I feel like a broken record in yet again reiterating my strong opposition to Democrats going on right-wing media outlets, such as the odious Fox “News.” But clearly Sen. Mark Warner disagrees. Here’s his office’s press release regarding his comments this morning on Fox “News” (ugh):
SEN. WARNER DISCUSSES BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE FRAMEWORK ON ‘FOX NEWS SUNDAY’
WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) appeared on Fox News Sunday with Martha MacCallum to discuss the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework and America’s critical infrastructure needs.
On having a bipartisan infrastructure bill come Monday:
“Martha, I believe we will because the one thing I hear all across Virginia the last couple of days, people want us to invest in our infrastructure. If you step back, you know, we have in — we are investing at about half the rate that we invested in our infrastructure as we did in the 1990s. As a matter of fact, infrastructure became, as you know, a joke line during the last of administration. They kept promising they were going to do infrastructure. It never came to pass. A group of us, ten of us, five Democrats, five Republicans, have been working on this for the last couple of months. This is the same group who actually put together the last COVID-19 deal under President Trump, so we know each other, we trust each other. I think you’re going to see whether it’s $100 billion plus for roads and bridges, whether it’s close to $50 billion for resiliency those coasts for having sea level rise, whether it’s making the kind of investments in cleaner buses. For example, our country is going to buy 20,000 new school buses over the next couple of years. Should those buses be made in China are made in America? I think they ought to be made in America, and there’s a host of new things around making our grades smarter. Broadband, I think we’ve got a menu of options, and candidly, we’ve had those menus of spending items agreed to for weeks. We have had to work through because my Republican colleagues did not want to use enhanced or actually make sure we follow our IRS tax laws, so we had to replace some of those pay fors. We’re down to the last couple of items, and I think you’re going to see a bill Monday afternoon.”
On voting on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and budget reconciliation before August recess:
“I sure want to, and by the way, I mean, there’s a little bit of workmanship going on here. There was a half-dozen times when Mitch McConnell was the leader of the senate where he would put up what’s called a shell bill because you’re not finished with the details. Then you substitute the actual text once you get into the negotiations because there will be amendments on this infrastructure bill. But, still, we will have that text; it will be out there tomorrow. After we’re done with the bipartisan bill, I would love to have some of my Republican friends join on the reconciliation left for it, the larger effort that looks at things like universal preschool, that looks at things like free community college, that looks at things like a broad based tax cut for every family that has a child in terms of the child tax credit. I would hope some Republicans would join us on that, but if not, I think the group of 50 Democrats have to work through that resolution as well.”
Video of Sen. Warner’s interview on Fox News Sunday can be found here. A transcript follows.
Fox News Sunday
MARTHA MACCALLUM: So you said you thought there would be an infrastructure bill that could be looked at on Monday and that you all were working through the weekend. Will you have that bill in place for everybody to look at come tomorrow?
SEN MARK WARNER: Martha, I believe we will because the one thing I hear all across Virginia the last couple of days, people want us to invest in our infrastructure. If you step back, you know, we have in — we are investing at about half the rate that we invested in our infrastructure as we did in the 1990s. As a matter of fact, infrastructure became, as you know, a joke line during the last of administration. They kept promising they were going to do infrastructure. It never came to pass. A group of us, ten of us, five Democrats, five Republicans, have been working on this for the last couple of months. This is the same group who actually put together the last COVID-19 deal under President Trump, so we know each other, we trust each other. I think you’re going to see whether it’s $100 billion plus for roads and bridges, whether it’s close to $50 billion for resiliency those coasts for having sea level rise, whether it’s making the kind of investments in cleaner buses. For example, our country is going to buy 20,000 new school buses over the next couple of years. Should those buses be made in china are made in America? I think they ought to be made in America, and there’s a host of new things around making our grades smarter. Broadband, I think we’ve got a menu of options, and candidly, we’ve had those menus of spending items agreed to for weeks. We have had to work through because my Republican colleagues did not want to use enhanced or actually make sure we follow our IRS tax laws, so we had to replace some of those pay fors. We’re down to the last couple of items, and I think you’re going to see a bill Monday afternoon.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: I know there was that dispute over whether the IRS part of that deal would go through. Would you want to see $800 billion in unspent COVID-19 funds? Is that going to happen?
SEN MARK WARNER: Well, the interesting thing, Martha, is everybody was for some of these unspent COVID-19 funds that came from the 2020 legislation. Again, most of that legislation passed under President Trump, everybody is for scraping most dollars until you go back and look at the actual programs. For example, hospital relief. For example, some of the programs for small businesses. We have agreed jointly on roughly $70 billion of funds that were not already spent that will be redeployed to help pay for this infrastructure package.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: What do you say to the criticism?
SEN MARK WARNER: The challenge, Martha, is that you’ve got folks who want to make big, bold statements but sometimes don’t want to roll up their sleeves; get into the details and make the very hard choices about where we find these pay fors.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: You heard Senator Scott and others say they didn’t have a bill to vote on last week, and this is what Senator Schumer said about his intention and his timeline.
“I have every intention of passing both major infrastructure packages, the bipartisan infrastructure framework, and budget resolution with reconciliation instructions before we leave for the August recess. That’s the schedule we laid out at the end of June, and that’s the schedule I intend to stick to.”
I mean, that’s very ambitious. Democrats hold the House, the Senate, and the White House. Can you get those two things done by this August recess, senator?
SEN MARK WARNER: I sure want to, and by the way, I mean, there’s a little bit of workmanship going on here. There was a half-dozen times when Mitch McConnell was the leader of the senate where he would put up what’s called a shell bill because you’re not finished with the details. Then you substitute the actual text once you get into the negotiations because there will be amendments on this infrastructure bill. But, still, we will have that text; it will be out there tomorrow. After we’re done with the bipartisan bill, I would love to have some of my Republican friends join on the reconciliation left for it, the larger effort that looks at things like universal preschool, that looks at things like free community college, that looks at things like a broad based tax cut for every family that has a child in terms of the child tax credit. I would hope some Republicans would join us on that, but if not, I think the group of 50 Democrats have to work through that resolution as well.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: Well, Senator, there’s a lot of concern about the inflation that we see rising in the country, and Senator Graham spoke to this just the other day. Let’s watch that.
“There’s a mandate in this bill to require every employer to offer paid family leave. That sounds good, I guess, on its face, until the employer has to come up with the cash to meet the mandate in this bill. Guess what the employer is going to do? They are going to increase their prices because the government has increased their cost. And over time, as we increase taxes in this bill, which they will have to do, there’s less money to do things that businesses need to do, like modernizing and hiring people. So this is a nightmare for American business. It’s going to be a nightmare for American consumers if this reconciliation bill passes.”
So he’s talking about driving up the costs for American businesses across this country and what the impact might be on consumers. Do you share those concerns about this in the three-and-a-half trillion dollar bill?
SEN MARK WARNER: Like many of the folks I work with within the senate, I spent 30 years in business. I was involved in the telecommunications industry, started a very large company. I can actually read a balance sheet, which is something that some of my colleagues can’t. Of the amazing thing that Lindsay just mentioned is there is every industrial country in the world, with the exception of the United States, providing some level of paid leave if somebody is having a baby or has got a death in the family. Other countries have managed to do that, and their economies are still moving forward. As a matter of fact, if there are inflationary pressures, it is because we put $5 trillion into the economy, three and a half trillion of that under President Trump, to respond to the COVID-19 crisis. I think history will actually treat that — those investments — as appropriate because we are seeing our economy rebound. We’ve added three million jobs in the last five months, and, Martha, I just got to tell you, as somebody who spent longer in business than I have in politics, if we don’t invest in road, rail, water, and sewer systems, broadband, those infrastructure investments will actually help us grow the economy, virtually every economist from left to right agreed on that.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: As somebody who spent 30 years in business, as you say, what about the bottom line? What about these trillions and trillions of dollars that have been spent since COVID-19? The fear is that all of this money that you talk about that’s being thrown at this problem is going to ignite inflation that will not just be transitory, that will be long-lasting, and I don’t think Americans have a long memory for what that actually feels like companies and individuals. Are you concerned about that as you seek to push through this $3.5 trillion deal?
SEN MARK WARNER: Well, again, am I concerned about inflation? I’m always concerned about inflation, but I also believe the federal reserve has pointed out that they think this is short-term in nature. We’ve already seen things like the cost of lumber, which went sky high, start to come down. We’ve already seen a little bit of relaxing in the used car market. One of the problems around our car market is that it would not have available semiconductor chips. We need to make investments there to keep up with China, and when you talk about some of these numbers, 3.5 trillion, big, big number, but that is spent out over ten years, so that’s not —
MARTHA MACCALLUM: It is still a big, big number.
SEN MARK WARNER: Right, but —
MARTHA MACCALLUM: It’s unprecedented.
SEN MARK WARNER: Nothing near to the 5 trillion we spent in the last year under both Trump and Biden.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: All right. Just in general, as a Democrat, when you look at this period of time with control over the White House, the House, and the Senate, are you disappointed with what you’ve been able to get done so far?
SEN MARK WARNER: Well, I actually think the American Rescue Plan that ended up providing, for example, a middle-class tax cut for every family that makes less than $150,000 that got children with the child tax credit, I think, makes sense. I think state and local government sure those up who lost revenues during COVID-19 make sense and I was a telegram guy. We are going to make sure every household in Virginia has high-speed broadband 2024. that would only happen because of the American Rescue Plan. I frankly think, and I would hope, every state would do that same kind of plan because if you don’t have broadband going forward, your chances for any kind of economic future is not going to be bright buried.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: Before I let you go, do you think the President should move to get behind the idea of eliminating the filibuster in order to get some of these things through while this window is still open?
SEN MARK WARNER: I don’t want the Senate to become like the House. Still, I do believe when it comes to voting rights when it comes to that basic right to exercise and participate in democracy, I get very worried about what’s happening in some of these states where they are actually penalizing, saying if you give somebody water waiting in line to vote, or in states like Texas where they are seeing a local government can overcome the results of a local election, that is not democracy. If we have to do a small carve out on filibuster for voting rights, that is the only area where I would allow that kind of reform.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: Do you think that’s a slippery slope?
SEN MARK WARNER: Listen, I would wish we wouldn’t even have started this a decade ago. When the democratic leaders actually changed the rules, I don’t think we’d have the Supreme Court we did if we still had a 60 vote margin on the filibuster, but we are where we are in the idea that somehow to protect the rights of the minority in the senate were going to cut out rights of minorities and young people all across the country, that’s just not right to me.
MARTHA MACCALLUM: Senator Warner thank you, good to have you here today.
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