Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Chris Jansing Reports,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said Democrats did not want to open the government because that would give President Donald Trump a “blank check again to continue his lawless activities.”
Van Hollen said, “Together with my democratic colleagues in the Senate, I have voted seven times now to reopen the government. But without giving Donald Trump that blank check, he was doing a whole lot of damage to federal employees in the country even before the shutdown. I mean, remember Elon Musk and his chainsaw and they did a huge amount of damage in their so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which was beautiful for billionaires, but not for others. And when they extended the tax cuts for billionaires, the one tax cut that they did not extend was that that helped middle class Americans afford their health care. They’ve left this ticking time bomb, and we want to defuse it. And that’s what I’m hearing from my constituents as well.”
He continued, “Well, I support making sure all federal employees get paid during the shutdown. This shutdown was not caused by them, and none of them should be punished for it. If you selectively say, well, we’re just going to pay the people that Donald Trump wants to pay, then Donald Trump will keep the shutdown going on forever. So we need to make sure that we provide relief. I would propose that we provide relief to federal employees across the board, since they have nothing to do with the political stalemate that’s going on on Capitol Hill. They should not be penalized.”
He added, “Well, I don’t think that we should be reopening the government and not dealing with these fundamental questions, not giving Donald Trump. We don’t want to give Donald Trump a blank check again to continue his lawless activities. And we want to address these health care issues.”
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