Former Rep. Abigail Spanberger was on MSNBC last night talking about the importance of federal workers and the “absolutely dire” “implications of this chaos coming out of the White House.”
- “Let me tell you who some of these people are, because they are Virginians, so many of them. They are the nurse at the VA who takes care of our nation’s heroes. They are the Social Security employer who ensures that our grandparents get their Social Security checks. They are the law enforcement officers who keep our country safe from terrorist threats the world over. They are the intelligence community members who spend every single day working to keep their neighbors safe. They are the air traffic controllers who work day in and day out to avoid tragedy. They are moms and dads and community members. And they are Virginians. And this is, yes, about them – and for them it’s a kitchen table issue. But the impact, the idea that we would have a president and a governor who’s standing by as said President says we’re going to push them out of the workforce? And this is a kitchen table issue in Virginia, but the impact is substantial across the entirity of the country.”
- “Talking about the Virginians who serve every day at CIA, and I’m a former CIA officer, I worked undercover for my entire time with the agency. These are people with language skills. These are people with specific well-honed skills, a focus and a devotion to national security. These are people who could choose to have jobs in the private sector that yes, are far more lucrative, but they are people who are driven to serve a mission. And year after year after year, not only do they bring their skills and their talents to the cause, to the mission of keeping the American people safe, but they learn and build upon those skills. You do not become an intelligence officer overnight, just as those who were investigating everything from terrorism to bank robberies to large-scale fraud cases learn that skill overnight.”
- “And so the reality is that what is happening the chaos that we are seeing out of Washington, the chaos coming out of this Administration, it is, yes, impactful to the Virginians that I have served and look forward to serving again as Governor, but it is impactful to Americans across the country.”
- “The thing about the intelligence community is ideally, when things are going right, you never know what they’re doing.”
- “As I’ve been traveling across Virginia in my campaign for Governor, from Southwest Virginia to Hampton Roads, this past weekend, Southwest the weekend before, this is an issue that people have brought to me. The reality is community health centers, they serve communities from the most rural parts of Virginia, across the entirety of our state. They deliver healthcare in places where people need it. And what we are seeing is there are at this point, currently by the numbers, more than a hundred health centers in Virginia that don’t know how they’re going to keep their staff on, they have not received the funding that they need. And the implications of this chaos coming out of the White House it is dire, it is absolutely dire. And this is the impact we are seeing here in Virginia. I’m hearing about it in every corner of our Commonwealth. And the sad reality is I know that it’s happening across the rest of the country as well.”
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