Video: Sen. Mark Warner Says “While I’m not Catholic, I had huge admiration for Pope Francis and I hope the church continues in that direction.”

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

• “I understand there has been white smoke coming out of the basilica in Rome and there’s going to be a new Pope. While I’m not Catholic, I had huge admiration for Pope Francis and I hope the church continues in that direction.”
• “You know there’s not a place in Virginia – rural, urban, suburban – where we don’t hear about high cost of housing, lack of supply of housing. And we really have to get a lot more innovative. Last week I talked a bit about the the low-inccome tax credit program that’s been around for some time that we’re trying to expand. That would add a lot of new supply units. We don’t obviously need demand, we need more supply. This week I want to talk about two bipartisan bills that I’ve put in that I think have real opportunity. One is the Neighborhood Investment Act…that would look at about 500,000 houses across the country that are already in developed areas but oftentimes are fairly dilapidated, and this would provide a bit of a beneficial bridge to make sure that rehabbing those houses becomes cost-effective…applicable in lots of communities all across Virginia where you’ve got declining properties that need this extra boost to get rehabbed. The second is focus on affordable housing in rural communities…this bipartisan legislation would encourage our housing finance agencies to put more effort to help bridge the gap a little bit more on rural housing opportunity.”
• “Second is a lot of work with my dear friend Tim Kaine…how do we make sure that we preserve the beauty of Virginia, how do we end up making sure that we preserve our legacy around national parks? …we’ve got legislation that would increase the number of wilderness designated areas within the Shenandoah Valley within George Washington National Forest, something that we’ve been working on for some time but I think would be a giant step forward. The second is more targeted towards designations in Bath County…The other is something that I’ve been involved with now for, gosh, eight or nine years, and that is how do we deal with the underfunded maintenance and repair at our national parks, monuments, historic sites…I was proud to be the author of Restore Our Parks Act that passed a number of years back…literally hundreds of projects across Virginia. That bill is expiring, so we’ve renamed it the America the Beautiful Act and we’ve got a bipartisan coalition that will say how do we keep hacking away at that residual cost of maintenance…This is a remarkably successful program and even in these contentious times, the America the Beautiful Act, if we want to make sure that Americans can visit our national parks, our monuments our battlefields – and we have as much concentration of these type of historic and national park locations in Virginia as virtually anywhere in the country. We’ve got to make sure we do our job and preserve that legacy by making sure that we take care of the deferred maintenance…”
•  “My concerns are that you know for years, American airspace has been the safest of anywhere in the world. And unfortunately, not simply due but partly due to some of the cuts to the FAA, cuts to air traffic controllers, I’m not sure we’re able to still make that claim as strongly. And we had the tragedy back in January, we lost 67 lives with that collision at National. We’ve had a couple of near misses since that time. And now we’ve got this military helicopter from the same unit that was involved in the crash back in January somehow taking the scenic route, it appears, for some kind of VIP. And that just should not be allowed. I mean this is crazy. We should not put the safety of the traveling public… let’s acknowledge that this is not just happening here. Up at Newark airport, we’re seeing delays and problems that that are enormous. This is what happens when you have a DOGE effort, Elon Musk and the boys, that’s candidly more focused on cuts than I fear on safety. And if you sacrifice the responsibilities of the FAA...that maintain safety or if you cut back on air traffic controllers – we knew at National we were understaffed the night of the tragedy back in January – we are at least 3,000 air traffic controllers short. But who’s going to want to go be an air traffic controller if you still have these potential cuts hanging over your head?…So we’re going to do everything we can to restore some of those cuts in the budget process. We’re going to stay on the transportation secretary to make sure at National itself that we don’t have any more of these incidents involving the military. But we’ve got to make safety paramount. We talk about all of the problems we’ve got with the economy and we’re already seeing declining number of tourists come to America because of the fear that they could actually be swept up in an ICE raid or frankly just the fact that our Canadian friends are just plain pissed at America and understandably, add to that, and we in the nation’s capital region we’re going to bear the brunt of that this summer with declining tourism numbers, you don’t need to add extra safety concerns at National to further drive down our region’s economy. We rely on tourism as much as virtually any economy, major metropolitan area in the country. And we will pay the price for that. And it’s why we’ve got to make it safe. We’ve also got to recognize that as we make our friends around the world angry, they’re going to be less less willing to come to see the great…history and heritage that we offer in the national capital area. So this is again one of the unintended consequences perhaps of some of the both the unmitigated cuts and candidly the ability for this administration in 108 days to basically make almost every one of our friends into if not an enemy but a heck lot less of a friend.”

• “It’s making an impact at our port in Hampton Roads, where you’re going to see because of these high tariffs, less port traffic come in. That will cost jobs. I talked about housing. You know, one of the major costs around housing, particularly whether it’s renovation or new housing construction, a lot of that lumber comes from Canada. And you add tariffs. you drive up those costs. A lot of the fixtures that go into our housing comes from Asia. You drive those costs up, you’re going to drive up the cost of housing. And as we see, particularly that starter house in Virginia, there are areas I believe, Northern Virginia…it’s getting close to a million dollars to buy a starter house in like 28 cities or metropolitan regions around America. You then add these tariff costs and you’re going to see less jobs in Hampton Roads around the port, you’re going to see less tourism dollars, whether it’s in the national capital region, the Shenandoah…particularly historic parks and battlefields in terms of lack of foreign tourists who are frankly afraid to come to America right now. You’re going to see housing costs continue to increase, which is putting a real squeeze, particularly on first-time home buyers. And you’re going to see the number of small businesses that I hear from virtually every day that say they just don’t know whether they can make it… a bourbon maker in Richmond who basically said with these tariffs, you know, Canadians rightfully have a reason to be so angry, and it’s going to be a heck of a long time before Canadians start buying Virginia bourbon again. That story, Virginia small businesses being creamed by these tariffs, is being reported in every industry. And the fact that there may have been one announcement today, and we’ve not seen any of the details with the United Kingdom that there’s a deal. At this rate it will be fall or into the year since every country in the world with the exception of Russia has been bashed by these Trump tariffs; we’re going to see a huge economic hit…I’ve never seen a more self-made economic crisis, and it is created because of the whims of one individual – Donald Trump. 
• “My response is [losing two US Navy Jets from the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the REd Sea is] outrageous. You know, I’ve not seen any legitimate response from the the commander of the carrier. And remember, as you know, Truman is homeported in Norfolk. And friends of the sailors on that aircraft carrier are already pretty rightfully angry because of the careless treatment of information about the attack plans against the Houthis. But this again, and this kind of sloppiness I’ve never seen before. This kind of not only waste of taxpayer money but potentially safety hazards for the sailors on the Truman. I have said repeatedly, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, is in way over his head. When you have this kind of chaos at the Pentagon, when you have this kind of morale…defeating activities where literally the senior brass seems more interested in internal political squabbling, at least in the secretary’s office. I’m afraid while there’s not maybe a direct response here, but I can’t imagine ever a secretary of defense if they’d lost three airplanes off a carrier in a couple week period that they would still have their job. Pete Hegseth needs to go.”
•  “…any [trade] deal that steps forward…I’m going to view favorably. I want to see the details. But it still raises the bigger issue, why did we take on the whole world at once with no plan on this tariff policy? As I’ve said, a targeted tariff policy against nations that cheat or undermine us, like China, could be effective if we do it with our friends and allies. Taking on all our allies at once really is a concern. And let’s even give the president the benefit of the doubt and assume this is a good deal, at this rate, it’ll be next year at this time if it takes weeks and weeks, country by country, to kind of end up doing deals with the over what I think about 150 countries Donald Trump put tariffs on.”
• “…in Buchanan County…. I think we’ve had the equivalent of you know five or six 50-year floods in the last 15 years. So we need resilience dollars, not only to simply rebuild, but then to rebuild in a way that’s smart. Literally in a hearing the other day, there was one of the administration witnesses that were basically saying we don’t need any subsidies at all around resilience, because a lot of the resilience grants that were in process have been pulled back. The absurdity of that, I’d love that guy to go up to Hurley and say you know what, folks, the state, the nation’s not going to be there for [you] as you build back from floods…It’s going to be up to each individual family to in effect build a wall around their property. That’s absurd. But that is the kind of policy that is taking place right now. Resilience grants that people were counting on, many that had already been awarded have been dragged back. I just hope and pray that particularly in southwest, that legislators – and these are mostly Republican legislators at the state level – will raise their voices and concerns as well. Their communities are bearing the brunt of these kind of storms and damage, and unless we build back smarter and more resilient, we are frankly in some cases just wasting building back, because you’ve got to build back in a more resilient way and you’ve got now…a federal partner that unfortunately is pulling back on that assistance.”