| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
The National, one part of the National Guard is stationed and I went and talked with them. | |
| I went and, you know, just checked out to see what was happening over there. | ||
| What is very clear to me is that our American soldiers don't want to be there doing political jobs and the president is attempting to use the National Guard as his toy soldiers. | ||
| We didn't ask for this. | ||
| We don't need this. | ||
| I went to the ICE facility to see if it was a war zone, as President Trump claimed. | ||
| And I saw with my own two eyes it was not that. | ||
| It was peaceful protests. | ||
| And I think the American people have been seeing that consistently. | ||
| Janelle Bynum represents the 5th District of Oregon, a Democrat there. | ||
| Thank you very much for your time this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
My pleasure. | |
| More of your calls coming up here in open forum, but first let's go back up to Capitol Hill. | ||
| Congressman Pat Harrigan, Republican of North Carolina, member of the Armed Services Committee representing the 10th District joining us this morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, thank you for your time. | |
| Let's talk about the government shutdown. | ||
| We're in day 30 here, sir. | ||
| What are you hearing from your constituents about both their health care costs? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What are they seeing? | |
| And food stamps. | ||
| Yeah, look, this shutdown has caused real harm to real people. | ||
| And I think that there's been a ton of finger pointing over who's responsible for the shutdown. | ||
| Clearly, we understand that Democrats are responsible for the shutdown, but really it's not about who's responsible. | ||
| The reality is that the only thing that's assured during a shutdown is that the American people lose. | ||
| We've got real policy debates that need to happen. | ||
| I think everybody understands that health care is unaffordable in our country. | ||
| The Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable. | ||
| The presence and necessity of subsidies from the Democratic side, I think, admits that by fact, by default. | ||
| And so we've got work to do, but we've got to do that work while the government is open. | ||
| Otherwise, our troops aren't getting paid. | ||
| Our air traffic controllers aren't getting paid. | ||
| Our TSA agents aren't getting paid. | ||
| 750,000 government employees aren't getting paid. | ||
| That's not right. | ||
| That's not the way that this should have happened. | ||
| Republicans voted for a clean CR back on September 19th. | ||
| We've done our job. | ||
| It is now time for Democrats to do their jobs and end this madness. | ||
| Congressman, you're repeating what Republican leaders have said, which is we will talk about these policy issues once you agree to reopen the government. | ||
| Then we'll sit down and talk. | ||
| Listen to Congressman Paul Tonko, Democrat of New York, on our program earlier. | ||
| This is what he had to say about these negotiations or the impasse over the government funding. | ||
| The Speaker has constantly punted to the Senate saying they can get the business done. | ||
| It's the balls in their court when in fact we know that you just simply don't pass a budget that you know is probably going to be rejected by the Senate or they can't get the votes for that measure in the Senate and just leave town. | ||
| They have been gone for five, six weeks here where we should have been negotiating and it's not simply passing your bill and kicking it over to the Senate, but all parties together bipartisanly, bicamerally, coming together in agreement on what that budget should look like. | ||
| Congressman Harrigan, your response. | ||
| Yeah, look, facts matter. | ||
| And the reality is, is Republicans voted for a clean CR six weeks ago. | ||
| I mean, this is absolutely ludicrous that we're even having these discussions at this point in time. | ||
| We've got to understand that Republicans, again, back in September, we voted to pay our troops. | ||
| We voted to have SNAP benefits go out to 43 million Americans. | ||
| We voted to fully open and continue our government open. | ||
| Back in September, Democrats have now voted 13 times in the Senate. | ||
| And look, I understand what he's saying. | ||
| They don't have the votes. | ||
| Yes, that's a Democratic problem that they don't have the votes. | ||
| And I want to take you back through the recent history here during the Biden administration where Republicans, when President Biden was in power, voted for a clean continuing resolution 12 times. | ||
| That's the respect that the Republican Party showed to the Democrats during President Biden's tenure in office. | ||
| That exact same respect is not being reciprocated today. | ||
| So we have to understand, look, shutdowns are not good for America. | ||
| Nobody wins. | ||
| America loses. | ||
| That is why we've got to get past this and we cannot allow the government to be held hostage. | ||
| We have to understand that with what the Democrats have chosen to do with shutting down the government, they are holding the American government and the American people hostage. | ||
| You cannot negotiate with hostage takers. | ||
| We have to get the Democrats to vote for a clean CR. | ||
| That's the only way that we don't have problems moving forward every three months in our government. | ||
| Clean CRs are the answer to impasse. | ||
| We can then have policy discussions while the government is open. | ||
| Senate Democrats argue that you need their votes, that it's the Republicans who don't have the votes in the Senate. | ||
| Republicans control the chamber, but you have 53. | ||
| And so you need Democrats. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If you need Democrats, then you should sit down and negotiate with them on policy. | |
| In this case, they're saying health care and the Affordable Care Act enhance tax credits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Coming back to, look, Democrats just simply need to vote for a clean CR. | |
| This is not difficult. | ||
| This is really very, very simple. | ||
| And coming back to the respect that I talked about that Republicans showed to Democrats while President Biden is in office, was in office, is not being reciprocated today. | ||
| There is got to be some, there has to be some sort of understanding between the two parties that we're not going to hold each other hostage over these votes in the Senate. | ||
| Republicans didn't do it to Democrats when President Biden was in office. | ||
| Why is that happening against President Trump right now? | ||
| Simply because Democrats are bending the knee to the radical side of the party. | ||
| These aren't just talking points. | ||
| These are very real facts. | ||
| Go look at the Democrats' continuing resolution proposal, and it is full of a Democratic wish list of absolutely crazy demands for the future of our country that Republicans cannot agree to at all. | ||
| We can have these policy discussions again, and sounding like a broken record, but the reality is that we are going to be a broken record until Democrats pass a clean continuing resolution. | ||
| What's your response then to your Republican colleague Marjorie Taylor Greene who has said Republicans don't have a plan on the Affordable Care Act premiums and that she thinks that the Speaker should bring you all back and deal with this issue that she's seeing, you know, the prices of premiums go up in her state? | ||
| Yeah, look, I've got great respect for Marjorie. | ||
| She's a colleague of mine. | ||
| We talk often, but I disagree with her on this fact. | ||
| And I'll tell you, look, you see behind me, I'm in Washington. | ||
| I've been in Washington almost every single week of the shutdown. | ||
| Most of my Republican colleagues have too, because we have priorities that we've got to get across the finish line. | ||
| We just had a teletown hall with my constituents less than two weeks ago. | ||
| We had almost 16,000 people on that teletown hall. | ||
| And the reality is, again, a government shutdown causes real harm to real people. | ||
| That includes people in my district that my office has been working, by the way, without pay, in order to try to help them, to guide them to resources that are available outside of the government to withstand this government shutdown that the Democrats have caused. | ||
| But look, Marjorie's not wrong about health care being unaffordable. | ||
| And coming back to what I said earlier, the Affordable Care Act is simply not affordable. | ||
| Work's got to get done on that. | ||
| But it's not in the form of emergency subsidies that were designed by Democrats to get the American people through the craziest time of COVID. | ||
| They actually set a lapse date and expiration date of 2025 for a reason. | ||
| This is not supposed to be a permanent government program. | ||
| We cannot just continue to give money permanently out of our government. | ||
| We're $2.2 trillion in debt, but we have very real health care issues that we've got to get a hold of. | ||
| And so she is right about that. | ||
| But look, all of these discussions need to happen while the government is open. | ||
| If we just come up here and go back and forth with the Democrats, we effectively do a disservice to the American people because we set a precedent that hostage takers during a shutdown can actually prevail. | ||
| That can't happen. | ||
| Republicans have been responsible for this in the past. | ||
| We should not be doing it in the future. | ||
| We're not doing it in this circumstance. | ||
| The Clean CR is the only answer here. | ||
| Congressman, before we let you go, we've had viewers this morning say members of Congress should be fined while they're in a government shutdown. | ||
| Maybe that would force folks to the table. | ||
| And also another caller saying that they should not receive pay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your response. | |
| I think a very reasonable approach here is actually Dusty Johnson's proposition, which is if Republicans and Democrats can't come to a resolution to fund the government, then there's an automatic, clean, continuing resolution that gets executed in two-week increments to allow those negotiations to happen, but effectively for no hostages to get taken. | ||
| Because keep in mind, we've got at least a million and a half Americans being taken hostage here. | ||
| Being forced to work without pay in many circumstances, that's wrong. | ||
| That should never happen. | ||
| It's actually, it's unethical, in my opinion. | ||
| That would never fly in the private sector. | ||
| Employers would get sued. | ||
| That shouldn't be happening in the public sector here in government, particularly in America. | ||
| We can do a lot better than this. | ||
| And so I'd be very much in favor of a proposal like Dusty Johnson's to have an automatic continuing resolution. | ||
| I think that's a great resolution to the problem we have today and preventing it in the future. | ||
| Congressman Pat Harrigan, Republican of North Carolina, thank you for your time this morning. | ||
| Hey, thanks for having me. | ||
| Always good to be with you. | ||
| Today, author and Eastern European historian Timothy Snyder accepts the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Prize and delivers a speech on how Ukrainian history was influential to human settlements and languages across Europe. | ||
| The new Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., Ola Stefanishina, will make opening remarks. | ||
| From the American Academy of Political and Social Science, watch live at 4.30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN. | ||
| C-SPAN now, our free mobile app, and online at c-span.org. | ||
| Friday, on C-SPAN's ceasefire, at a moment of deep division in Washington, one congressman and one senator from opposing parties sit down for a frank and forward-looking conversation. | ||
| California Democratic Congressman Scott Peters and Utah Republican Senator John Curtis come together to address the top issues, including the government shutdown, the future of health care, and America's role on the world stage. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Ceasefire, Bridging the Divide in American Politics. | ||
| Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| Watch America's Book Club, C-SPAN's bold new original series. | ||
| This Sunday with our guest Pulitzer Prize winner, Stacey Schiff, author of biographies, including Ben Franklin, Samuel Adams, and Cleopatra. | ||
| She joins our host, renowned author and civic leader David Rubinstein. | ||
| So writing a second book on Franklin, you must admire him. | ||
| I assume you don't want to write two books on somebody you don't admire, but you do admire him. | ||
| I feel as if he is in all ways admirable in so many ways. | ||
| Just the essential DNA of America. | ||
| His voice is the voice of America, literally. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Watch America's Book Club with Stacey Schiff. | |
| Sundays at 6 p.m. and 9 p.m. Eastern and Pacific. |