CNN "CNN Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi

Interview

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WHITFIELD: All right. Close is good, but not done yet. All right, Manu Raju, Capitol Hill, thank you so much.

All right. Want to talk about all of this now, joining me from -- there you are, in Washington, OK, Illinois Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi.

Congressman, good to see you.

REP. RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI (D-IL): Hi, Fred. How are you doing?

WHITFIELD: I'm great. All right. So are you confident there'll be a deal by midnight tonight?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I feel confident. I think that Speaker Pelosi and the others have done a herculean job at this point of pulling together this package. You know, we're at kind of a point the Friday before Christmas where if we don't deliver the stimulus package, it would be putting a lump of coal in everybody's stockings. And that's completely unacceptable at this point.

WHITFIELD: And then how concerned are you that averting a government shutdown may not happen?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Actually on that score, I think that the negotiations have been pretty going pretty well and I think that we are looking at a good chance of completing that in short order.

[16:10:10]

I think the stimulus is just taking longer because as Manu just alluded, it's such a huge package. The text needs to be written for so many different programs and it needs to all get ironed out very quickly, but I do feel confident that everything is going to come together by tonight.

WHITFIELD: OK. You wrote an op-ed on Medium and saying this, quote,

"Without action, by the end of this month, 12 million Americans will lose the unemployment benefits enacted through the stimulus including gig workers who are eligible for benefits for the first time and others who receive 13 additional weeks of benefits. Many won't be able to pay their rent or mortgage. Food depositories are already facing record demand, even in suburban districts like mine, and once again frontline health care workers including my wife, an area doctor, are seeing local hospitals filling up with coronavirus patients."

Do you feel like other members of Congress have been attuned to these needs, these signs of desperation, or do you feel like it's been falling on deaf ears and that's why we're now at this moment, you know, encroaching on some very critical deadlines?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I think everybody is feeling the pressure, Fred. It's funny, I just received some text messages about some constituent cases. We have a school bus driver who's worked for the district for 20 years. As you know, a lot of the schools are closed. And so he's on unemployment and he's facing a cliff.

I have another text message showing that a waitress, who's now suffered three different shutdowns of three different restaurants where she worked, also on unemployment and facing the cliff. So those cases and those types of stories abound, as you know, and they're afflicting constituents across the country.

So right now as we talk about football Sunday, for instance, we are at the one-yard line. We can't have the Senate Republicans or anyone else fumble the ball. We've got to get into the end zone and deliver this package right now.

WHITFIELD: The president hasn't said a whole lot about this nor has he said much about this cyberattack on U.S. agencies, and this morning Congressman Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in which you are a member, said he doesn't think there's any question that Russia was behind this cyberattack. Then why, in your view, do you see President Trump is taking a posture of protecting Russia by instead suggesting it must be China?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: This is crazy. All the evidence is pointing to Russia. It's the work of SVR, also known as Cozy Bear. And I mean, the persistent question with this president is why does he keep cozying up to the Russians? Why does he not want to call them out? And why does he not want to make them pay a cost for this attack? I'm glad that Joe Biden has already made it clear that in his administration, there will be a cost, including sanctions, and that we are going to make cyber security a top priority because this is a massive attack, Fred. And the attack is persisting. It's even continuing today. And so we have to take this very seriously.

WHITFIELD: What do you wish the response would be to this cyberattack?

KRISHNAMOORTHI: I think that we have to do a couple of things. One, obviously we have to hunt for the malware that's embedded within our cyber infrastructure, get rid of it, stand up new clean systems. Two, we have to pass this NDAA, which the president, by the way, has threatened to veto, which gives the DHS, the Department of Homeland Security new authorities to keep our cyber infrastructure clean.

And then third, and this is very important, we have to exact a cost on the Russians for these repeated attacks on our cyber infrastructure. We haven't done so. Even though we know that the Russians have wanted to make this type of attack on our supply chain repeatedly over the years, over the last four years. So now is the time to take significant action. And if we don't do so, we're just inviting more attacks.

WHITFIELD: Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, thank you so much.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Thank you, Fred.

WHITFIELD: Have a peaceful and safe holiday to you and your family.

KRISHNAMOORTHI: Happy Holidays. Thank you.

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