CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Government Shutdown

Interview

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BLITZER: Another side of the spending fight that's under way. Only 11 days left before the government might shut down, running out of money. Democrats say they've been left out of the House negotiations on a possible shutdown. They are in the minority, as you know.

Chris van Hollen, of Maryland, joining us from Capitol Hill, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Walk us through what you suspect is going to happen over the next 11 days. Will there be a government shutdown?

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, (D), MARYLAND: Well, Wolf, I certainly hope not. But even by Washington, D.C., standards, by congressional standards, what you're seeing here in the House of Representatives really is outrageous. What the Republicans are doing, and what you're seeing is the Tea Party faction has taken over, speaker of the House has given the gavel over to the Tea Party faction, and they've said that they will shut down the government if they can't totally shut down the Affordable Care Act. By the way, if they don't succeed in those rounds, they'll shut down the full faith and credit of the United States if they can't shut down the Affordable Care Act a little later.

These are outrageous demands. They're not going to be successful. The problem is that, in the meantime, it's creating a lot of crisis in confidence and certainly it's going to hurt the economy if we ever got to a situation where on the debt ceiling they really brought us to the brink of default.

BLITZER: In order to keep the government operating full-funding for another year, some Republicans are offering this as a compromise, since the president says he's going to delay implementation of certain parts of Obamacare for a year. Why not delay the whole thing for a year and at least allow the government to operate fully funded?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Wolf, a couple of things. First of all, much of Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, is already in progress. It's in motion. Millions of Americans are already benefiting from it. You have seniors on Medicare who don't have to pay as much for their prescription drugs. They don't fall into the doughnut hole. You have kids with pre-existing conditions like diabetes or asthma who no longer can be discriminated against based on those conditions by insurance companies. So, all of those millions of Americans who are currently benefiting would no longer get the benefit.

Secondly, the exchanges, the supermarket where Americans can buy affordable health insurance are to start up October 1st.

And it's important to remember this was originally a conservative Republican idea. That's why Governor Romney used this approach in Massachusetts. It helped provide affordable care to people in Massachusetts. And it's just very unfortunate that our colleagues want to deny that kind of affordable health insurance to millions of Americans and to threaten to shut down the government if they don't get their way.

BLITZER: The president says repeatedly he's willing to negotiate with the Republicans in the House and the Senate over the full funding of the government, making sure there's no government shutdown by the end of the month. But he says he's not willing to negotiate with them at all on raising the debt ceiling. They have to raise the debt ceiling. He's not willing to make new concessions on that front. You've heard the House speaker, John Boehner, say Reagan made concessions to raise the debt ceiling, George W. Bush made concessions, Bill Clinton did, and even President Obama did a couple years ago. Should he negotiate at least with Republicans on raising the debt ceiling by mid-October when the treasury says the U.S. must do that?

VAN HOLLEN: No, and here's the reason why, Wolf. People think you raise the debt ceiling so you can start a bunch of new programs, new spending. That's not the case. We don't want to do that. What we want to do is make sure that the U.S. government pays its existing obligations on time. You can't get up one morning, I can't get up, the American people can't get up and say we're not going to pay our mortgage or our credit card bills. If the United States wakes up one morning, like October 15th of this year, and says it's no longer going to pay its bills, whether to our soldiers who are fighting, whether it's on social security, whether it's to people who have U.S. treasury bonds, that would be catastrophic. So what the president is saying is that he is not going to somehow give Republicans some -- into their radical demands in exchange for making sure we pay our bills on time.

In those other cases you mentioned, almost all of them, the debt ceiling was a vehicle for something else but it wasn't used as a bargaining chip. It wasn't taken as a hostage in order to get those other things done, with the exception of 2011 when the Republicans in the House did this, and it did hurt the economy. We don't want that to happen again.

BLITZER: The president did in 2011 been but you're saying that's the last time. You should never negotiate over raising the debt ceiling, even if there are reasonable demands? Let's say the Republicans come forward with some relatively modest spending cuts to go ahead and raise the debt ceiling? You say no negotiations whatsoever?

VAN HOLLEN: No, Wolf, we've said this -- let's be really clear. We're happy to discuss spending cuts. We're happy to discuss shutting down some tax loopholes like the ones for big oil companies. In fact, just last night, I asked for the eighth time to have a vote in the House on a proposal to replace the sequester with a proposal that would get the same amount of deficit reduction, even more deficit reduction, without the deep, immediate cuts caused by the sequester, which we know are dragging down the economy. Republicans wouldn't allow us a vote on that proposal.

So, let's be really clear. The president is more than happy to negotiate with Republicans on budget issues, on where to cut, whether to cut tax loopholes. Where he will not negotiate is on whether or not the United States pays its bills on time, whether or not we live up to the full faith and credit of the United States. And we all know that if the United States ever did default, it would send our economy into a big downward spiral, very quickly.

BLITZER: We've got to end it, unfortunately.

Congressman Chris van Hollen.

But you heard Boehner say the president's willing negotiate with Vladimir Putin but not willing to negotiate with Republicans. Those were stinging words from John Boehner, speaker of the House.

VAN HOLLEN: But what the president got was everything we asked for and more. We got the destruction of Syria's chemical weapon stockpile. Here, what the Republicans are calling for is to shut down the government or get rid of a law that's protecting millions of Americans. What if they said we're going to shut down the government unless you get rid of Medicare or the Clean Air Act? That's the kind of demand they're making. It's just unreasonable.

BLITZER: Chris van Hollen, Democratic Congressman from Maryland, thanks for joining us.

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