See below for video and highlights (bolding added by me for emphasis) from Sen. Mark Warner’s weekly press availability. As always, there was a lot talk about – kinda like the supposed ancient curse, “may you live in interesting times.”
- “I hope everybody had a good Fourth of July break. I can tell you I really needed it.”
- “First, it’s the first time I had a chance to address the state press corps after the passage and now signature of what I think may be one of the worst pieces of legislation I’ve seen in my legislative career. I’m talking about the big ugly bill that I think is going to, people will look back on and say, you know, how could people in any right mind take this on?…First of all, at the end of the day, it cut health care and food assistance for literally millions to pay for a price for a tax cut for the wealthiest of Americans…One part that’s not been focused as much, the Medicaid cuts are roughly 11 to 12 million people, but another five to six million are going to lose their health insurance because they currently buy it in the marketplace, the Obamacare marketplace that was set up, but they will lose any of their subsidies.”
- “…this awful bill dramatically cut back on incentives for things like solar power, wind power. I think we need as much energy as possible in this country. I’m still believing that natural gas ought to be in the mix. Solar, wind, renewables. I’m a huge advocate for nuclear power. That’s the only way we’re going to be able to power the data centers, not just in Virginia, but around the country. But we’ve been making dramatic strides forward in this area. And this cuts out the support for most of the renewable sources. This is like a packaged up gift to China because it will allow China to recapture their already advantage in solar, wind, and other renewable technologies. I mean, this is against…our national security interests.”
- “And on top of that, to just tie this all together with a big bow, it adds three and a half trillion dollars to the debt. Those of you who’ve been following me for a long time know I’ve been, since the days of Simpson Bowles, been advocating for taking down our debt with both government cuts and actually additional revenues. You can’t do it on one side of the ledger only. This will be the largest single debt increase from a single bill I think in our country’s history. And that will end up driving up interest rates. that’ll end up driving up costs for mortgages, credit cards, student loans, you name it. And for what? This was not a bill that had a a coherent purpose. It was kind of a wish list that President Trump created. And when people start to say how the heck this happened, just remember every Democrat voted against it. There were literally a handful of Republicans who voted against it, but it would not have passed if more of my Republican friends who expressed concerns had actually voted their conscience.”
- “…next week there is another battle happening in the Senate. It’s called a rescissions package. where the Trump administration is basically saying we don’t want to follow the law in terms of what Congress passed in terms of spending bills, the appropriations bills from last year. So, this bill would cut out and and seal the fate of all foreign assistance, which I know sometimes is not that popular, but I can assure you there’s nobody in the intelligence community or in the military community that doesn’t think it’s a lot cheaper to help a developing country with aid than it is to send in the troops. But we basically erased 70 years, 75 years of soft power by cutting out foreign assistance…if President Trump can arbitrarily say, I’m gonna ignore the law and just rescind what I don’t like, that really raises a question of, you know, why go through the budget process in the first place if Congress doesn’t have the power of the purse? And in many ways, that will be the debate next week.”
- “…If you’ve got this Sword of Damocles hanging over you that the administration is just going to arbitrarily cut V.A. staff. They’ve announced this week they were only going to cut 30,000. Well, how do you staff the facilities if you’re going to cut 30,000? They said they were going to cut 80,000 at first, so maybe this a little better, but let’s face it, this means less V.A. staff, less services that veterans will receive. That is their is their duty to receive this. This is a promise, a solemn promise we made in terms of benefits and health care to our veterans. And you cut this level of personnel without a plan, and you break that promise. And again, this one brought to you by the administration entirely without even any sign off by Congress.”
- “Tim Kaine and I today put a piece out in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that I just wanted to raise and that is pointing out that this administration’s attack now on public universities here in Virginia. We know the administration has taken on a number of the Ivy League schools over the last few months. We know a few weeks back the administration forced out President Jim Ryan from the University of Virginia with threats of budget cuts and personnel cuts. I thought it was extraordinarily inappropriate. We now see potential efforts to raise those kind of threats against George Mason University…being attacked by bureaucrats inside the Department of Education. I thought my Republican friends said we don’t need bureaucrats in Washington trying to interfere in local education. Our universities are well-managed in Virginia, run by boards of visitors that are appointed by the governor. And Tim Kaine and I, as former governors, we’re proud of our universities and we are going to stand up against this federal meddling in what is one of our Commonwealth’s greatest assets, our public universities. And I hope more both leadership in Richmond and the balance of the congressional delegation will join us in this fight. It was bad enough what happened at UVA. If now then this bureaucrat’s next sights are on George Mason, we’ve got to step up and stand up.”
- “Pete Hagseth, the Secretary of Defense, is incompetent and the president should either ask for his resignation or fire him. The idea that he is arbitrarily deciding to cut off assistance to the Ukrainians and allow Vladimir Putin to basically slaughter Ukrainian civilians to attack their cities. We had made a solemn promise to continue to equip Ukraine and these are funds that were approved under President Biden. So it so, I think it’s outrageous. On on top of that, you know, it appears President Trump has finally realized he’s being played frankly as a fool by Vladimir Putin. If you’d listened to anyone who had dealt with Vladimir Putin over the years, realize that this is a tyrant and his goal is not only to take Ukraine, but to take back and reestablish the old Soviet Union, which would, if we honor our NATO commitment, could put us in a war with Russia. So I’m glad to see that Trump has decided to restart those arms. I hope he will continue them. We want to get to a peace negotiation, but as long as Putin feel feels like he’s got an advantage on the battlefield and America is on one week and off one week in terms of aiding Ukraine, then he’s going to continue this heartless war attacking Ukrainian civilians. You know, America is better than that. And again, I’m glad the president has restarted these weapons. But what in the hell happened when they were stopped without his knowledge? That shows a level of incompetence and frankly a level of irresponsibility coming out of the defense department that I hope he’ll take action on.”
- “Listen, artificial intelligence is going to be the biggest transformation I believe in our lifetimes. And I’ve spent a lot of time with all the AI leaders. that offers a huge upside opportunity, but there’s also a lot of downside. There’s going to be dramatic job elimination, and we need to get ahead of that now. And I’ve been warning about this problem of deep fakes using AI for the last couple years. It’s why I’d urge that Congress step up and act on a national basis to put some some guard rails on AI. You know, there are a number of states – and I hope Virginia would join this at some point that would prohibit, you know, AI, deep fake technology to be used for political manipulation. I’m concerned it could also be used for market manipulation. But there’s been this sense that we don’t want to put any guardrails at all because that might slow down innovation. Listen, my background was in technology. I’m all for innovation. But I think most policy makers would agree that if we’d look back 10 or 11 years ago and put some guardrails on social media back in 2014, we’d have a heck of a lot healthier kids today. And now we’re trying to catch up with like banning banning phones during school days and other things to make sure our kids don’t have the kind of mental health problems that come from some of the downside on social media. Social media’s challenge is tiny compared to AI, and whether it is deep fakes in terms of political manipulation, market manipulation, or frankly the idea of non-consensual images where somebody’s face appears with a nude photo attached that’s not their body…I think it is very dangerous that we’re not doing anything... I’m almost in many ways surprised that we’ve not seen greater utilization of AI technology in terms of this kind of manipulation. The fact that it’s not come so far at the level I expected doesn’t mean that it’s not coming. And I think it would be really important for Congress to step up, and if not, for states to step up. That’s one of the things that, one good thing that happened in the awful bill of a week ago. There was an effort to try to prohibit any state from having any AI regulation for 10 years. That’s crazy. I do think at the end of the day we need national standards, but if the Congress isn’t going to work, and I got bipartisan AI bills out there, if the Congress isn’t going to act, then the states need to act.”
- “…I’ve had a lot of conversations with my Republican friends. I think they realize that we are again in way uncharted waters. And once you take these actions – and I hope they won’t and I’m still hopeful they won’t – you know, it’s hard to come back and rebuild any level of trust. And at the end of the day, you know, the political process in our country only works if you have some level of trust. You know, I’ve been in every bipartisan group that’s existed since I’ve been in the Senate. And I think at the end of the day, that’s where good legislation is made, where both sides have to compromise. But if you have a single administration basically overruling Article One powers of the Constitution, which they would do with these rescissions, then boy oh boy, we got a heap of trouble.”
- “…you know, many of those hospitals in in Southwest and Southside have already cut back on OBGYn services, where you have to drive literally hundreds of miles to have a baby. If more of those hospitals close, it’ll be a disaster. You know, one of the things that hospital systems already warned is one of the things they’ll have to cut back first will be mental health services. And you know, there’s so many communities in Southwest Virginia that are coming back strong…And the way our system is set up where in many of those communities, 50% of the population is eligible for Medicaid. And these hospitals operate on a very thin margin. If that margin disappears, you’re seeing to see a lot of them close. It’s just dollars and cents. And what’s so insulting…These are communities that voted 65% plus for President Trump. And what you what they’re going to get is the backside of his hand by this policy, that is going to be just brutal for all hospitals all across America.”
- “…one of the things in the bad bill they snuck in, trying to steal the space shuttle from the Smithsonian, which is where it’s seen for free, and try to move it to Houston to move it to Texas where visitors will have to pay 30 bucks…a head to see the space shuttle…a lot of these moves…I think have got political overtones…”
- “Well, clearly the Hoover building, the existing headquarters doesn’t work and it is falling down. It’s going to take a lot of money to rehab. When I heard about the move to the Reagan building in DC, I have questions about how you would meet the security concerns because the original request had been for a campus type that had appropriate setbacks. I want to see that information. You know, it’s no secret to you or anyone that I have had concerns at some point for a long time about the the Maryland site that it seemed, and this was the Biden administration, let me be clear, seemed to pick that for political purposes. I think the the rational site, logical site would have been Springfield between DC and the FBI facility at Quantico. All of the professionals um who were involved in that selection process picked the Springfield site. It was overruled by a political appointee. I thought that was wrong. I still think it’s wrong. But let’s see how this plays out.”
- “If I was the governor or the state legislature, I’d be pretty upset at this bill because, for example, Virginia’s going to get stuck on the food assistance program called SNAP with about somewhere between $250 and $350 million a year of additional administrative costs. Even when you’re cutting back on the food assistance to kids in schools, you’re also going to see a bunch of the administrative costs transferred from the feds to Richmond. I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think that’s right. I think you’re going to see a lot of the hospitals who are going to get overwhelmed in terms of their emergency room. You know, in the past, what had happened was there was state funding for uncompensated care. Who’s going to pick up the the cost of somebody who shows up without any insurance? There are laws across the country. You can’t turn somebody away just because they don’t have insurance. If they’re bleeding on the emergency room floor, you’re going to try to take care of them. And will the state be stuck with some of those? I hope as well at the federal level we’re going to continue to make clear how draconian and mean-spirited these cuts are. And at the end of the day, in many ways, the biggest message to send is going to be when people vote this fall for a new governor and a new House of Delegates. If you like these cuts, you vote for one team. If you don’t like these cuts and you think we are better with more people having health care coverage and more kids going to school not hungry and frankly that there ought to be a thing of last resort like food banks, then vote for the candidate – in this case it’s Abigail Spanberger – who opposed these cuts.”
- “I’ve been in churches and ministers have always been cautious. They sometimes have been willing to say, well, support candidates who support these policies. So I think the ability to have a first amendment right from the pulpit makes some sense. I worry though, whether you know you’re suddenly going to have not just a a pastor or a priest making a comment, but then are they going to suddenly pass out church literature with endorsed candidates. So, you know, this is an area where that was always a little bit gray and pastors, you know, on the left or right would make their intentions known, but without full-fledged endorsement. I think it probably, the gray area may have been better. I am very worried that if this suddenly moves to, you know, flyers and advertisements saying church-endorsed candidate X or Y or Z, I’ve not fully read the whole court decision. So I ought to make sure I get to read it and get fully up to full information and then you ought to ask me another week because…why don’t I leave it at that for right now until I get a full briefing and reading on the of the court decision.”
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