Sen. Tim Kaine explained to Fox’s Shannon Bream why Democrats can’t take Leader John Thune’s word for anything when it comes to ending the shutdown. Kaine made an appearance on this weekend’s Fox News Sunday, and was asked by host Shannon Bream about Sen. John Fetterman’s statement that he believes that “Majority Leader Thune is an honorable guy” and can be trusted to negotiate in good faith if the Democrats voted to end the shutdown.
Kain proceeded to explain why there’s no reason they should believe any of Thune’s assurances:
BREAM: And so Senator Kaine, couple of things. Do you believe that Leader Thune is an honorable, quote, reasonable guy? And why not vote to reopen and then begin conversations, debates, negotiations?
KAINE: I’m… Shannon there’s two issues that really are driving us. One is the fact that folks’ healthcare premiums are spiking largely because of the reconciliation bill that the Republicans passed in the summer.
For example in Virginia, if you are at 100 percent of poverty or below, you just got to notice this week that your healthcare premium is going up by 2000 percent. If you’re between 100 percent and 130 percent, slightly above the poverty level, your premium is going to to up by 95 percent.
Even Republicans want to fix this. People are hurting now, let’s fix it now.
But the second issue that’s very important to me, and I don’t challenge Sen. Fetterman saying that John Thune is an honorable guy, but here’s the challenge. We can’t do a deal with president Trump and then have him tear it up tomorrow and start mass firings, or canceling programs that he doesn’t like, or canceling programs that help blue states.
We have to be sure that the deal is a deal, and if we shake hands over a deal, Congress will follow it. Will the president follow it? And we haven’t been able to get that assurance from the president, and that’s not something that John Thune can assure us about.
It’s up to president Trump to say that he’ll live by a deal, and thus far he’s not been willing to even discuss a deal, much less guarantee that a live by one.
BREAM: Okay, so just a follow-up to that. What we’re talking about is extending current spending levels — no cuts, no ads, at least while you have a conversation. So, you know, you have one of the top House Democrats this week saying, we know the American people are suffering, we know this is rippling out. But this is our leverage point, so we’re going to continue this for now. What do you say to the American people who are suffering about this is just leverage?
KAINE: Well, I know I challenge your opening assertion that we’re just extending current spending levels.
BREAM: Well, the measure that comes with that bill is just maintaining our current levels. You may not like the levels, but it doesn’t add or cut anything.
KAINE: But let me finish. If we were to vote on that and then tomorrow President Trump decides, yeah, but I’m still firing thousands more people and I’m holding back the monies that we just agreed to, why would we do a deal without a guarantee that the president’s going to follow it?
And we have reason to be worried, because in Virginia we’ve seen since January 20th canceling economic development projects in our state that were authorized and appropriated, pulling back public health funds that were authorized and appropriated.
And so we see healthcare costs spiking, energy costs spiking, food costs spiking, people getting fired, federal employees in food lines. We need President Trump to agree that if we shake hands on a deal, he will honor it.
I would argue that any assurances from Trump are worthless as well, but it would make it harder for Republicans to weasel out of an agreement if Trump is on the record as supporting it. Right now they’re all telling Democrats to just trust them and they’ll negotiate in good faith later. They’ve all proven there’s absolutely no reason to believe that’s true.