STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
So here's the deal in the United States Congress. Actually, it's a story of no deal at all. Republicans are voting for a bill to keep the federal government operating for the next few months. To avoid a partial government shutdown, they need Democratic support in the Senate and openly made no effort to get it, presenting a bill with provisions that Democrats hate. Last night, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer walked onto the Senate floor and said he needs to vote for that bill anyway.
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CHUCK SCHUMER: Either proceed with the bill before us or risk Donald Trump throwing America into the chaos of a shutdown. This, in my view, is no choice at all.
INSKEEP: Other lawmakers made different choices. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont is opposed, and his advisers include Faiz Shakir, who is in our studio. Thanks for coming by.
FAIZ SHAKIR: Hi, Steve. Good morning.
INSKEEP: Good to see you again. What do you make of Senator Schumer's decision?
SHAKIR: Well, you have a government decimation going on right now, of course. And the question is whether Democrats want to assert any leverage to indicate to America that this matters to us. We are upset about it, and we aren't going to be party to it. And at this moment, I think you have this great opportunity to show that with a microphone. People are going to be paying attention to you. In fact, in 2013, I was looking at President Trump during the Obama shutdown. You'll remember this, Steve. There was a shutdown at that time.
INSKEEP: Yeah.
SHAKIR: And President Trump at the - or, he wasn't president, but...
INSKEEP: Yeah, Donald Trump, sure, at that time.
SHAKIR: Yeah, he was indicating the politics of it were - and I was reading that this morning - if there's a shutdown, no one knows who the leader of the House or the Senate is. It's the president's responsibility. It's the president that everyone pays attention to. What better time to tell everybody the president is on the wrong track, and we have a different governing philosophy for America?
INSKEEP: I suppose you would have gotten the public's attention, or you might have gotten the public's attention. Who knows these days? But you also would have - another million or so federal workers would have been told to stay home and not be paid.
SHAKIR: Well, you know, I - we have to fight for those federal workers. There are a lot who have been hurt right now. And the question is, does it matter to you such that you want to indicate to Donald Trump that we have - we're not only angry, we're going to assert some leverage in which we're going to compel you to have to negotiate with us? That's the outcome of this, Steve. If you don't - if they can't get a government funding bill on their own terms, which is what they're trying to force down the throat of everyone right now, they'd have to negotiate with you.
And, you know, Harry Reid, when I was working for him in 2013, said, we'll shut this down for 16 days, Ted Cruz and John Boehner. You're going to negotiate with us. We're going to solve this together. And if you don't, yeah, this is on you. This is you as a leader. And I think that kind of muscularity of a Democratic party is what people are hunting for.
INSKEEP: It's possible to imagine, I suppose, Democrats approaching this administration a little differently than they have.
SHAKIR: Yeah.
INSKEEP: They've tried to say, we'll work with the president where we can, and then they've objected to a lot of things the president has done. I suppose they could have gone into total opposition, just opposing at every single turn, slowing down the Senate at every single turn, any number of things. Would you rather have seen more of that approach?
SHAKIR: It feels like we have a framework of playing not to lose rather than playing to win. I would love a Democratic Party who has demands of governance. One of the problems and struggles here is when you become too process normie - that, oh, well, we got to just keep the government open. Well, what are your demands? What do you want of a government? I want zero Social Security office closings in America. I want zero veterans' clinics being closed. I want expansions of the federal minimum wage. I want to see people in the workforce being respected for the work that they do. That, I think, is what people are hunting for out of a Democratic party.
I would argue, too, as you go into the midterm elections, Steve, like, they're saying one of the questions of that election will be, are you going to be a check on Donald Trump, right? If I put power into your hands, Democratic Party, will you be a check on him? What are we indicating right now? Are you going to be an actual, honest, sincere, serious check on this person?
INSKEEP: This is not an absolutely literally serious question, but I will put the question out there. Would you go so far as to say that Congress should cut its own budget because it's not doing its job as a Congress?
SHAKIR: Yeah. When we were in the shutdown before in 2013 and other times, we said that, hey, you know, if the Republicans or - and/or Democrats compel a shutdown, then, yeah, you bear some of this cost as well. You should not take pay during that period of time. It should not be easy and comfortable for you. If all these federal workers are out, then you should also suffer yourself. And I think that, you know, sending this message right now that we stand with federal workers, we want the government to function - I think you can send that message with muscularity.
INSKEEP: Just got about 15 seconds, but isn't the midterm elections the moment to make a judgment here and not now?
SHAKIR: Well, I think you start it right now. You start with that message - we, as a Democratic Party, have a very different philosophy for governing this nation, and I'm going to tell it to you in the boldest way right now, and then I have 16 to 18 months more to tell you about it.
INSKEEP: Faiz Shakir, senior adviser to Bernie Sanders, thanks so much.
SHAKIR: Thank you, Steve. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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