After the federal government shut down for the first time in nearly seven years overnight, Vice President JD Vance stopped by “CBS Mornings” early on Wednesday for an interview with co-host Tony Dokoupil.
“Why are we in this position? We’re in this position because Senate Democrats decided that they were going to shut down the government, despite the fact that the House voted to keep the government open,” Vance began. “To be honest, Tony, it’s actually not all Senate Democrats — to their great credit, a number of moderate Democrats voted with Republicans to keep the government open last night. Unfortunately, it was one faction of one branch of government, the far left faction of the Senate Democrats, who decided to shut down the People’s Government.”
“There are critical essential services that the people rely on that are going to suffer because of this. There are people who benefit from low income food programs, families like mine, who benefited from those programs, who are going to see those programs disappear,” he continued from his VP mansion. “There are critical services that the Democrats have taken hostage because they have a policy disagreement that they are open to work with us on, but they shouldn’t be shutting the government down because of that policy disagreement.”
According to CBS News’ estimates, “up to 750,000 workers could be furloughed every day, costing them $400 million in pay per day,” with one economist telling the network that could cost the U.S. economy $7 billion per week. While essential workers like air traffic controllers and military personnel will still have jobs to do, they won’t immediately get paid as Congress remains deadlocked over its funding deal.
“We don’t want to lay anybody off, but what we do want to do is make sure that as much of the essential services of government remain functional as possible. We were sort of dealt this hand by that faction of Senate Democrats who shut down the government. We’re going to have to deal with it. We’re going to have to make sure that as much of the People’s Government remains open or functional as possible. That’s what we’re going to do,” Vance insisted. “But there’s going to be some pain, and there’s necessarily going to be some pain because Senate Democrats refuse to re-open the government. We hope that they’ll change their minds in the days to come.”
While Dokoupil attempted to push back against Vance’s claims of Affordable Care Act subsidies expiring in 2026 (as opposed to the Nov. 1 renewal notices) and its eligibility towards “illegal aliens,” the politician instead dodged those questions by labeling them as “crosstalk.”
“In the past, of course, people have shut down the government, but what we’ve learned through many cycles of government shutdowns is they never work. They cause a lot of damage,” Vance said. “We should take that wisdom, open up the government and then talk about how to ensure that people have access to health care. We want that, Tony. We want people to have access to health care, we just don’t want to shut down the government as part of a hostage-taking tactic, which is what we’ve done because of the Senate Democrats in the situation they put us in.”
“We’ve been working with insurance companies to ensure that we have the time necessary to get the right reforms in place so that people’s health care premiums don’t skyrocket. Of course, we inherited this really bad health care system from the last days of the Biden administration. We want to fix it. We just don’t want to shut down the government while we’re fixing it. Why can’t we open up the government fix the health care problem and actually work together for a change?” he concluded. “You don’t take the economy hostage because you want a particular health care policy, especially when The White House is offering to work with Senate Democrats to fix that policy. So let’s fix it. Let’s re-open the government. Let’s do something for the American people and not take the economy hostage by shutting down the government. We’re already in this — each day that we keep going it’s just going to get worse, so let’s stop it.”
Vance’s CBS appearance also notably comes three months after parent company Paramount reached a $16 million settlement with President Donald Trump after he sued CBS News for $20 billion over editing a “60 Minutes” with former VP Kamala Harris.
