Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Dias-Balart Talks Shutdown; White House Briefing; Concerned Americans Voice Frustration; FDA Food Inspections Shut Down.

Aired October 02, 2013 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now is the Florida Republican congressman, Mario Diaz-Balart.

Thanks very much, congressman, for coming in.

REP. MARIO DIAZ-BALART (R), FLORIDA: My pleasure, Wolf.

BLITZER: So what do you think? Do you think this meeting the president's scheduled at 5:30 today over at the White House with the speaker, with the minority leader in the Senate, the Democratic leaders, is there a possibility that they get into a room and they just talk and talk and talk and don't leave until they've worked this out? Is that possible?

DIAZ-BALART: You know, what I'm hoping comes out of this meeting is a path forward, Wolf. What we've had, to this point, is people talking at each other, not to each other. And, you know, you just don't solve problems that way. So I'm hoping that this is not just a photo op, I'm hoping this is not to say that you're doing something. I'm hoping what comes out of this meeting is, let's -- what's the process, what do we have to do to start talking, to start negotiating?

All of us are to blame. The entire federal government is to blame here. I think the Republicans in the House, we have to take our portion of the blame. And the president has to take his portion of the blame and the Senate has to take its portion of the blame. What's important is are we willing to now lower the rhetoric, stop accusing people if you will did this, you did that, lower the rhetoric and let's start talking, let's start negotiating if we can move that, if we can start that process and then we can get out of this thing and we can get out of this thing relatively soon.

BLITZER: I got a lot of tweets. I asked my followers on Twitter to offer suggested questions. Many want to know, will you accept your paycheck as 800,000 other federal workers are being denied theirs?

DIAZ-BALART: Will you accept what? I'm sorry.

BLITZER: Your paycheck.

DIAZ-BALART: Accept my paycheck?

BLITZER: Yes. Will you accept your paycheck --

(CROSSTALK) BLITZER: -- while almost 800,000 other federal workers are being denied their paychecks?

DIAZ-BALART: Right. Well, a couple things. I know you said that, obviously, I hope, I hope that when this is over and I hope it's over soon, and all it takes is for everybody to talk to each other. That's what I hope will happen. I'm hoping also we will be able to make whole those folks who, through no fault of their own, they're getting hurt. There's a bit of a constitutional issue, by the way, as you know when you're dealing with the paychecks of members of Congress.

So the important thing here is this. Will we and can we solve this. Yes. I think it's not time to, again, draw lines in the sand. No red lines in the sand. It's time to just lower the rhetoric, not come up with gimmicks or with ways to point fingers. It's time to now talk, not at each other, with each other. If we do that, Wolf, we will get out of this. It will have a very minimal impact on the economy, on the country, on services. In order to do that, I think we have to start focusing on the real issues, on the big issues, the big issue, Wolf, is --

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: Do you think they should lump -- do you think they should lump together reopening of the government and raising the debt ceiling, because that has to be raised by October 17th, as you know? If they don't, the economic consequences of that would be horrendous on the U.S. global economy, maybe the global economy. Some economists predicting it could drive this economy back into recession. Should they make a deal on everything right now?

DIAZ-BALART: First place, I hope we solve this before we get to the deadline of the debt ceiling. Could there be a deal on everything? Absolutely. But what is lacking right now is communications. The House -- again, I'm not going to get into blaming. I think we're way beyond that. The House has established a process. We have a conference committee. We're ready to meet. It requires -- the president, by the way, has been clear he will not negotiate with the House, which I think is, you know, is frankly not productive. The president of the United States must lead and he must negotiate. The House needs to lower the rhetoric. The Senate needs to lower the rhetoric. If we do that and focus on the real issues, not on the peripheral issues that are good sound bites on the real issues, on how do we move forward, we can get there. I hope we do it before the debt ceiling.

Could it be part of an overall deal? Absolutely, it could. But I just hope we do this the sooner the better for the sake of the country.

Also, by the way, just the visual of the world seeing that we're closed down is not something that I think is positive.

BLITZER: It's a horrible situation. Very quickly, because we're out of time, if they reopen the government, you will vote to make sure that all those 800,000 workers retroactively get the pay they lost? DIAZ-BALART: I would. I absolutely would. You know, it's -- they didn't make this decision. They want to be working. And I don't think that they should solely be the ones that suffer the consequences for this shutdown. I would vote for that.

BLITZER: Would you vote for a clean continuing resolution just to end this once and for all, without any attachments to Obamacare, without any other attachments, just get everybody back to work right away?

DIAZ-BALART: Wolf, I think it's a very valid question. But these negotiations should not be done out in the press, with all due respect. These negotiations have to be done with members of Congress and the president speaking. I'm not drawing any red lines as to what I will or will not support. The important thing is to start the conversations. In the House, we're ready to do that. I'm hopeful that we're seeing that the president and the Senate is willing to do the same thing.

BLITZER: Representative Mario Diaz-Balart, thanks very much for coming in.

DIAZ-BALART: Always a pleasure.

BLITZER: Appreciate it.

With hundreds of workers now furloughed and the shutdown a reality, let me show you how some of the numbers are adding up. They're pretty remarkable. While those workers are off the job, the average pay collected this week by a member of Congress is $3,346. Congress's reputation isn't doing very well right now. The approval rating hovering only around 10 percent. That's lower, by the way, than Richard Nixon's rating when he left office. Even Brussels sprouts and root canals get a higher approval rating than Congress at least for now.

There's a big birthday this week that pretty much won't get celebrated. NASA turns 5. There won't be anyone to eat the cake since almost all of its employees have been furloughed. The agency has a launch of a Mars probe scheduled for next month.

Finally, the Treasury Department is about to run out of money. There's only enough to pay the nation's bills for another 15 days. Then it's broke. That debt ceiling needs to be raised.

Many of you are telling us exactly what you think about the shutdown and your messages to Washington are not pretty. Some of them coming up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The president has just wrapped up a meeting with major CEOs of big business, Wall Street leaders. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, briefing reporters right now.

(BEGIN PRESSER COVERAGE - IN PROGRESS)

JAY CARNEY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: And I hope you took note of what was said.

Furthermore, the president will meet with the four leaders of Congress at 5:30 p.m. today in the Oval Office with the vice president. The secretary of the treasury, Jack Lew, will, in that meeting, brief leaders on what were the impacts of the threat of default in 2011 and the economic imperative for Congress to act to raise the debt ceiling without the threat of default and without delay and drama shortly.

With that, I'll take your questions.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Any coverage on that?

CARNEY: It's a meeting with the leaders.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: No photo op?

CARNEY: I don't have anything for you on that, Mark.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thanks, Jay. The media today, is that something we should be looking at as a negotiation on the government shutdown or is this more about the president gathering these leaders in the Oval Office to just tell them what we've heard from him publicly for the past few days?

CARNEY: I think I can answer your question this way. A negotiation, in the Washington sense, traditionally implies give and take, tradeoffs, demands. You know, if you give me this, I'll take that, I'll give you that. The president's approach from the beginning in this is that he's asking for nothing, nothing from Republicans. He is attaching zero demands to the general proposition that Congress should simply open the government. Keep it open. He's asking for nothing. He is making no demands. He is attaching no partisan strings to his request that Congress fulfill its responsibility to ensure that the United States does not default on its obligations for the first time in our long history. So in that sense, no, the president is not going to sit down and start asking for puts and takes. He's not going to engage in that kind of negotiation because he does not want to hold -- or have held the openness of the government, the functioning of the government or the world and American economy hostage to a series of demands.

You know, what the president is asking the Congress to do, what the president is asking Republicans in the House to do is quite literally the least they could do. He is asking them to extend funding at the levels set in the previous fiscal year to keep the government open. That's the least they could do. And the speaker of the House should hold a vote on that proposition and see what happens. If he's convinced that a majority, that all of his Republicans in his conference will vote no to opening the government, to a clean C.R., in Washington speak, to just a bill that opens the government and funds it at the levels it has been funded for the previous year, then we'll see what we do then.

But my guess is, and the estimation of numerous observers and members of Congress of the Republican party is that if John Boehner, the speaker of the House who has this power alone put on the floor of the House a bill to fund the government to open it up without partisan strings attached, it would pass overwhelmingly. I think you know that's true. I think every member of Congress knows it's true. And it reflects the simple fact that. unfortunately, the speaker won't do that because he is responding to the demands of one faction of one party in one house of one branch of government. And everyone is paying the price of that decision.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: So that position of the president is pretty well-known at this point. So if he's not budging off of that what's the purpose of having the Congressional leaders here?

CARNEY: Look, the president's said, and he is true to his word, that he would be having conversations with the leaders of the Congress about the essential need to keep the government open or now, in this case, to reopen the government and to ensure that we do not default. And he will have that conversation.

And you know, look, we all realize, this has put the Republicans -- you know, they've gotten themselves in a box here in the House and it's put them in a difficult position and they're under a lot of pressure, a lot of it applied by Republicans. And there's a simple way out. Do the democratic thing. Pass a bill. See if it can win a majority. Put a bill on the floor. See if the majority votes yes. Be surprised and delighted by the fact that a number of your own Republicans would vote yes. By some estimates, quite a number of them. Take that as a win. And move on. And then we can ensure that the government doesn't -- rather that the economy doesn't default, the United States doesn't default. We raise the debt ceiling in an orderly fashion without drama and delay. And then we can go about debating and discussing our budget priorities. How do we move forward? How do we fund the government in the way that assures that our economy continues to grow, that the -- the jobs that have been created thus far in this recovery, 7.5 million private-sector jobs, are added to as quickly as possible with more private sector jobs? And you know, put to votes, you know, different propositions about how we should do that. Have negotiations, discussions, put it to a vote.

But do not -- I mean it is profoundly undemocratic for, you know, one faction of one party to say I didn't get what I wanted through the normal legislative process. I didn't get what I wanted through the Supreme Court. I didn't get what I wanted when the American people nationally voted and so I will therefore hold the government hostage and the economy hostage in order to achieve my aims. I don't think that's good for our democracy and it's certainly not good for our economy.

I think you heard Lloyd Blankfein, he's the head of the Financial Services Forum, you know, say you cannot use U.S. obligations to repay its debt as a cudgel. And there's a consensus -- this is again quoting him on reports I've seen. I was not out at the stakeout -- but there's a consensus that we shouldn't do anything to hurt the recovery. And that's a consensus among CEOs who might not otherwise all agree politically with the president, because this isn't about -- it shouldn't be about partisan politics. We keep the government open. We pay our bills.

Yes?

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Move on to the Asia trip. It was presented --

CARNEY: Come on, I was just getting started.

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: You'll have the opportunity, I'm sure. The cancellation of the two stops was presented as sort of a logistical decision. I'm wondering if there's also any concern about the optics of having the president be abroad during a shutdown and when the final decision on the Indonesia and Brunei needs to be made by.

CARNEY: You're right that it was a logistical decision related to the shutdown. It was because of where assets were and people were, and the fact they had not been deployed to those two countries, which were scheduled to be at the back end of the trip. Therefore, because of the shutdown, it made it logistically necessary to cancel those two stops. We had assets and personnel in the first two countries. And as of now, we are continuing to intend -- intend to have the president make those -- you know, make a trip because it is important. It is --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Make that trip whether or not the government is shutdown on Saturday?

(CROSSTALK)

CARNEY: Again, I'm not going to spin ahead to Saturday. And we'll obviously evaluate this as each day goes by. You know, if the speaker were to do what I just talked about, we could -- the government would be up and running by dinnertime. So -- so there remains the opportunity here for that hypothetical to be moot. And we hope that it is, because, you know, it's an important responsibility of a president to travel and conduct foreign policy, to conduct discussions about economic growth and investment in the United States in our economy that creates jobs.

You know, the two summits that are taking place in Indonesia and Brunei offer opportunities, both economic opportunities and security opportunities to the United States. And that's why a trip like this for any president is useful and important to the American economy and the American people. So I can't give you a prediction about what things will look like Saturday, except to say that I hope, you know, the majority has an opportunity to speak in the House of Representatives.

(END PRESSER COVERAGE)

BLITZER: The White House press secretary, Jay Carney, repeating so much of what we have heard from the administration over the past few days, it's up to the House of representatives, the Republican leadership to simply allow an up or down vote on what's called a clean bill without any attachments, without any references to Obamacare, to come up for a vote to get the government back operating and this shutdown. The president getting ready for his very important meeting later today, 5:30 p.m. eastern over at the White House. He's invited the Republican and Democratic leadership of the House and Senate, including the House speaker, of course, John Boehner. We'll see what emerges from that meeting. We'll have extensive coverage later in "The Situation Room," also throughout the night here on CNN. Very important meeting coming up. Let's see if they can resolve this matter.

Meanwhile, people all over the country are outraged about the shutdown. They want to deliver a message to Washington.

Ted Rowlands is on the road for us. He's listening to these folks.

You're joining from Illinois right now. What are you hearing, Ted?

TED ROWLANDS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, yesterday, we were in Chicago. Today, we're out in the suburbs in Naperville, Illinois. This is a community that leans a little to the right. And guess what? People here, like all across the country, have some very strong opinions and messages for Washington.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS (voice-over): Morning commuters outside Chicago have a lot to say to lawmakers about the government shutdown.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Grow up. You're there for a bigger purpose.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's games they're playing. I would say get beyond it, get over it, and then think about the people, you know, that they're hurting.

ROWLANDS: While there's universal disgust for both parties, many Republicans we talked to are concerned their party will end up taking a hit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think the Republicans will get a lot of blame for it, Unfortunately, I don't think it's their fault. There's plenty of blame to go around, but they'll get most of the blame.

ROWLANDS (on camera): What would you say to the president and Harry Reid?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's get off this "my way or the highway" stuff. Let's compromise, figure out what pieces we can make work, what pieces we can't make work and let's adjust.

ROWLANDS (voice-over): Some think it's up to President Obama to break the gridlock.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think he should step in and do something, absolutely. Don't worry about Obamacare and whatever. Do something now for the people struggling in America.

ROWLANDS: Some actually think a shutdown isn't so bad.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I don't have a problem with it. I don't want to see the government default on its debt, but, generally speaking, if the government is not doing something, that's probably a good thing.

ROWLANDS (on camera): Are you worried the shutdown is going to hurt the party?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No. I'm very much in favor of what they're doing, frankly. As you can see, the world isn't coming to an end because the federal government shut down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ROWLANDS: Bottom line, Wolf, wherever you go I think around the country, it's safe to say, Democrat, Republican, Independent, people are frustrated with the inactivity in Washington and the mess that they have created with the shutdown.

BLITZER: Ted, thanks very much.

Ted Rowlands in Illinois for us.

So after all you have heard about the government shutdown, what is your message to Washington? You know what? Make a video for us. Send it to iReport.com, iReport.com, as the shutdown continues. We may share your views right here on CNN.

You don't want to spoil your appetite too much, but the people you depend on to keep your families save from disease and poison, many no longer on the job right now. For that, you can thank the government shutdown. Brian Todd is standing by. He'll be joining us next with information you need to know about the suspension of the FDA inspection program.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BLITZER: The partial government shutdown could soon impact your family's dinner table. The Food and Drug Administration has furloughed almost all of its food inspectors, calling them, quote, "nonessential."

Brian Todd has been looking into this for us.

What is going on?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, you talk about the impact on everyday Americans on this government shutdown, how about the food on your grocery store shelves? The FDA -- I spoke to an FDA official who said we have been hit very hard on this, especially on the food inspection side. Bottom line is a lot of the inspectors who inspect your eggs, fruits and vegetables, seafood, have been furloughed. Not all of them but a lot of them. The risk of food producers, farms, others, cutting corners or not having someone to make them be vigilant about the sanitation of their food, that's going to be going away in this government shutdown. So the risk of an outbreak of food-borne illness has gone and will continue to go up as long as the shutdown is in effect. The FDA saying its "unable to support the majority of its food, safety, nutrition activities" during this shutdown. They've been hit very hard. Not all have been furloughed. And state-run inspectors are still on the job. They're still working. So not every food inspector is furloughed but a lot are. So the risks of food-bourn illnesses are going to go up as long as they're furloughed. I don't know why they're considered nonessential and some others are not.

BLITZER: Well, the Department of Agriculture is in charge of meat inspection.

TODD: That's correct.

BLITZER: Are they considered essential or nonessential?

TODD: Whatever they are considered, they're still on the job. They'll be functioning normally in the shutdown. But again, our fruits and vegetables, seafood, eggs, they may be slipping through the cracks and they're not inspecting a lot of the imports that come in from overseas. 80 percent of America's seafood comes from overseas so a lot of the seafood at its origins is not being inspected. They'll try to get to some of it at the ports. But, again, a lot overseas will not be inspected before it gets to the United States.

BLITZER: I know you'll be doing more investigating and will have more in "The Situation Room" later today.

TODD: Absolutely. Yes.

BLITZER: Brian, thanks very much.

That's it for me. Thanks very much for watching. I'll be back at 5:00 p.m. eastern in "The Situation Room." Lots more news coming up then.

NEWSROOM continues right after this with Brooke Baldwin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)