Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says He Wants the Shutdown To End Quickly, But the Federal Workers He’s Talked To “feel like at some point you’ve just got to draw the line”

See below for video and highlights from today’s press availability by Sen. Mark Warner (bolding added by me for emphasis of key points):

• “I’m sorry I’m a little bit late…a sign of the times, not only have bipartisan talks broke down, but the Senate trolley that I was riding over froze and I had to climb out the emergency exit. So a little bit of a metaphor maybe for the day.”
• “Well we are…about 13 hours into the government shutdown and let’s say at the outset nobody wants a government shutdown, or at least I sure as heck don’t. In the past, we have resolved these by bipartisan negotiations. This time it’s kind of a take the deal or nothing. And I strongly believe, as Virginians are going to be getting their notices of dramatically increasing health care costs that are supposed to go out this month. I’ve heard there’s some effort to delay informing Virginians before the gubernatorial election, which would be pretty dastardly. We ought to be able to resolve that as well as make sure we keep the government open. And the irony is for those who say, ‘well, you can do that later,” well notices go out on healthcare costs going up this month and people have to sign up next month. They won’t sign up with the higher costs. These trains need to run in parallel. That being said, I’m still hopeful that there that bipartisan conversation can break out. There are a number of us that have been talking. I think nobody wins and particularly our federal workers who this administration continues to threaten, coerce and – using the OMB director’s own language – terrorize, is awful. I will say that the overwhelming majority of federal workers who’ve been in touch with me over the last few weeks have said they feel like they’ve been in a continuous shutdown already for the last 7 months. They feel like they’ve never been under more assault and they want us to push back. Whether that’ll be the case in a few weeks, I don’t know. But that was the clear message I had received from federal workers. My hope is we can see progress. As somebody who’s been proud of being in part of every bipartisan group since I’ve been in the Senate, I think cooler heads should and could prevail. But we will stay tuned.”
• “I do think that the most hopeful sign that I’ve seen in the last 36 hours doesn’t have anything to do with the shutdown, but it has to do with what happened when Secretary of Defense basically ordered 800 of our senior military officers to Quantico to receive a lecture on grooming and how to be physically fit for combat. These leaders have commanded troops, have fought in our nation’s battles. And on top of that, then the president lectured them for over an hour. The thing that I want to say proudly is thank you to our military, because unlike virtually every other institution that has bent the knee – the media, universities, law firms, businesses – the military yesterday I think demonstrated by their decorum their absolute loyalty to the constitution. That filled me with hope, because so many institutions are allowing excesses and and breaking of laws and norms to go unquestioned and unheeded. I came away from the remarkable display of professionalism from our military leadership frankly glad that that institution is going to maintain its loyalty to the constitution and to being non-political. That is important news for I think all of us in this country.”
• “Here’s what we’ve got to resolve. I mean, if you take an average couple who buys their health insurance through the exchange and say they’re making $80,000 a year and they’re in their mid 60s, they’re going to get a health care increase of about $800 a month. Most folks I know can’t afford that. So that will be in an economy that is already where affordability is the top issue, it is going to slam families at an unprecedented rate. And the fact is that even if you don’t buy your health insurance through the exchanges, when you combine the Medicaid cuts and pricing people out of the health insurance market, even if you get your health insurance through an employer, your rates are going to go up. You can’t take… in Virginia, you know, 600,000 or 700,000 people and throw them into the emergency room without everybody’s hot costs going up. And we know that there will be rural hospitals around Virginia that will close their doors. We can’t sit idly by and let that happen. So, it needs to be addressed. Our belief is it needs to be addressed at the same time as the government funding. We’ve said that for weeks and weeks on end.”
• “And I think there’s a way to to get to a deal. On top of that, I would point out there’s another crisis brewing at this point and across our farming communities, including in Virginia, but even more in in the Midwest because of President Trump’s tariffs. We have farmers, particularly soybean farmers, who are going to declare bankruptcy because they sold 50, 60, 70% of their crop to China, and now China’s not buying. So, if there’s going to be an agriculture relief, if we can provide the healthcare relief, we’ve got to make sure the economy keeps running and that people are not priced out of their ability to put up with cost of living. I think those issues, they’re important, they’re timely, and they need to be addressed now. And again, I’ve got a lot of Republican friends who are talking to me about that quietly.”
• “Well, folks are going to be going to work and not getting paid. Now they will be retroactively paid, but that’s still going to put a stress on on government workers. But where the real stress and I think in Hampton Roads, think of all the people who are federal contractors – they don’t have any reimbursement level. I’ve got legislation that would say just like federal workers, when the government reopens they should get their back pay as well. We’ve not had much interest from the administration on that. So there will be harms…across the region in terms of delays potentially at our airport in Norfolk. But I’ve also heard again repeatedly that our federal workforce are saying they’ve been under such threat and now you’ve got the president threatening to fire people. I mean these are human lives. These are not, you know, chips that you toss around, you know, in a betting game. This has never happened before where administrations, we’ve had plenty of shutdowns, threaten to fire people. I think it reflects again this administration’s complete disregard for our federal workers, for our federal contractors, and at least indirectly for our military because they are affected as well in terms of short-term on pay. And that’s why we need to get this resolved. And the way to resolve it is the way it’s been resolved every other time in the past with a bipartisan agreement.”
• “Well in prior shutdowns, there was at least conversations and meetings between both parties. You know, the president had never met with the Democrats until the day before the shutdown took place. I think the Democrats have been pretty clear. Every other shutdown was resolved by a bipartisan agreement. You know, the Republicans do control the presidency, the Senate, the House, but in this bill, as you know…they need Democratic votes because it is 60-vote margin. We ought to do what we did in the past, get in a room and and hammer it out. And I would go back to, you know, I don’t agree a lot with President Trump, but his own words have said, if you’re president of the United States, you are responsible for preventing government shutdowns. President Trump is president. I believe he bears responsibility. And the fact that he has only had one meeting and then he puts out crude AI videos kind of belittling the whole process and then threatens the federal workers, that is not the traditional path to how you get a deal.“
• “I think it’s frankly insulting to our military. I think it is remarkable that the men and women who appeared there have actually had years of experience in combat, and to be lectured by a Fox News caster  think is demeaning and belittling. I think the idea that he’s, you know, beyond how fit you are, he’s talking about, you know, you got to be clean shaven, I wonder if that’s going to apply to the vice president, Vice President Vance as well. It just seems beneath the office of the Secretary of Defense to kind of lay out this this kind of lecturing of men and women who’ve served in much more combat, who protected our nation with their lives. It’s insulting. It’s demeaning. And I go back to what I said at the beginning. In an otherwise pretty dark day these last few days, the fact that the military leadership didn’t take the bait, didn’t respond, were purely professional, gave me hope again that if there’s one institution that is not going to bend the knee and be moved into inappropriate practices, it’ll be our military. And I would add…I’d love to get the actual response from our military leadership when President Trump basically threatened that we’re going to send the military into our cities, our communities, and the term ‘the enemy within’. I mean, is is President Trump advocating the military to be used in some form of civil war against other Americans that simply because they don’t agree with the president? I did come away though that I think the military will not take unconstitutional orders. And one thing we will see, and my Republican friends agree with this as well, this president is pushing on every boundary, on every legal front to see how far he can go. We’ve seen it in the attempt to corrupt the intelligence community’s analytical product. We’ve seen it obviously with threats to law firms, universities, threatening first amendment rights by threatening to yank FCC licenses from your kind of stations if you don’t adhere to the president’s views. And unfortunately, the vast majority of our institutions so far have given in. And what I got out of yesterday is the military will not give in. And I think we owe a great debt of gratitude if we continue to push past laws and and limits. I came away with thinking the United States military will stay loyal to the Constitution. And for those of us who are concerned in both parties about a slide through a kind of a president without any legal barriers, I came away relieved from their professionalism yesterday. But I can imagine I’ve already heard in a number of cases of how angry, disappointed, and how kind of insulting it was beyond the cost of literally millions and millions of dollars to bring folks in from ommands all around the world for that kind of lecture.”
• “…I do wonder whether the president is frankly not looking forward to this. And again, I go back to the kind of unprecedented threats that he’s going to continue to fire federal workers without cause, led by the OMB director whose goal, not my words, his words, was to terrorize the federal workforce, which is terrorized. I don’t know how that makes America safer. I don’t know how it makes our government more efficient or effective. And we ought to get past this and into a room and negotiate a deal to get the get the government reopened. Make sure health care costs don’t explode and start addressing the host of other problems including the crisis with farmers around America in a rational way.”
•  “To state the obvious, federal workers are going to notice [the shutdown] most since the vast majority of them have not been deemed essential. And you’re going to get those who are working and not getting paid and those were at home and were not getting paid. They will get paid once the government reopens….hopefully this won’t last long, you could see delays at airports…Obviously we’re approaching peak foliage time in Virginia. The Shenandoah and some of our national parks around Virginia will be – they’re not closed, but it’s going to be much reduced services. I’ve already mentioned the fact that federal contractors…they don’t get repaid. I would couple that though with what’s going to happen is as Virginians start getting the notices of how high their health care costs are going to be. I think folks are going…folks particularly who don’t follow politics are going to say, you know, oh my god, I can’t afford this. I’m going to have to drop health insurance. That could have our whole health insurance market spiral out of control. So, we ought to get this done and it ought to it’s going to take both sides. And I think there’s a rational way to get this done and which is, you know, get in a room, negotiate, and reopen the government and assure people that they’re not going to be have their health care become unaffordable, which again would potentially break down the whole system. If we overwhelmed our hospitals with, you know, 600,000 or 700,000 new uninsured, that will be a disaster, particularly in rural communities that will feel it the worst in terms of the health care cost.”
• “Southwest Virginia is going to take it more on the chin than any other part of Virginia in terms of healthcare. And the remarkable thing is that Southwest Virginia voted overwhelmingly for President Trump. I think about Lee County Hospital, that it took us years to get reopened. It could be very well on the chopping block when you take the Medicaid cuts and you take the insurance premiums. It’ll be devastating. We’ve already got, as you know, wide swaths of Southwest Virginia where you don’t have OBGYN services. If if a mom can’t deliver a baby except for driving two or three hours to get to a hospital, then your community is not going to have a chance to kind of go through the economic recovery that so much of Southwest Virginia were rooting for. I mean, last Saturday was a year anniversary of Hurricane Helene. And to see the progress that has been made on the Creeper Trail and Damascus and communities across the region from recovery, to have that all cut short now with health care costs doubling or tripling or disappearing, that’s just not right. And we can’t punt on that until sometimes next year. People will start having their health care become unaffordable before the end of the year. Literally, the sign up for the Obamacare marketplace is November. And we’ve already seen, not so much in Southwest Virginia, but Augusta Health up in Augusta County, they’ve already closed rural clinics and just because of the Medicaid cuts that are coming. So that is coming across Southwest Virginia and it’s why we’re saying, you know, let’s get the government open, but let’s also deal with these healthcare rising costs. It’s going to really hurt a lot of rural Virginia and disproportionately southwest Virginia.”
• “I’m not sure I’m a great political pundit, but I’ll go back to what I said at the outset – the federal workers overwhelmingly that I’ve heard from are saying we feel like we’ve been under assault, terrorized, riffed…I think we’re losing…I don’t have the exact number, tens of thousands of Virginians who took the so-called ‘fork in the road’ and did early retirement, they’re getting their last paycheck today. I think they’re angry at this president’s approach. Can I guarantee that three or four months, three or four weeks from now? I don’t know. But I think federal workforce in particularly is bitterly disappointed at how they’ve been treated by this administration. In terms of other Virginians, I’d say to them, you take President Trump’s own words when he said earlier, it is the job of the president to keep the government open, particularly when he and his political party controls all three levers of government – the presidency, the House, and the Senate. But these are unpredictable. I’ll be the first to grant I’m not going to pontificate here, but it would be good for all of Virginia if we can get this resolved in a way that doesn’t drive up and break our health care system and also keeps the government open. But at the outset at least, I think the antipathy from the federal workforce towards how they’ve been treated by this administration, and I don’t think it’s being helped now by the president callously threatening to fire a whole bunch of additional workers…Although I would point out the president has no additional powers in a shutdown than he does right now. So that’s one of the reasons I’ve heard from the federal workforce so much that they are concerned because they’ve already been riffed. They’ve already been pushed out. They’ve already been threatened and they feel like at some point you’ve just got to draw the line.”
• “…I was one of the ones that first raised concerns about Tik Tok. And I’m going to give the president the benefit until I see the details. At the end of the day, it’s not just about American company control. It is also about making sure that the algorithms that TikTok is brilliant at are not completely generated and upgraded by a Chinese entity that’s controlled by the Communist Party. You know, this is in many ways no different than the case we’ve made against Huawei, as we try to get other countries around the world to say don’t buy telecom equipment, because even though it may be clean at this moment, if you get constant updates, you know, there’s always a way the bug can be planted later. That’s the same concern I have about TikTok. And we don’t have any of the details on the deal at all. And I want to see the details and read the fine print.”
• “Listen, I’ve worked with the governor on lots of projects, particularly economic development projects. It’s the political season. So I would simply say this, you know, when Virginians realize if they get their notices on time, if somebody’s cooking the books and delaying the notices of how much their healthcare is going to go out, I’m sure that Republicans in Richmond will also say, you got to get the healthcare issue fixed. Well, we’re saying let’s fix them both right now. get the government reopened and bring down health care costs or at least not let them go up. You know, our health care system is not perfect. Let me be the first to acknowledge that. But we’re looking now with the effects of Medicaid cuts and these – we took Virginia, and I was proud of this when I was governor, we dramatically got more people signed up for health care. With all the imperfections of Obamacare afterwards we took the uninsured rate from 17% 18% down to about 6% or 7%. Those numbers will go back up to 16% 17% 18%, maybe even 20% uninsured. That will hurt Virginia’s economy. Anybody that can read a balance sheet will realize that. I can read a balance sheet and that’s why I’m I’m fighting so hard to make sure that Virginians don’t get priced out of healthcare.”
•  “The WIC program is critical to women, infants and children….you have an administration where I’m not 100% sure I trust the numbers coming out of this OMB. But regardless, you have an administration that has treated federal programs and federal workers with such disdain. You’re going to have a hard time convincing me that Russell Vought gives a hoot about the WIC program or any other program that helps Americans who are going through hard times. There’s just been the opposite reaction frankly when you see even when we had a budget and we had programs, the OMB director would cherrypick programs to cut on his own without any congressional approval. That is one of the challenges we’ve got right now too. The lack of trust from in this administration, I hear this from Republicans as well, that even if a deal is reached that the president and particularly the OMB director will follow the law.”
• “Arlington’s got both a huge number of federal workers and federal contractors….As somebody that lives in Alexandria next door, you know, just in my my daily life, when I’m not up here working and I, you know, I’ve heard from Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax, from most of the Northern Virginia community, probably louder than anyone,  that federal workers and contractors feel like they’re under assault already and you got to push back. Again, I’ll be the first to acknowledge, will they still have that view 2 to 3 weeks from now? I don’t know. I’m absolutely hopeful that this can be resolved very quickly. It should be resolved very quickly. But people coming up to me in Arlington have have all been of virtually all of the mindset, you know, you got to stand up. This is just undermining so many of our government purposes are being undermined. Government agencies are being undermined. You’ve got to draw a line. And the challenge is, as you know, if you’re in the minority, there are only certain times when the majority party needs your votes. This is one of those times. And dealing with health care costs, not letting our federal workforce be further abused, I think is important.”