Sen. Cory Booker on the Democrats’ risky shutdown bet

0:00Cory Booker:Right now, during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at WashingtonPost.com slash subscribe.

0:29Colby Itkowitz:I'm going to have a lot of tactics. I, for one, am very— I stood on the floor for 25 hours. I did a sit-in on the steps of the Capitol.

0:37Cory Booker:To what end, though? It didn't change President Trump's behavior.

0:41Colby Itkowitz:Oh, I disagree with you in the sense that you have got to find ways with a guy that dominates your attention and the attention economy. I mean, you have got to find a way to break through.

1:01Cory Booker:As you may already know, that's New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker. I sat down in his office this week to talk about how Democrats are trying to break through and how they're using the government shutdown as a tactic to do it. From the newsroom of The Washington Post, this is Post Reports. I'm Kolbie Echowitz. It's Thursday, October 2nd. It is day two of the federal government shutdown, and both sides are dug in. Democrats are holding out for billions in health care subsidies, and the Trump White House is threatening mass layoffs of federal workers. For as long as this lasts, federal workers are out of work or some of them are working without pay.

1:44Cory Booker:Democrats are making a gamble that this fight will be worth that pain. In this moment, I wanted to speak with Senator Booker because he was one of the Democrats that voted against the Republican plan to fund the government back in March. He's been one of the most visible critics of the Trump administration in the Senate. As he mentioned earlier this year, he held up the Senate floor for a record-breaking speech against Trump policies. Today, Senator Booker's take on how long the shutdown could last. We ask him about the Democrats' end goal in this risky stand against President Trump's agenda. Well, Senator, thanks for taking the time.

2:22Cory Booker:I really appreciate it.

2:22Colby Itkowitz:I'm actually really—it's good to be on a podcast that I really like. So thank you for coming to my office.

2:28Cory Booker:That is incredibly flattering. We are talking Wednesday afternoon. It's been a little over 12 hours since the government shut down. How long do you think you're willing to allow the government to stay shut down?

2:38Colby Itkowitz:Well, I don't obviously look at it that way. You know, we've had a president that's been in office as of today, 254 days. He said he would lower costs on day one. And he's done the opposite. You've seen costs go up on groceries, on fuel, on prescription drugs across the board, interest rates going up, the labor market tightening. The economy's gotten much worse as people are experiencing it. And then you add to that, we're in a healthcare chaos or catastrophe because of his own making. So we have been, as Democrats, asking to come to the table to deal with the pain that his budgets and his other practices have caused.

3:26Colby Itkowitz:The House and the Senate Republicans, which they control, seem to just do his bidding. He has a tremendous amount of power. There's only one way to go forward, and that's in a bipartisan way. This is on him to come to the table with us and negotiate.

3:40Cory Booker:So when you're talking to your Democratic colleagues right now, I'm sure you're having a lot of conversations about what it's going to take to reopen the government. What assurances do you want from Republicans here in Congress, from the White House? Does it have to be that these subsidies get extended?

3:56Colby Itkowitz:So I would definitely not prescribe anything publicly like that. I'm a person who's negotiated a lot of bills with Republicans who just let's get to the table. You're not going to get everything you want. I'm not going to get everything I want. And let's find some common ground. Our line that we've been saying out there is we want to do something that's going to help Americans who are struggling with the loss of their health care. As the Kaiser Family Foundation has said, that if we don't do something, the average premium increase will more than double. Let's do something about this crisis that we're in that's of, frankly, Donald Trump's creation.

4:30Colby Itkowitz:Help us to solve this crisis that's going to help people. That's all we're saying. Do something. because every month that we continue puts more and more Americans in peril, and now it's real. These subsidies will run out at the end of the year.

4:43Cory Booker:And these are for the Affordable Care Act marketplace, people that buy their health insurance through commonly known as Obamacare.

4:49Colby Itkowitz:Right. But you understand that that number more than doubled since the pandemic. It's about half of American small businesses get their health insurance. And the one time Democrats have any kind of leverage where they need us is now. And to just capitulate to a president who promised to lower costs, promised that he had some, what do you say, some semblance of a health care plan. Everything he told us he would do, he has not followed through on. And so if they're going to get my vote, I can't speak for the rest of my colleagues, but I'm not going to give them my vote unless they're willing to do something to help the people of New Jersey.

5:28Cory Booker:In some way, does shutting down the government, though, play into his hands a little bit? I mean, because he also has said, all right, shut down the government and I'll just lay off more federal workers. And we, you know, by the time this show airs, he may have done that. So are you kind of giving him the power to then maybe to some people make things worse?

5:47Colby Itkowitz:Well, I mean, you and I have witnessed Donald Trump's leadership. And I just never imagined I'd be in a moment in America where a president has said, if you don't give me my way, I'm going to hurt hundreds of thousands of more people. I mean, that's literally what he is saying is that if you don't come my way, I'm going to hurt people in the blue states. He said that. If you don't come my way, I'm going to lay off more government workers. And you talk to senior citizens who have longer wait times at Social Security already, veterans who have seen what thousands of layoffs have done to their service.

6:24Colby Itkowitz:So that is just another underlying of the main features of this presidency, which has been corruption, a man who's doubled his net worth since he's been in office, is chaos, which he's thrust us in right now by not coming to the table to do a bipartisan way forward. and then the worst of the C's, chaos, corruption, and cruelty. And for me, I'm sorry. I'm not going to let you continue to operate this way. We are a democracy, not an autocracy. And I, for one, one senator is going to stand up and fight you.

6:59Cory Booker:After the break, I talk with Senator Booker about Democratic voters' frustrations with their own party. We'll be right back.

7:16Cory Booker:Right now during the President's Day sale, you can get a Washington Post premium subscription for just$3 every four weeks. And that includes three extra accounts to share with friends or family. After your first year, renews at$19 every four weeks. The Washington Post. Power. Perspective. Premium. Learn more at washingtonpost.com slash subscribe.

7:47Cory Booker:How much of this moment is also to show, like you said, that Democrats are willing to stand up to President Trump? Because there's obviously been a lot of frustration among Democratic voters and others that the Democrats haven't done enough to kind of try to blunt this president.

8:04Colby Itkowitz:Yeah, so I'm one of these people that has been frustrated, not just with Democrats, like with everybody. I mean, why are we allowing him to do what he's doing to private law firms who are forced to come to heel if they want to keep their practice areas intact? Why are we letting him do this to major corporations like we just saw with Disney, threatening them in ways that we haven't seen in our lifetime?

8:29Cory Booker:Meaning the Jimmy Kimmel.

8:30Colby Itkowitz:The Jimmy Kimmel threatening to use the Federal Communications Commission to attack people on free speech rights. Why are we allowing him to do what he's doing?

8:40Cory Booker:But what can you do?

8:41Colby Itkowitz:So that's the point. There are so many things that he's doing that are offensive that, yes, I want more Americans. And I've seen them, Republicans, private sector people, Democrats. But to me, I'm wondering how much more can this president do before more of us, whether it's the attacks on the media, Why there's more of us, why there's tax on religious institutions? Why not more of us are not standing up and saying this is wrong, this man is wrong? Because as Frederick Douglass said, the limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those people that are oppressed. How much more will we endure before more people speak up?

9:20Colby Itkowitz:Because that's exactly the point that Donald Trump will stop doing the things that he's doing.

9:24Cory Booker:Senator, why do you think it's taken almost, you know, more than eight months into Trump's presidency for the Democrats to take a united stand like this?

9:32Colby Itkowitz:Again, I said this in my 25-hour stand on the Senate floor, that Democrats have helped to pave the road to where we are right now. I have a lot of frustrations with my own party.

9:44Cory Booker:Yeah.

9:44Colby Itkowitz:And really believe that this is a Shiva moment in the Hindu faith, the god of destruction, but it's also the god of renewal and rebirth. The Democratic Party better come back, put itself back together about being the party of the kind of things that the American people really wants to see. I'm in an institution that has corruption that's just been accepted. How so? People on both sides of the political aisle trade stocks. That's ridiculous that I could have made a lot of money in my 13 years here. I don't understand how we allow that. I don't understand how we allow corporations and Citizens United to come here and dump money on politicians.

10:29I would think I was the fourth, and there may only be six or seven senators, to say I'm not taking corporate PAC money because this system is corrupt.

10:37Colby Itkowitz:And I don't want my constituents to know that I don't have, like NASCAR racers, stamps of corporations because I take money from their corporate PACs. There are so many things baked into this system that our party needs to start standing up and saying we're on the side of the American people and not on the side of the corrupting forces in our politics. I want us to redeem the American dream because 60 % of this country, it's not working for them anymore. When my dad was coming up, 90 % of Americans did better than their parents did. If you're born in the 80s, which I imagine you are, forgive me if I'm making a really wildly bad assumption.

11:14Colby Itkowitz:That was absolutely accurate. If you're born in the 80s, 50 % of your generation did better than your parents. For Gen Z, it is worse. The American dream, the idea of our country is slipping away from the majority of the people. And our party has lacked the compelling vision for how we are going to deal with that. and that frustrates the hell out of me. I may be the only senator that lives in a neighborhood that the census tract at least is technically below the poverty line. I wake up in my neighborhood in Newark. We've made tremendous changes, which I'm proud of, but I see people struggling and working hard, but not being able to get out of the trap.

11:53Colby Itkowitz:The trap that even though they're working harder and harder, everything is going up from housing to groceries to the cost of raising children. And this has got to stop in our country. And I believe in this political chaos that we're in right now, because I'm a prisoner of hope, I believe that there's not going to be one party that's going to emerge. I believe we're making the makings of all this destruction is a moment that I hope to help be a part of that is actually an American renewal where we don't hate each other anymore, when we don't see each other as enemies, but we actually belong to each other, that we need each other.

12:30Cory Booker:Let me ask you, though, because I think Democrats also want to see leaders fighting, right? They see someone like California Governor Gavin Newsom, who just this week responded to a tweet that quoted J.D. Vance and called J.D. Vance a dipshit. I wonder what you make of that strategy. Look, Gavin and I have been friends since he courageously did civil disobedience to fight the law and issued marriage licenses.

12:58Colby Itkowitz:We both were mayors coming up together and have a lot of respect. And thank God when I played basketball, everybody on the team didn't play the same way. We had point guards and guys under the hoops. And so I'm going to have a lot of tactics. Like what? I stood on the floor for 25 hours. I did a sit-in on the steps of the Capitol.

13:19Cory Booker:To what end, though? It didn't change President Trump's behavior.

13:22Colby Itkowitz:Oh, I disagree with you in the sense that you have got to find ways when with a guy that dominates your attention and the attention economy, you have got to find a way to break through. And what Gavin's doing and a lot of people are doing are trying to find a way to break through. I happen to believe that what Americans are yearning to hear from us is that we're problem solvers, that we can get things done, that we don't hate each other, that ultimately we can find a way, not left or right, but a way to bring this country forward.