CNN "Piers Morgan Live" - Transcript: Government Shutdown

Interview

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Joining me now is Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the third (ph) who chaired of the Democratic National Committee, and Congressman James Lankford of Oklahoma, the Chair of the House Republican Policy Committee.

Right you two. Let me start by a dental bone tossed your way which has on it a stain on both your Houses.

Debbie, how do you plead?

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, D-FL, CHAIR OF THE DEMOCRATIC NATL. CMTE.: Well, I plead with my colleagues who really should just go to the floor and let 218 members of the House of Representatives, not only 218 Republicans decide what legislation we are going to send to the Senate and then to the President.

And unfortunately, because the tail is wagging the dog and extremists have been allowed to run the Republican Conference, we are now shutdown. We are jeopardizing our economy. We have furloughed 100,000 federal employees. And that is all in the name of denying millions of people access to quality, affordable health care. It's mind boggling.

MORGAN: Why -- Let me ask you this so, Debbie. Why is it that Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton in the last shutdown 17 years ago, spoke every single day during that period to try and get something done and this time we understand the President has only spoken to John Boehner twice in a week.

SCHULTZ: Well, they certainly should be talking, but it's very ...

MORGAN: Why aren't they talking?

SCHULTZ: Well, they're not talking because the only thing the Republicans are willing to talk about is whether or not we are to going to delay or defund or repeal ObamaCare. We've voted on that 45 times in the House of Representatives, and there's not much else to talk about if that's the only thing they want to talk about.

If they want to talk about the spending levels, I sit on the Appropriations Committee, Piers, if we want to talk about the spending levels that we're going to have in the Continuing Resolution, great. That's appropriate for this discussion and debate.

But, you know, in my colleagues' home state, essentially, what we're talking about is denying the 89,000 young adults who can now stay on their parent's insurance until they're 26 years old.

MORGAN: OK. Look -- all right, let me go ...

SCHULTZ: The almost, 700,000 people, who will now get health insurance ...

MORGAN: Let me go to your colleague. James Lankford I mean, you're going to get the blame, Republicans. No question, you did last time. You will again. And it looks like John Boehner has lost control of a renegade element of his party.

And although I think that President Obama has been a pretty poor negotiator here, he has got a point. It's his law. He was re-elected with that being the law. People gave him another mandate with this huge ObamaCare plan that he had. Why the hell should he be wasting his time? The (inaudible) said people is going to bring him down.

REP. JAMES LANKFORD, R-OK, CHAIR OF THE HOUSE REPUBLICAN POLICY COMMITTEE: Well, because not only was he re-elected, so were we re- elected. That's the irony of all these. That people in a constitutional government all had a representative, and a senator, and a president. They all have different opinions. They sit down and work it out.

As you mentioned before, Newt and Gingrich and Bill Clinton sat down and worked it out. Tonight, we ask for a conference committee to say, "Let's conference with Senate." That's how we work things out since the 1700s when Jefferson wrote the rules in about conferences during the House and the Senate when we get to then fast. You sit down and have a conference.

We've already agreed and we're going to the process tonight to say we've done three different proposals over the Senate. All those have been tabled or rejected by the Senate. So, now we're going to vote to the conference. And now we hear that Harry Reid says he's going to table that. And he's not even going to conference. He's not even going to meet to discuss these things.

As my colleague mentioned, we've sent 45 things over to the Senate, which they just ignore everyone. At some point, we have to actually sit down and talk about these things, not just send things over to the Senate one after another and pretend that they didn't actually occur. There are real concerns and real problems with the Affordable Care Act. There are real issues that have to be addressed there. And we can't just say ...

MORGAN: Yes, but nobody -- here's the thing, though ...

LANKSFORD: ... they're going to happen some day.

MORGAN. ... here's the thing, nobody disputes that. Everyone knows it's a huge program. Everyone knows there are parts of it which need to be modified, changed, may be dropped. But, Debbie Wasserman Schultz here, I come back to the main problem again. Is that, it doesn't appear to be a sensible grown up, ongoing dialog, between the two people who matter most, Speaker Beohner and President Obama. And I -- you know them both well. You know the President very well. What is wrong with the President that he can't just pick up a phone or and go see Speaker Boehnor, or get him to come and see him on a daily basis until they thrash out a deal. Isn't not the way any business gets done?

SCHULTZ: Look, President Obama has made it very clear that as we implement ObamaCare, which is going to happen, this is a settled matter. We are not going to repeal or delay, nor should we, ObamaCare. In fact, even the people who have been called that oppose ObamaCare think we shouldn't have shut down the government over it, and think that we shouldn't defund or delay it.

What we should do is what we had done since the 1700s in America. And that is when a law has problems that we passed, we sit down and we work together and we hammer out those problems. We don't hold the economy hostage repeatedly until we get our way.

The implementation of ObamaCare has nothing to do with the Continuing Resolution, has nothing to do with whether we are going to fund the essential needs of this government. They are separate. They should -- would be treated separately. And now we have shut the government down because the Republicans won't just let it go.

MORGAN: James Lanksford are you proud of what the Republicans have done tonight?

LANKFORD: No, this is the great challenge of this, Piers. I wish we could just -- today work this out, 45 times we send somebody over the Senate. Every time we said, "Let's sit down, let's talk about this." And we finally reached a point that had something like this to be able to sit down and say, "No. We're serious. We think that the House and the Senate should sit down and be able to work together. We thought tonight's proposal was actually very reasonable. We've already agreed upon a budget number. Divide the budget number and we added two requests to it that members of Congress and the White House actually are included in ObamaCare.

It's in the original law. The White House changed it with the waver and we said, "No. You can't do that. That's not legal in the law. So members of Congress and the White House should be in the exchanges like every other American take out the deductions.

The second thing we asked for was, in the first year of ObamaCare, individuals should not have to pay penalties and the tax on it, just for the first year. And it's already been done for businesses. We just said we think it should be for individuals. It's an extremely confusing law. A lot of people misunderstand it. A lot of people are going to make mistakes. They're going to make a mistake and get a penalty at the end of year for making mistake.

We just felt like in the first year, they shouldn't have a mistake and all members of Congress and White House should have the ObamaCare.

MORGAN: Well, yes, but the point is -- you're missing this other bigger point which is it's law. It is law and therefore a debate about what is existing law should not lead to the government being shutdown. It seemed utterly here are...

LANKFORD: It's the job there, Piers.

MORGAN: I'm going to leave it there ...

LANKFORD: Well the members of Congress. That's in a law as well that ...

MORGAN: You two sound like you can talk to each other they can bang their heads together, get Speaker Boehner and President Obama in a room tonight. Get it done for the American people.

SCHULTZ: Piers, we need to put a House bill on the floor that gets 218 votes -- not 218 votes of Republicans. That's the American Democratic process works. And the Republicans are only allowing Republicans to make decisions and extremist ones at that. It's unacceptable.

LANKFORD: Let's check the vote count, we've had Democrats on all of our votes for every time that we sense a member we've had Democrats joining us on every single one all in this bipartisan.

SCHULTZ: (inaudible) the House work its well and reopen the government ...

MORGAN: OK.

SCHULTZ: ... stop holding the economy ...

MORGAN: Well, OK. We're ending with you two apparently in agreement which is probably first positive summit (ph) -- I don't know. So, I thank you both very much indeed.

LANKFORD: Thanks, Piers.

SCHULTZ: Thanks.

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