>> The federal government shutdown likely rolls into
next week after competing funding bills failed in the
U.S. Senate Friday afternoon. Some 18,000
federal employees in Wisconsin go without pay
during a shutdown. Most essential services and
benefit payments continue. The shutdown went into
effect at midnight on October 1st, after the
Senate failed to pass a short term funding bill,
falling short of the 60 votes needed. All but two
Democratic senators opposed the bill, including
Wisconsin U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin. Democrats
wanted an extension of expiring Affordable Care
Act subsidies, and a reversal of about $1
trillion in Medicaid cuts. Even as the shutdown
started, Wisconsin Republican U.S. Senator Ron
Johnson proposed a bill called Eliminate Shutdowns
Act. He's here to explain. Senator, thanks for being
here. >> Well, Frederica, how are
you doing? >> Good. So you've had it
with shutdowns. What does your bill do?
>> Well, first of all, I will ask you. I think it's
pretty obvious. You and your listeners. I mean,
aren't you getting sick and tired of this? I've been
sick and tired of this for a long time. And all it
does is if you don't appropriate money for
government prior to the beginning of the fiscal
doesn't shut down, government doesn't shut
down those departments, just establishes a rolling,
14 day continuing appropriation. So then the
appropriators have time to pass an appropriation bill.
Again, it's just it's modeled really is modeled
after what Wisconsin did in the 50s. They're the same
thing. It doesn't decrease. It doesn't increase
at last year's levels until you pass appropriation. I
was disappointed that every Democrat voted against that
when we voted on it Monday. But we also had 12
appropriators. Republican appropriators vote against
it because they said it would undercut the
let me just describe that process. That's be undercut.
I've been here 15 years. 15 appropriation cycles. That
means 180 appropriation bills should have been
passed before the end of the fiscal year on time.
You know how many have been passed? Six. But that's a
96.7% failure rate. That that's apparently what the
Alleviate Shutdown Act would undermine or undercut.
Again, it's absurd. I'm not. Listen, I would love to see
an appropriation process work. It doesn't. It's
obvious. It doesn't. So let's at a minimum, stop
playing partisan politics with people's lives. I mean,
this is highly disruptive there's no reason for it
whatsoever. The House has passed a continuing
resolution. All Democrats have to do is do the same
thing to end the Schumer shutdown.
>> So in this shutdown, again, as you've just
expressed, you blame Democrats, but why not
negotiate it out before it gets to this point?
>> Well, that's what I try to do. Just let let's
prevent this. Just pass the Eliminate Shutdowns Act and
then we can negotiate whatever wants, whatever
needs to be negotiated. Individual appropriation
bills. You know, there is agreement on many things.
For example, the Senate did pass what we call a minibus.
The main part of that was Veterans affairs and
military construction that passed the Senate. I'm not
sure what happened in the House. We didn't conference
those. It hasn't been signed into law, but there
should be plenty of areas of agreement. The problem
is, as dysfunctional as this seems. Frederica, this
actually is a very well-honed process on the
part of the uniparty where you don't pass
appropriation bills, you put yourself into the
shutdown mode. You create deadlines like right before
Thanksgiving or right before Christmas. You know,
members want to go home. The appropriators or
leadership basically writes a 2000 page plus omnibus
spending bill, drops it on her desk and say, vote for
you can't go home. That's one of the reasons we've
gone from 14 trillion to over $37 trillion in debt
since I arrived here in Democrats are seeking, and
that is an extension of the enhanced tax credits in the
Affordable Care Act. You've long opposed the Affordable
Care Act. I trust you would never vote in favor of
extending those enhanced credits.
>> Well, remember, these were temporary enhanced
credits for the pandemic, but there's all kinds of
pandemic relief funding that has expired that we're
not continuing. Why do we continue these?
you see Republicans backing down on any of the
provisions in the big, beautiful bill, including
additional requirements around eligibility that
critics argue would result in people losing coverage?
>> Well, first of all, what we did was actually minimal.
We're not cutting Medicaid funding we're trying to do
is eliminate the fraud. We're trying to eliminate
Medicaid being used by people in this country
illegally. Quite honestly, we didn't go far enough.
>> What is your response to President Trump seeming to
use the shutdown as a predicate to put to cut
agency budgets and personnel?
>> Well, first of all, in the private sector, when
your company goes bankrupt, you know, unfortunately
people lose their jobs and they have to go find
employment elsewhere. You know, except for the fact
that the federal government our labors and taxation.
This will bankrupt entity. And so I don't see why
public service, public sector employees should be
immune to what we all have to experience in the
private sector. It's unfortunate. It doesn't
have to be. Again, Democrats could end this
today in about an hour when we vote on the House
continuing resolution, we could reopen government. So
there's no sense them wailing about the fact that
maybe President Trump will utilize this opportunity to
shrink down the size of government, which by and
large, I'd be all for. I mean, the federal
government is massive. Spent $7 trillion this year,
2019, before the pandemic. We're spending 4.4 $37
trillion in debt. You got sometime.
>> We leave it there. very much, Vigue. For her
part, Democratic U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin was
expected to join us, but her office told us the
senator had a last minute scheduling change. Earlier,
she said, quote, Republicans who control the
white House, the Senate and the House have not only
refused to listen to families who need some
breathing room, but they breathing room, but they