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One day after the House of Representatives approved the bill that reopened the government and avoided a default on the nation’s debt, Crossfire’s Van Jones got the chance to take on one of the Republican congressmen who voted against it. Jones asked Rep. Luke Messer (R-IN) how he could “justify” voting “no” on a bill that prevented “economic catastrophe.”

“Last night you voted against opening the government, you voted against lifting the debt ceiling,” Jones asked Messer. “If everybody had followed your leadership, sir, today we would be in economic catastrophe. How do you justify that vote?”

“I voted no yesterday, because it was a bad deal for the American people,” Messer responded confidently.

“Would you be happy if right now we were in default?” Jones pushed back.

Messer insisted that “nobody wanted to be in default,” even though his vote would have led to that outcome if he had been in the majority.

Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) joined in at this point,

arguing that if Republicans had just accepted the budget proposal as it was back in July, “we would have been able to keep our government open, averting the default, and we could have been focusing on a jobs bill, passing immigration reform, moving our country forward.”

“The president and Democrats met the Republicans at their own budget number, but the Republicans couldn’t take yes for an answer,” Horsford added.

Watch video below, via CNN:

[photo via screengrab]

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Tags: CNN, Crossfire, Steven Horsford, Van Jones