See below for some highlights from Sen. Mark Warner’s Reddit “Ask Me Anything” yesterday:
- “You have previously voiced your opposition to single-payer healthcare and were reluctant to even endorse a public option. Have your positions changed now that healthcare prices are exceedingly unaffordable and require dramatically more subsidies to stay viable?”
- Sen. Warner: “It’s become obvious…in order to have a sustainable system, we have to have universal health care, so that we don’t focus only on coverage, we can focus on bringing costs down. I’m seriously looking into solutions that are actually working around the world, and I’m intrigued with what Australia and Germany have done. You couldn’t create a more opaque system than the one in the U.S. No one pays more for less than we do.”
- On the cost of electricity, Sen. Warner said “the cost of power for data centers should not be borne by consumers, but by the data centers,” also that it’s “crazy what Trump has done trying to take down wind, solar and renewable power.” Warner also reiterates his view that we should “take a fresh look at nuclear, particularly small modular reactors that are safer, cheaper and still are carbon-free” (note: SMRs are still somewhat speculative technologically, also SUPER expensive – far, far more than energy effiiciency, solar, wind, storage, etc. – so…nope, I definitely do NOT agree with Sen. Warner on this!)
- Sen. Mark Warner says he “didn’t vote for Kristi Noem” and is “damn glad I didn’t, because her ICE policies are violating rights left and right, and they’re frankly anti-American.” Sen. Warner also notes that he’s “voted against more than 80 percent of Trump’s executive branch nominees, and I’ve voted against every single judge he’s put up.”
- Sen. Warner says “I understand why people are pissed off at Congress,” that it “shouldn’t be a retirement home,” but that he’s “not going to give up the fight against Donald Trump,” and that it’s “about whether you can get shit done, and I’ll match my record on that with any Senator of either party.” I agree with Sen. Warner on all of that.
Sen. Warner says “I know people are pissed off” and “I hear you.” He adds that if he’s “lucky enough to be re-hired, there are some tough conversations ahead.” He specifically cites “protecting health care, working to bring costs down, and hold[ing] Trump accountable.”
- Sen. Warner says he supports “an increased minimum wage,” but “let’s be real, we have to win a lot more elections in order for it to happen at the federal level.” Sen. Warner also says “I strongly support the right of workers to organize,” although he “did disagree with the part of the PRO Act that tried to make everybody a 40-hour-a-week W-2 employee when the nature of the economy is that people are going to have gig work, part-time work, and move through a variety of jobs in their career.”
Sen. Warner says that part of his responsibility “absolutely is to support the next generation,” but points out that “no elected official worked harder to get Democrats back into the majority in Richmond,” citing an addition 13 Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates for “my friend Don Scott.”
