‘This is Extortion!’ CNBC’s Joe Kernen Erupts at Dem Senator ‘Not There Yet’ on Shutdown Resolution
CNBC Squawk Box host Joe Kernen erupted at Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) Wednesday, appealing to his “conscience” as a “human being” while accusing Democrats of holding federal workers hostage amid a partisan standoff on health care and spending.
The exchange came after co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin warned that the shutdown was creating a situation “where we’re going to have piecemeal component parts of the government that stay open and piecemeal parts of government that we decide don’t stay open.” Emergency measures, although needed, he added, risked extending shutdown standoffs.
“That seems like a terrible idea,” Sorkin said.
Welch agreed that shutdowns were “an indication of the breakdown of the political process,” but he argued that the crisis also reflects deeper failures in the U.S. health care system.
“Recently, you’ve also seen debt ceiling crises, where there’s a threat not to default on our debt. So this is a serious indication of the breakdown of the process,” he said, adding: “One of the existential fights here, beneath the surface, but really important to Americans, is the cost of health care. I mean, it has been rising way faster than inflation. It’s a killer for small businesses that really have benefited by the Obamacare tax credits.”
Kernen then pressed the senator to separate that issue from the shutdown itself: “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.”
He continued: “And 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 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.”
He added that Democrats were “not going to fix” Obamacare “before we reopen the government.”
“Are you ready to vote with the Republicans to reopen the government at this point as a reasonable Democrat?” Kernen asked. “Maybe others would follow you.”
“I’m not there yet because we have had literally, Joe, no discussion whatsoever about how we’re going to deal with this –” Welch began before the host cut him off.
“This is the right way to do it, Senator? By people not getting paychecks at the TSA?” Kernen asked, adding: “This is extortion!”
He continued: “You think this is the right way to do it? In your conscience, you think it’s the right way to do it? I never thought I’d say that, Andrew, that ‘as a human being’. As a human, you’d think this was the right thing to do?”
Welch argued the ongoing shutdown was why he’d introduced emergency measures to maintain the SNAP food stamp program.
“But there is something that we’ve all got to acknowledge here, OK? The administration has had an attack on health care, as we know it. The Medicaid cuts were immense. They’re going to have real impacts on individuals, and they’re going to have impacts on state budgets and community hospitals,” the senator said.
Co-host Becky Quick then joined in to challenge Welch’s claim that lost pandemic-era subsidies were driving the spike in insurance costs, pointing to Wall Street Journal reporting that the subsidies only accounted for “three percent of the increase.”
“That’s peanuts,” she said. “You still have a huge problem.”
Welch maintained that both parties must face “a real conversation” about drug pricing, pharmacy benefit managers, and overall affordability, but insisted that Republican-backed Medicaid cuts had already damaged the system.
“You hear my frustration,” he said.
Watch above via CNBC.
