Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) said on this week’s broadcast of “Fox News Sunday” that House and Senate Republicans were having a “hard time” facing “a lot of confusion” during the negotiations on the federal budget.
Host Shannon Bream said, “The funding battle that’s coming, federal funding runs out on March 14. A lot of people say, oh, in D.C. time, we’ve got plenty of time to figure this out. And maybe you do.”
She added, “Here are two recent headlines. New York Times. Two Democratic senators said on Sunday that their party would not rule out forcing the federal government to shut down. The very next day, USA Today has this headline. Dems say they are open to shutting down the government. You’ve said in the past that shutdowns are not good for the American people. You’ve talked about Virginia, you’ve talked about military families that are a big part of the Commonwealth. You said this, it inflicts unnecessary harm on federal employees, government contractors, and millions of Americans who rely on government services. So should a shutdown this time around, now that Republicans are in control, should it be a threat? Should you be guys using it as leverage?”
Kaine said, “I never use it as a threat. I don’t like the fact that Donald Trump is shutting government down as we speak. You know, he says I want to shut down the Department of Education, shrink USAID staff down to 250 people. That is a shutdown unauthorized by Congress against the law. I don’t like that and I don’t think we should be contemplating shutdown. Look, the Republicans, as you point out Shannon, they have all three levers. They got the White House and they got both houses. They got to figure out a budget deal. We could have done one last year, but after the November election they said, well let’s wait till 2025 when we have all the levers and we’ll do a budget deal ourselves. So far, you can see there’s a lot of confusion between the House Republicans and the Senate Republicans. We know where this is going. It’s tax cuts for the wealthiest is going to come very, very soon. We saw that in the budget committee this week, but they’re having a hard time getting on the same page.”
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