Senator Murray Tells MSNBC’s Katy Tur: “The House is Offering Chaos-Paying Our Bills And Negotiating Spending are Separate”

Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and senior member of the Senate Budget Committee, joined MSNBC’s Katy Tur to discuss the urgency of immediately raising the debt ceiling to ensure the U.S. government doesn’t default on its debts, and how Congress should separately negotiate bipartisan spending bills that move our nation forward—not back. Murray also highlighted the harm of House Republicans’ Default on America Act, which would cause hundreds of thousands of job losses and push our nation into a recession—not to mention pull cops off our streets, kick veterans out of their homes, lay off air traffic controllers, undercut railroad safety, and decimate other essential government services; and tie our hands when it comes to competing with the Chinese government.

A transcript of the interview is as follows:

TUR: Joining me now is Washington senator and member of the Budget Committee, Patty Murray. Senator, thank you very much for being here. Let me ask you… what do you think can pass the Senate if a bill comes to the Senate?

MURRAY: Well, Katie, I think it’s time for us to all take our “it’s time to eat our vegetables” pill. We have to pay our nation’s debt. And that requires us to lift the ceiling on the debt and pay our bills. That is a separate conversation from what we are all focused on here, [which] is what is our budget and our appropriations going to be? Let’s separate that out, do our due diligence on what we’re supposed to do, and then of course, we will have to engage on what our spending plan is for the rest of this year. Tying those two right now is wrong. We will get to the wrong answer, and we need we have a responsibility to eat our vegetables right now and do it. And I hope that the President is firm in saying that.

TUR: Why can’t you do them at the same time? What is stopping you from doing them at the same time?

MURRAY: Well, first of all, what the House is offering is chaos: We are not going to pay our nation’s bills, we’re going to send us careening into debt… or we are going to demand that we cut absolutely basic services across the board that Americans depend on, which will also create chaos and make it impossible for us to be, as a country, economically viable or provide the basic services for Americans. Those are two alternatives that are not acceptable.

TUR: The two biggest parts of the budget, the two biggest reasons we are in debt are defense spending and Social Security and Medicare. Is there anything… is there any fat in either one of those that can be trimmed out? I know no one wants to touch Social Security or Medicare because there’s questions about whether or not that money can be paid out in the future as we currently stand, but you look at the defense budget, the black hole of the Pentagon’s budget—are you saying there’s nothing in there that can be taken out?

MURRAY: Katy, as you know, I have been in the middle of negotiations a number of times on our budget, our debt, and our spending. And we’ve been able to work together—as I did with Paul Ryan—to bring a budget, put it together. Both of us have to give a little and move to where we need to be.

I don’t know what the outline of that is right now because we haven’t gotten to that and we’re certainly not going to get to it in the next two weeks. What we have right now is a crisis, clearly in front of us, that we need to pay our bills. Let’s say together, stand together as adults, we’re going to pay our bills. And then we can work on those very challenging questions that you just outlined.

TUR: Do you need Senator Dianne Feinstein there to help you pass something?

MURRAY: Well obviously, we hope everyone will be here. I’m hoping Diane can be back. But the fact is that we have to deal with the realities that are in front of us, not trying to fake our way through any of this. Pay our bills, and then let’s work on that appropriations and budget bill.

And Susan Collins, who’s my counterpart—I’m Chair of Appropriations, she’s my Vice Chair—we are willing to dive in and work on this. So, I’m hopeful that we can be able to do that soon, but we need to get this whole “pay our debt” thing behind us so we can get to that conversation.

TUR: Americans are worried about this. Can you promise them that we’re not going to go into default? 8 million people are not going to lose their jobs, the stock market is not going to tank, we’re not going to have our credit rating downgraded—can you promise that’s not going to happen?

MURRAY: The reason that I can’t promise you that is because I don’t know what Marjorie Taylor Greene, or any of those people who demanded so much from McCarthy to begin with, are going to be willing to do. I think that we have to at this point say, please get this behind us right now by paying our bills. And yes, then we are going to have a discussion about our appropriations and budget, as we do every year. Don’t hold that hostage to some demand that will tank our economy.

TUR: Senator Patty Murray, thank you very much for joining us.