Video: Sen. Mark Warner Vows “to do everything I can in the Senate to either stop or dramatically reform” the House GOP’s “big bill – nothing beautiful about it…will do remarkable damage.”

See below for video and a few highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability, held earlier today. Bolding added by me for emphasis of key points…

• “First on two sober notes. One, I want to express my condolences to the two young members of the Israeli delegation who were brutally murdered last night on the streets of the District of Columbia. Huge sympathy for their families. And obviously there is no place in anywhere in America for this kind of violence. It appears at least from press reports that the shooter was politically motivated. And I think we all need to continue to be united in standing up against these acts of anti-Semitism. I think we have to be concerned about acts of Islamophobia, and in a time when tensions around the world are so high, we have to do all we can to show unity and also to show support for the members of the Jewish community not only across the region but across the country who feel fear and under assault.”
• “I also, as this was obviously a topic more of yesterday, but want to again express my condolences to the Connolly family for the passing of of Gerry Connolly. I’ve known Gerry for more than 35 years. He was a great friend. He was a great fighter. So I said to a number of folks, if you wanted to be in a political battle, the guy you wanted next to you in that foxhole was Gerry Connolly. He was tough. He was pugnacious. But he always did it a certain amount of humor, but also he let you know what he he felt. And there is not, particularly in Fairfax County, there’s not a a park, a hiking trail, a road, an economic development benefit, a program that Gerry Connolly in his many years of service – from being a supervisor to chair the Fairfax board to one of the most influential congressmen in the country – that Gerry didn’t touch…There was no stronger fighter for federal workers. And with the level of assault that federal workers are under at this point, they’ve lost a champion, and it’s going to be incumbent upon me and Tim and other members of the delegation on both sides…to stand up for our federal workers as they get frankly terrorized and traumatized – not my words, words of the OMB director Russell Vought. We have to stand up for these workers… You lose the expertise at the FAA, you lose air traffic controllers, air traffic is less safe. You lose key folks in the intelligence community, fire young spies, America’s less safe. You lose folks who do our food inspection… our food supply is less safe This chainsaw massacre approach to federal workers continues. And I know if Gerry was still with us, he would be at the bulwarks with us fighting against this.”
• “It appears again in the dead of night, the House eked out this big bill – nothing beautiful about it. It is a bill that I think will do remarkable damage. You’ve already seen the bond market get extremely spooked because of the amount of money that is added to the debt is scaring the bond market. Why? Because people then say ‘well, if America can’t pay its bills, then maybe I want a higher interest rate on buying for example Treasury notes, which are simply IOUs from the United States of America’….That will end up meaning higher rates for home mortgages, higher rates for car loans, anything that has debt, a business that wants to expand. Of course I’m not sure any business is going to expand with the overhang of the crazy Trump tariffs. What this bill does though is just devastating to Virginia..If we don’t get some of this fixed in the Senate and those [health insurance premium] rates go up fivefold or tenfold, remember where that came from; didn’t come from outer space, it came from this big awful bill that Donald Trump has put forward….I think rural hospitals will shut down – and even if your hospital doesn’t shut down, already in wide swaths of Virginia it’s hard to find a a hospital that will provide OBGYN delivery services. Do we really want it in Virginia where you’ve got to drive a couple hundred miles to deliver a baby? I mean, that is a giant step backwards. If you’re looking at some of the things that the effects of some of the the cuts in this bill on medical research, do we really think America should be less innovative? If you’re thinking about something as basic as the ability for folks and kids to go to school not hungry, this bill makes dramatic cuts in kids’ breakfasts, school lunch programs. Does anybody really think a hungry kid is going to learn better? But this is all baked in to this giant, mass bill that I’m going to do everything I can in the Senate to either stop or dramatically reform. I’ve talked to my Republican friends about this and will be interested to see…recent estimates indicate that if you’re on minimum wage anywhere in America and if you’re on minimum wage, chances are you may have to even be working two jobs to make ends meet, you’re going to see your taxes go up estimated 53%. If you’re at the high end of earners that top tenth of 1%, you’re going to get a tax break about a minimum of $188,000. And if you’re really super wealthy, you could see a tax break you know exponentially higher. That’s just not right. It’s just not fair. I’ve got nothing against people who are successful in our society. I believe in our capitalism system. But there ought to be a responsibility to pay your fair share and to get a such a tax break when rural hospitals and for example OBGYN services are shutting down. This isn’t the kind of America that I think most of us believe in, and frankly I don’t even think that’s the kind of America that most of the folks who voted for Mr. Trump actually want to have happen. But that will come out of this legislation.”
• “Final point is I’ve been hugely concerned since the whole Elon Musk DOGE bros effort to come into our our federal agencies, I’ve been concerned about the random cuts they have been implementing. But I’ve also been hugely concerned as a former tech guy about their ability to kind of punch a thumb drive into our massive databases and suck that information out. Whether it’s your Social Security information, your tax information, your personal information, there are existing rules to say you can’t abuse government information. But we have no we have no idea how much information is being exfiltrated out, that could end up going to the financial advantage of some of the tech guys who are part of this process. So our DOGE bros bill dramatically increases the fines if this private information is somehow taken from the federal government and misused. That may not affect Mr. Musk – he’s the wealthiest man in the world. But I hope for some of these 22-year-old you know DOGE bros, they will think twice before stealing that information. And that’s what it will be, illegally excfiltrating information, so that if they are found guilty of that, they will pay a heavy financial burden. So whether that bill gets through, there’s an awful lot of my Republican friends who have expressed concern about this, I hope they have the courage to actually co-sponsor the legislation along with me Tim Kaine and a number of others and and actually put some real serious consequences in place.”
• [Question: “A little bit of an off-topic question, but what are your thoughts on the three Republican congressmen who represent Western Virginia forming their own interview committee to fill the US attorney seat for the Western District?”] [Warner shakes his head] “You know I’m disappointed. I’ve worked well with all of our Republican House members. We take a lot of input from those members. The idea that they’re setting up a separate partisan review is not the way the process works. It disappoints me. I hope the White House – and again…Tim Kane and I work very quickly; we know President Trump won, you know he ought to get his right to pick people. We went through a thorough bipartisan review process, recommended somebody from both the Eastern District and the Western District. We’ve already heard back from the White House. They thought our process was very good. We realized we had to recommend people that would been you know supporters of Mr. Trump. So there’s no political bias here. And yeah I kind of scratch my head about it. I hope at the end of the day the White House is going to rely upon the same process that every White House, including the first Trump administration, where the sitting senators review candidates, make recommendations, White House then gets to choose their own person…But if they somehow try to go around the historic process where senators make those recommendations, it would be a huge step backwards.”