most civilized nations. And the irony here is if you are gonna take these 24 million Americans and drive them out of the system ’cause they can’t afford it, and have them show up at the emergency room, all you’re really doing is putting additional burden on the emergency room that’s gonna also drive up healthcare costs for the other Americans who’ve got traditional private health insurance. Because that, for the most part, comes in as what’s called uncompensated care. The hospital has to eat it. That means it’s gonna drive up rates for everybody else.

 

Some of this is just plain math 101 and the fact that the vice president is, you know, making this baseless, false argument they had assumed for a while that there’s, you know, huge amounts of – their presumption is all of these programs must be riddled with craft, even in states that are controlled by Republicans. If somehow non-Americans are getting this assistance. I don’t believe that is the case. And it would be obviously a, a great black eye for those Republican controlled states where the disproportionate number of people are who are buying through the marketplaces. But the law is 100% explicitly clear. And again, I am disappointed the vice president doesn’t know the law of the country.

 

MARTIN: Do you see any way forward here? I understand that you specifically on just getting to an agreement, your argument is, as your other colleagues are on the Democratic side, that the president has to get involved, get in the room, and sort of, and, and work and work it out.

 

WARNER: Well, I’d also say, lemme just quickly add there. I don’t think there’s any Republican senator I’ve talked to who hasn’t privately said to me, Mark, you know, we gotta get Trump in this. We, we can’t, we’re not gonna do anything without Trump’s approval.

 

MARTIN: But substantively do you see a way forward that you could support? 

 

WARNER: Yes.

 

MARTIN: Because I mean, the Republicans who have been consistent, they just say, you know what? The subsidies are too expensive. Like, I’ve had conversations with Republican senators and some of them are consistent. It is just too expensive. We can’t afford it

 

WARNER: Yes. I see path forward substantively that avoid the cliff. And if there are reforms that need to be put in place, put us on a path to get those reforms, avoid the immediate cliff of November, put reforms in place. And frankly, one of the things that, that I offered to some of my Republican friends, why don’t we put into the debate as well, because of President Trump’s tariffs many of our farming community, particularly in the Midwest, some of those same Republican states are getting creamed because China’s no longer buying soybeans. We’re gonna need a 10, 15, 20, $25 billion assistance package for the agriculture community across the country. Why that isn’t introduced into this conversation, I’m not sure why, either. Because, you know, we’re gonna get this done and I believe it will get done, and then the president come back and say, oh, I forgot there’s, you know, we need another bucket of money. Why we wouldn’t go ahead and put that into the conversation right now and get it all resolved and actually show the American people, and for that matter to the rest of the world, we can still function with appropriate checks and balances. That would be a win for everyone, I think, including the president.

 

MARTIN: Senator Mark Warner, thank you for speaking with us. 

 

WARNER: Thank you so much.