CNBC Squawk Box host Joe Kernen went to town grilling Sen. Peter Welch over his continued blocking of a GOP-championed bill to end the government shutdown.
Kernen pressed Welch (D-Vt.) over his party’s use of the shutdown as a means of “extortion” to extract concessions from Republicans on Obamacare, and nudged the “reasonable” senator to change course.
“You’re always reasonable when you come on, and I’ve said that, and you’re almost conceding that you should not be shutting down the government, that the Democrats should not be doing that,” Kernen told the Vermont senator.
“I don’t think you’d ever say that extortion is the way that Republicans should get their way if they don’t like the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] or they don’t like overspending or whatever is at any given point in time where the other party has a disagreement.”
“This is not the way to do it.”
Welch stressed that he’s “not there yet,” because there hasn’t been enough dialogue with Republicans on how to fix Obamacare, as premiums are expected to soar for Americans across the country.
Wednesday marked the 29th day of the government shutdown due to a stalemate in Congress. Last month, the House passed a short-term spending patch to get Uncle Sam’s lights back on.
But Senate Democrats have repeatedly blocked it with the 60-vote filibuster, demanding that Republicans cave to their array of healthcare-related demands.
“This is the right way to do it, Senator? By people not getting paychecks at the TSA?” Kernen further pressed. “This is extortion!”
“You think this is the right way to do it? In your conscience, you think it’s the right way to do it?” he continued. “As a human, you’d think this was the right thing to do?”
Welch pointed to his legislation with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) to fund SNAP amid the shutdown.
The Vermont Democrat then re-upped his argument that the Trump administration has been mounting an attack on government funding for healthcare.
Republicans have repeatedly offered Democrats to take up a vote on extending the enhanced Obamacare subsidies after they stop blocking the spending patch to reopen the government.
The enhanced subsidies are set to expire by the end of the year.
The shutdown is poised to get a lot more painful next month, as funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which feeds millions of low-income Americans.
Funding for other critical programs, such as the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), is also set to run dry. All of that comes on top of growing air travel snarls as TSA workers and air traffic controllers call in sick as they are forced to work without pay.
