See below for video and highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s media availability earlier today.
- “If you look at the three big bills that are now law – the infrastructure bill, the CHIPS bill and the energy changes at least that came out of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, enormous positive actions coming out of those bills, those laws. But only about 10%-15% of the money in each of those entities has actually hit the street yet. So the benefit of these new laws are really going to hit Virginians over the next 12, 18, 24 months. I think that’s good news. It also in my mind begs the fact that if we’re going to do all these things we’ve got to build stuff again in this country…and that means we need regulatory reform…It shouldn’t take 3-5 years…to get permits.”
- “We know there are some in the House who are once again threatening a government shutdown. That’s crazy. What’s particularly crazy and I can’t imagine anybody that says it’s all right if you shut down the government… some of the advocates of shutting down the government are saying it doesn’t matter. I would ask them, do you not realize that we passed laws that said if there’s a government shutdown after the crazy one that lasted 35 odd days under President Trump, we’re going to make sure federal employees are paid regardless. So not only do you disrupt people’s lives, it actually costs the taxpayer a lot more money if we’re going to honor that law. So I’m very proud of the fact the Senate in a bipartisan way is working through the appropriation issues we’re going to do our job it’s my high hope that the House will do the same. There is no state in the country that gets hit harder than Virginia…this doesn’t make sense for the country, sure doesn’t make sense for the Commonwealth of Virginia to see a shutdown…First and foremost, what I can do is make sure the Senate passes what’s called a continuing resolution, which will keep the government operating…Tell me the business case [for shutting down the government]; why disrupt people’s lives, why cost the American taxpayers more? For what?”
- “If you had a secret ballot in the House of Representatives, or if you didn’t have rules that say that if you went back to the way the House used to work…we’re going to put up something and as long as you get a majority, it might be 80% of the Republicans and 95% of the Democrats, that still will get you 75% plus…If you did a secret ballot in the House, I bet would it be 85% plus would say we shouldn’t shut down the government. But you’ve got this small group of individuals…and that’s why Speaker McCarthy I think, you know, in his effort to get this job, boy oh boy, at some point he’s gonna have to break with some of these folks who tend to want to put politics over what I think is in the best interest of our country.”
- “The truth is, we’re not going to get the whole package done by September 30th. I think we should have. The House hasn’t passed a single appropriations bill out of committee. The Senate has, and the Senate has been doing their work based upon the deal that the President and Speaker McCarthy put together…We’ve all seen this movie way too many times…I’m not sure who else could even be close to being hurt more by shutdown than any other state…we will take it on the chin and it will hurt our economy, it will disrupt Virginians’ lives…This makes absolutely no sense.”
- “As chairman of the intelligence committee, I’m intimately involved in… making sure that we stand with our European allies and with the brave men and women in Ukraine who are pushing back against Vladimir Putin and the illegal Russian invasion of their nation. We’d like to have seen quicker progress, but literally on a daily basis the Ukrainians are making strides forward. We must remain steadfast with them. The rest of the world is watching us. If those who were critical, as I was, of how we got out of Afghanistan, if we were to suddenly pull the plug on Ukraine at this moment in time, America’s commitment to our allies and our commitments to our treaties – because while this Ukraine is not a NATO nation we are working in close concert with all our NATO allies who many in cases are actually sending more aid per capita than we are in the United States – we’ve got to hang in with President Zelensky and the brave Ukrainians who are fighting the Russians…This additional funding…is critically important. And I would point out one of the things that I hear again from from some members, disproportionately House Republicans, who…somehow want to just give up, they somehow act like there’s no linkage between the circumstances of what’s playing out in Ukraine between Ukraine and Russia and the rise of China…The best gift that America could give to Xi Jinping in terms of his efforts to try to spread Chinese Communist Party domination, not only around Asia but around the world, or for that matter Xi Jinping’s aspirations to retake Taiwan, would be if America walked away from a similar conflict in terms of helping Ukrainians against Russia. I do not understand anyone’s failure failure to see that linkage. In the Senate, the vast majority of of members of both parties – at least anyone who is in a leadership position on committees like the Appropriations Committee, the leadership of the Senate majority and minority leader, the Intel Committee, the Armed Services Committee, folks who have followed this and have been informed on both a public and classified basis of the progress of what’s going on, we need to stand with the Ukrainians now more than ever. Remember…the Ukrainians are doing what America had prepared literally for 75 years to do…to take down, at least most of my lifetime, the world’s second biggest military force was the Soviet Union slash Russia. Well now, the Russian military is in many ways the second best even just within Ukraine, since the Ukrainians in certain ways are performing better than the Russians. They are doing the job that in many ways for 75 years America prepared to do. It is critically important that we get this supplemental assistance to our Ukrainian allies, as well as reaffirming America’s commitment to our alliances around the world”
- “I’m not going to weigh in on the legal arguments” regarding whether Donald Trump should be disqualified under the 14th amendment.
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