| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
7 p.m. on C-SPAN, Obama White House Chief of Staff Rah Emanuel and Vice President Mike Pence once colleagues in Congress sit down together for this episode of Ceasefire, hosted by Politico's White House Bureau Chief Dasha Burns. | |
| Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins. | ||
| Two leaders, one goal, to find common ground only on C-SPAN. | ||
| On the line for Democrats, Damien out of Alexandria, Louisiana. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're up. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Thanks for taking my call. | ||
| What are your thoughts on this eighth day of the shutdown? | ||
| Seven days, seven hours into it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, of course, I don't think it's good. | |
| My wife's a government worker, and we're going to be fine. | ||
| But I think that this shutdown is based on Republican lies. | ||
| What was you and your wife's reaction yesterday to the news about that draft memo that federal workers may not receive back pay after the shutdown ends? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We didn't discuss it. | |
| It would be bad. | ||
| It wouldn't be good. | ||
| And, you know, like I said, we're going to be okay. | ||
| We're not going to be great. | ||
| We may not be able to go out to Outback this weekend. | ||
| But I'm exaggerating, but I'm just saying we'll be fine. | ||
| But some folk are not going to be fine. | ||
| Damon, what is your wife's best guess on how long this goes? | ||
| What sort of guidance is she getting from folks she works for in her agency? | ||
|
unidentified
|
They've done it too many times. | |
| So they're, you know, it's almost business as usual. | ||
| But they're not comfortable with it because they don't know what's next. | ||
| And it is different. | ||
| We have a different administration who clearly wants to use this to make a point. | ||
| They want to fire people. | ||
| She's not going to get fired, but many people may get fired. | ||
| That's Damon in Alexandria, Louisiana. | ||
| Further reductions in the federal workforce, certainly one issue that has come up during this shutdown, one potential issue, the potential lack of back pay for federal employees who are furloughed. | ||
| That's for federal workers. | ||
| For non-federal workers and Americans in general, here's a headline on impacts of the shutdown. | ||
| Thin air traffic control staffing leads to delays at airports. | ||
| The Wall Street Journal noting that over Monday and Tuesday, more than 9,000 flights were delayed across the United States. | ||
| Some of the impacts of the shutdown starting to echo out across the country. | ||
| This is Leroy in Baltimore, Maryland. | ||
| You're up next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| This is really simple to me. | ||
| The Republicans have already had the votes to open back up the government. | ||
| They've already got 53. | ||
| They're trying to get 52 so they can get around. | ||
| I forgot what it's called, but they already have the votes to open the government back up. | ||
| So this is a Republican shutdown because they could open the government up right now. | ||
| But they're listening to their commander-in-chief. | ||
| I'm not going to say nothing bad about him, but we know who he is. | ||
| And this is a maneuvering move. | ||
| But if they wanted to open the government up, they could do it right now. | ||
| So this is a Republican shutdown, point blank. | ||
| To the Republican line, this is Frank in Georgia. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Wow. | ||
| The line. | ||
| The Democrats are lying about Medicaid. | ||
| You know, it's a state-run program. | ||
| All they have to do is go to the ER, an illegal, And he could get, if he gets severely hurt, you know, he's going to be seen in the ER. | ||
| That's where they get enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| So the problem when the illegals come in and they get hurt on these construction jobs or whatever, maybe they get paralyzed from the hip down, from the waist down, and they end up going. | ||
| You're talking about that law dating back to the 80s that mandates emergency care, but you're then saying there's a step further that happens. | ||
| How do you, what evidence do you know of people being enrolled in health insurance after receiving emergency care? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, Impala. | |
| The Imtala laws are the laws that require that anybody that shows up in the ER, regardless of whether they have health insurance or not, have to be treated. | ||
| That's number one. | ||
| They're going to get treated when they come to the ER. | ||
| And if they come to like California, Illinois, or New York, they will be enrolled in Medicaid. | ||
| And they could probably come to the ER with just little sniffles in California, and they're going to get enrolled in Medicaid. | ||
| So to say that illegals are not being enrolled in Medicaid is a lie. | ||
| Now, no, they can't go to the Medicaid office and enroll. | ||
| They have to go through the ER. | ||
| And that's how they access the system. | ||
| That's Frank in Georgia. | ||
| This is David in Illinois. | ||
| Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| I'd like to ask a question. | ||
| Why do the Senate Republicans need 60 votes to pass this bill? | ||
| And can they do it another way? | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| So, David, it's overcoming the filibuster. | ||
| They need 60 votes to advance the legislation. | ||
| You're talking about a simple majority vote, and we've talked about that for reconciliation bills, budget reconciliations bills. | ||
| This is not that. | ||
| This is the usual process for Senate legislation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, thank you, John. | |
| Is there any way, though, that they could possibly do this with a simple majority? | ||
| That's not possible. | ||
| It would involve blowing up the rules of the Senate, changing the rules of the Senate, getting rid of the filibuster. | ||
| That would be how you overcome that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, can the Republican majority do that? | |
| David, there's been talk of ending the filibuster in the past, and there's been members on both sides of the aisle that thinks that's a bad idea, but certainly a discussion that's happened more and more in recent years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay, John, thank you so much. | |
| It's David in Illinois. | ||
| This is Mark in Florida, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| First of all, the Democrats in the Senate, led by Schumer, are shutting the government down. | ||
| It's very simple. | ||
| Every member of Congress and the House of Representatives or the Senate who voted yes on this bill, they voted to keep the government open. | ||
| If you voted no, then you voted to shut the government down. | ||
| It's not any more complicated than that. | ||
| Now, another issue here is if the framers, if the men who founded this nation could see where we're at today, they would be just so appalled. | ||
| The idea that any American citizen would be dependent on the federal government, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the President of the United States, for their health care services, it just goes to show you how far gone we are as a nation. | ||
| No citizen should be under the thumb of government and reliant on the government as to whether or not we're going to receive any kind of health care. | ||
| If we had a free market-based health care system in this country where we had as many private health insurance companies as possible as the market would decide on, bartering for our services, we wouldn't have these problems. | ||
| Healthcare costs would be minuscule. | ||
| Everything that we're seeing with health care, the expense is all because the government has gotten involved in it. | ||
| The Affordable Care Act has done nothing that Obama and the Democrats said it was going to do. | ||
| All the promises have blown up. | ||
| Healthcare costs are going to be brought down by Obamacare, prescription drugs. | ||
| The Democrats are bellyaching and complaining about the same things now as they were 15 years ago, 20, 25, 30 years ago. | ||
| Nothing's changed, and it's not going to change as long as the government has their hands in things. | ||
| Now, we're going to come up with another plan. | ||
| As long as the government, the Congress is trying to figure out a new way to keep health care costs down. | ||
| They're just compounding the problem, and it just never ends. | ||
| And it goes on and on and on and on. | ||
| And it's so sad that we have so many people in this country who literally cannot exist without government programs, government agencies. | ||
| It's really sad. | ||
| But thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| That's Mark in Florida. | ||
| We talked about the potential of federal employees who are furloughed, not receiving back pay, the impact on air traffic control staffing. | ||
| But this is the lead editorial in today's Washington Post, the editorial board writing that government shutdowns are not painful enough to be able to be ended quickly. | ||
| Most Americans, they write, have hardly noticed, let alone grown agitated at the partial government shutdown as it heads into its eighth day with no clear path out. | ||
| That's the natural consequence, they write, of a process designed to make life as painless as possible when elected officials fail to do their jobs as appropriators. | ||
| What's the real harm of a shutdown if it mainly inconveniences some federal contractors who won't get paid here? | ||
| The government is too big, they write. | ||
| There's plenty of fat to cut. | ||
| If the last week has shown anything, it's that the federal bureaucracy performs too many non-essential tasks that do not have a direct bearing on the lives of most citizens. | ||
| The Washington Post saying government shutdowns are not painful enough for members of Congress to want to end them quickly. | ||
| Kimberly in Illinois, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
| Yeah, so the last caller and the callers that have called before, the Republicans absolutely have the right to, I mean, they have the ability to open this government back up if they want to. | ||
| Yesterday, the Senate just voted 4146 to confirm a block of nominees. | ||
| They suspend the filibuster rules when they want to. | ||
| That is what they did yesterday. | ||
| They can certainly suspend the filibuster rules of Republicans and open the government up with a simple majority rule. | ||
| They can do it, but they don't want the government open. | ||
| This is what they want. | ||
| So don't tell me, you know, people really need to know. | ||
| Yes, they have the majority in the House, in the Senate, and they have the White House. | ||
| In the Senate, they, again, just voted to confirm a block of nominees on a simple majority vote. | ||
| They can certainly do the same to open the government if they wanted to. | ||
| That's Kimberly in Illinois. | ||
| This is Jim in Texas, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| Well, you know, it's real clear. | ||
| It's kind of like a gentleman was saying here a couple of calls ago that the Democrats voted to shut the government down. | ||
| They're the ones that voted. | ||
| Schumer, he just, Schumer is leading them, and he wants to shut it down because he's just scared of a little Crockett. | ||
| He's scared of the little radical left lunatics that got Elon Omar and that little racist Jasmine Crockett and a bunch of radical left little lunatics. | ||
| He's just scared of them. | ||
| And he's going to run and do any little thing they want to. | ||
| And all I can say is I'm already getting ready to say President J.D. Bance, President Marco Rubio. | ||
| I'm already, I mean, the Democrats are losing voters. | ||
| They've already lost 2.1 million voters here in the last three years, and the Republicans have gained 2.4 million voters. | ||
| Jim, are you talking voter registration numbers? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just keep going the way you're going, and you're going to get beat even worse than you did the last time. | |
| That's Jim in Texas, line for independence. | ||
| Again, the Senate is set to come in at 10 a.m. Eastern today. | ||
| You can watch it on C-SPAN too. | ||
| They'll be holding a vote on a continuing resolution to reopen the government to keep it funded at previous levels. | ||
| It'll be the sixth vote on this continuing resolution. | ||
| 10 a.m. Eastern is when they come in. | ||
| 11 a.m. Eastern is when we're expecting a vote or thereabouts. | ||
| Yesterday, it was Senate Majority Leader John Thune who was on the Senate floor discussing the shutdown and the continuing resolution votes. | ||
| Mr. President, it's been one week since Democrats shut down the government. | ||
| One week since Democrats put their far-left base before the American people. | ||
| Over the past week, the Senate has taken votes on two different continuing resolutions. | ||
| One, offered by Republicans, is a clean funding extension, something that we do routinely around here. | ||
| It adds no Republican policies. | ||
| It has no partisan policy writers. | ||
| It just extends current funding levels through November the 21st so that we can make more progress on full-year appropriations. | ||
| The Democrats' proposal, on the other hand, shows their lack of seriousness. | ||
| Their resolution would fund the government until October 31st in exchange for $1.5 trillion in new partisan spending. | ||
| Yes, you heard that right, Mr. President. | ||
| $1.5 trillion in new partisan spending to fund the government through the end of the month. | ||
| Just the end of the month. | ||
| Four weeks for $1.5 trillion. | ||
| And then there's the fact that their plan makes non-citizens eligible for federal health care programs, strips away common sense work requirements for able-bodied adults to be eligible for Medicaid, and repeals the transformative $50 billion rural health fund that Republicans enacted in July to support and bolster rural hospitals. | ||
| Why Democrats think that threatening health care in rural America is a winning proposition is beyond me. | ||
| But apparently they really do think so because we're still in the shutdown one week later. | ||
| Senate Majority Leader John Thune on the floor yesterday. | ||
| We'll hear more from him today in the 10 a.m. hour. | ||
| Back to your phone calls. | ||
| This is Prince South Carolina Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are you doing? | ||
| Doing well. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Only thing I wanted to say was, I believe that the shutdown shouldn't have been. | |
| All it is that you got two parties fighting over who could steal the most money from America. | ||
| The Republicans hold the House. | ||
| They hold everything. | ||
| And if the president is supposed to be the deal maker, why ain't he making a deal? | ||
| Why is he trying to threaten people to make deals? | ||
| That's not a way to make a deal by threatening everybody. | ||
| He's threatening to turn off this and turn it out. | ||
| And then it's partisan. | ||
| He wants to turn off everything on the Democrats. | ||
| He's looking at Democrat this, Democrat that. | ||
| Then you got Republicans and Democrats hollering at one another, calling each other this, that. | ||
| That's kids' play. | ||
| America is tired of kids' play. | ||
| We need grown-ups in the house instead of children playing. | ||
| If their money, if their time was at stake, do you think that we'd still be doing this? | ||
| That's all I had to say. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Prince, before you go, when do you think the last time was we had grown-ups in the house, grown-ups in Congress? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't think there has ever been grown-ups in the Crownish Congress ever since every time they have a shutdown. | |
| It doesn't show grown-ups. | ||
| It shows children bickering like in the schoolyard, constantly fighting against one another. | ||
| And Americans, I wouldn't care if they're Republicans, Independents, or Democrats, is falling for it. | ||
| Nobody knows what's going on. | ||
| Everybody just taking news snippets from here, from there. | ||
| Everybody's being deceived because we're not the ones making the rules. | ||
| We're just the ones at the bottom. | ||
| That's how I see it. | ||
| That's Prince in South Carolina. | ||
| Some 21 lapses in government funding since 1980. | ||
| Funding, of course, expired at midnight on September 30th of last week. | ||
| We are seven days, seven hours and 23 minutes into this latest government shutdown. | ||
| The longest government shutdown ever was 35 days from December 22nd of 2018 into January 25th of 2019, back during the first Trump administration. | ||
| We'll see how long this one lasts. | ||
| We're taking your calls on day eight of this shutdown, a rainy, foggy day here in Washington. | ||
| This is Alex in Florida. | ||
| Republican, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| I'm a calling because this whole shutdown is about power and control. | ||
| They've been doing it since day one, since they got into the administration. | ||
| They already have millions and billions of dollars, and they're still greedy to withhold from all the people who aren't in their same bracket of category of being rich people status. | ||
| And then they claim that they have Christianity where they don't carry Bibles, they don't preach from the Bible, they don't anoint from the Bible, they don't speak about the Bible, but they throw up devil horns in the funeral and act like a WWE event or Super Bowl. | ||
| Christianity has nothing to do with that. | ||
| There's no transparency whatsoever, and the Christ-like Holy Spirit doesn't come out of their genes, out of their blood. | ||
| So, Alex, you're calling in on the Republican line. | ||
| Do you agree with the Republican leadership's efforts so far when it comes to the government shutdown of holding the line on this continuing resolution? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, just because I'm a Republican, that doesn't mean that I cover the sun with my hand or my finger. | |
| You have to say what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong. | ||
| And to give to Caesar, what is Caesar is a gift to God, what is God's. | ||
| It's Alex in Florida. | ||
| This is Cornell in the Garden State Democrat. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, John. | |
| The Democrats need to stick to their guns because, first of all, the Republicans never wanted the Affordable Care Act in the first place. | ||
| And for years, they've said that they're going to get rid of it. | ||
| They're going to get rid of it with nothing to replace it with. | ||
| Secondly, Donald Trump said that he would fix it on day one. | ||
| Literally, people in nursing homes are going to get kicked out and the premiums for insurance is going to skyrocket. | ||
| And sadly, every elected official has the best health care system in the country. | ||
| And they're still getting paid during this shutdown. | ||
| And yet, and still, the Republican lawmakers just leave and go home. | ||
| And then what can we do when the Speaker of the House says that, well, let's just pass this through and then we could negotiate afterward. | ||
| With this Republican elected, this Republican government under the leadership of Donald Trump, everyone knows that we're not going to get anything done. | ||
| And we haven't gotten anything done since Donald Trump's really been in office, except for, first of all, the most important thing is to make sure that the wealthiest Americans get the lion's share of everything he's doing, even to make their tax breaks permanent. | ||
| He says that, okay, we're going to stop tips. | ||
| We're going to stop the tips. | ||
| But guess what? | ||
| The tips expire in a couple years. | ||
| He says we're going to stop taxing Social Security. | ||
| Guess what? | ||
| That expires in a couple of years. | ||
| And the ignorance, the ignorance of the Republican callers that constantly say about immigrants, you know, the reason why we don't have national health care and every industrialized country does is because the Dixiecrats did not want black people to get health care. | ||
| That's the reason why we don't have national health care in the first place. | ||
| Cornell, what would be your response to the caller who brought up earlier the law dating back to the 80s to the Reagan administration? | ||
| That if somebody goes to the hospital in an emergency, they receive treatment, whether they have health insurance or not. | ||
| The law is that they need to receive treatment from that hospital. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you throw out the baby with the bathwater. | |
| They are in this minuscule minority. | ||
| But the reason why they had the reason why they had the Affordable Care Act in the first place was pre-existing conditions. | ||
| People were losing their homes because of health care. | ||
| And as far as the most people that are going to get really hurt are people in the Republican states. | ||
| And yet, and still, they refuse and they're blindsided by the fact that if the Democrats cave in on this, everybody's health care is going to skyrocket. | ||
| Cornell, were you surprised with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene breaking with Republicans on the Affordable Care Act, calling for Republicans to avoid the premium hike? | ||
| A series of tweets from the Congresswoman saying she's not a fan of Obamacare, but complained that her own adult children's insurance premiums for 2026 would double if Congress ignores this issue. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, she's a Gemini. | |
| That other twin showed up. | ||
| She's as radical as Donald Trump. | ||
| She's as radical as Donald Trump, as Marco Rubio, the people that flip-flop and flip. | ||
| But I do agree with her on that instance. | ||
| Because, and the Democrats, please, please stick to your guns. | ||
| And then for Donald Trump to say that the people aren't going to get paid, seriously? | ||
| The people that, because you refuse to do your job, they're not going to get paid. | ||
| But yet and still, he's made billions since he's been in office since that January. | ||
| That's Cornell in the Garden State at 7:30 on the East Coast, halfway through this opening segment of the Washington Journal, taking your phone calls on day eight of the government shutdown. | ||
| We are seven days, seven hours, 30 minutes, and just about 30 seconds into this shutdown. | ||
| This is Doug on the Republican line out of Newport News, Virginia. | ||
| Doug, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I think the biggest problem we have is everyone in Congress should not be paid. | ||
| I hope your listeners understand they get paid. | ||
| They're not shut down. | ||
| They need to put on a uniform, pick up a weapon, and go into harm's way without pay, and then tell me how it feels. | ||
| This is the most ridiculous thing for people to sit there and say that the Republicans shut the government down. | ||
| The Democrats shut the government down. | ||
| If you weren't watching C-SPAN with the vote, they're the ones that voted to shut it down. | ||
| You can't keep feeding welfare people and expect the military to do their jobs, and their families are suffering. | ||
| I think everybody in Congress should resign, and we need new people tomorrow that can fix this. | ||
| It's Doug in Virginia. | ||
| This is Tom, Rock Island, Illinois, Independent. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I'm going to try to keep from being too radical here, but I'd like to point out to people: you know, all these things that are happening right now, the shutdown, all of these things has been called orchestrated chaos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are so busy. | |
| Have you ever walked into a disco with all the flashing lights and the disco ball and all blowing around? | ||
| You can't keep track of one of the spots. | ||
| They spin too fast. | ||
| You get disoriented. | ||
| That's what's happening to us right now. | ||
| We're facing a bad issue here, shutdown. | ||
| But it's one of, we're in the grass. | ||
| We're in the grass picking up blades after blades instead of looking at the lawn. | ||
| There's a lot going on here in addition to what we are looking at. |