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Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcast Podcasts Radio News Joining me now live from.
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Capitol Hill is Democratic Senator Gary Peters of Michigan. He's the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, also member of both the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Commerce Committee. Senator, thank you very much for the time. And let's start with what we heard there from the House speaker about Democrats and Republicans needing to come together. I note that Lisa Murkowski, the Democratic senator, Republican Democratic Senate senator from Alaska, speaking on the on the floor, calling upon colleagues to forego their paychecks. She said she'd be willing to do that, indicating that the Congress should not go out of session until all of this is handled. How likely is that? What's the quality of conversations that you're having among Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill?
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Well, there's no question. We, we have to come together. We got to have substantive conversations. I find it's interesting you have the speaker saying we have to come together, and yet none of his members are here in Washington. They're basically all back home on vacation. It's very difficult to have conversations when none of the House members are here working. I can say in the Senate, you know, I've been actively engaged and conversations with many of my Republican colleagues along with Democratic colleagues, we're going to continue to have those conversations. But quite frankly, we need to have leadership involved. And quite frankly, you're going to need Donald Trump. He's going to have to get engaged. You know, I've worked with Republicans in the prior administration and currently and even if you're negotiating with Republicans, unless Donald Trump signs off on it, they're not going to support things even if they agree to it with us. I saw that in the in the last Trump administration, we had an agreement on border security legislation. Republicans said they agreed. And literally an hour before the vote came up on the Senate floor, Donald Trump said he wasn't for it. And all of the folks who shook my hand and said they were for it were no longer for it. So we've got to make sure that we can negotiate in a way with someone who can actually deliver when we come together to make sure that Americans have access to quality, affordable health care.
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You've been back in Michigan. You're now returned to Washington, D.C. carrying with you, I imagine, comments and worries from your constituents about this shutdown. What do your constituents say to you about how it's affecting them and the prospects for them if this continues?
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Well, certainly people, no one likes a shutdown. I don't like a shutdown. I think we should never have a shutdown. We should come together. And certainly if you're the majority party, if you have the presidency, you have the Senate and you have the House, you should do everything you can to bring people together to make sure that we can keep the government open. But I think folks also are very concerned about increases in health care costs. It is becoming increasingly unaffordable for, for more and more Americans. And we know the Affordable Care act, when these tax credits, which have already expired impact people, they're going to see it starting November 1st when they get their bills, some people are going to see a doubling, a tripling of their cost that's simply unaffordable. We know that people are now going to have to go without insurance. And we also know when people lose their insurance and they don't get on a plan that ends up actually costing everybody because then the cost of insurance goes up for folks. And we look at the people who are likely to lose insurance because of this large increase that we could avoid, which is what we want to do as Democrats, avoid these large increases in premiums. They tend to impact younger folks. And you got to have younger folks in the insurance pool to keep the insurance affordable for everybody. So this is a critical situation. Health insurance is something that I believe has to be affordable. It should be a right for Americans to be able to have the peace of mind to know that they have that kind of coverage. And all we're asking the Republicans is come forward, let's talk this through. In fact, it's curious that if you look at the areas that are actually most impacted, the people who are going to see the largest increases in these health care costs tend to be Republican congressional districts and Republican states. So if they don't want to stand up for their own people, I know it's difficult to get them to stand up for others, but they're not even standing up for their own folks in their own districts and states.
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Senator, let me ask you to change the subject here about what we've seen up the coasts of South America. You were in the Navy and you've watched as the Gerald Ford has been dispatched down there, is making its way to South America. As I say, you said in the Armed Services Committee, how do you process what's happening with this military movement, this military maneuvering? What does it signal to you and what questions do you have about the administration's objectives here?
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Well, we have all sorts of questions. So as you mentioned, I serve in the Navy. I also serve on the Armed Services Committee. We have been asking for a briefing as to what is going on down there. We know that they have been destroying boats. What, what is engaged? Who is being engaged? How do you know who is on those bo, how do you know where they're going? You know, I'm the ranking member on Homeland Security. I want to stand firm to make sure that we don't allow illegal drugs into our country. That stuff is poisoned. We have to do everything we can to keep it out of our country. But we have ways to do that. I work closely with the U.S. coast Guard, Department of Homeland Security, but we always get information about those operations and what we need to do in order to keep our country safe. Right now the administration has been radio silent. We don't know what is happening here. It's hard to comment. And when you go in and destroy a boat and kill folks and we don't know who those people are or how they were identified, it raises a lot of serious questions. The part of the moral authority we have as the United States is that we believe in the rule of law. We are a country of laws. And I believe that we have to continue to be a country based on the rule of law. And part of that is having the information to understand exactly what that military force is being used for. Congress has to be engaged in that. We know that Congress has the power under the United States Constitution to declare a war. But in order to declare war, we have to understand exactly what that war is going to involve, what the purposes are and how it's being carried out. And we're completely unable to do that right now because we have not received the information that quite frankly, the Constitution demands of the executive to provide to the Congress.
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And very quickly here, 10 seconds or so. Have you gotten a response to requests for briefing from the administration?
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Not yet. We've asked repeatedly and still have no response.
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Gary Peters, the Democratic Senator from Michigan, thank you very much for the time on this Monday afternoon. I really appreciate it.
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