CNN "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" - Transcript: Government Shutdown

Interview

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CROWLEY: Joining me now, Sen. Susan Collins, the senior senator and Republican from Main and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Democrat from Minnesota. Thank you both for joining us.

Let me first ask you the question about mood, temperament. It seemed awfully tense to be on Capitol Hill yesterday and days before then. And I want to add something to this and this is the latest "Wall Street Journal"/NBC News poll. And the question was, would you vote to defeat and replace every member of Congress including your representative if you could? Sixty percent said, yes, I would. There's a lot of pressure and a lot of tension.

COLLINS: There is. And there's a lot of justifiable anger at Congress and at the president for failing to solve these problems. But I do want to say that despite what people may read, there are a lot of constructive discussions going on behind the scenes. In my office yesterday, there were two different meetings with 12 senators, six Democrats including Amy and six Republicans to try to work away out of this impasse.

CROWLEY: And then we look up on TV and Senator Reid is saying, no, the Collins plan is -- yes, there's nothing in it.

COLLINS: I was very surprised when Senator Reid said that. I don't know why he said it. I don't think it was very constructive. But the fact is we have a responsibility to govern. And we're continuing to talk. And I'm still hopeful that at least we sparked a dialogue that did not exist before we put out a plan.

And, I think that I've made a real contribution that way and that elements of the plan that Sen. Murkowski and Sen. Ayotte and I have put forth will end up in the final compromise.

CROWLEY: Sen. Klobuchar, why did Senator Reid just reject the Collins plus which you have been working on or talking about in her office? Why did he just reject it out of hand?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I see this plan as a positive framework going forward. And we need that right now. I think you see that back that Senator Reid and Sen. McConnell are now talking and we gotten to a stage where some of the demands that we've heard from House Republicans to put ideological things on the budget and shut the government down if they didn't defund Obamacare, if they didn't get something on birth control. That's behind us know. And, I think the plan and work that we're doing is positive. I think what Senator Reid meant is that he wasn't going to accept every little detail of it. But I think he knows that there are some positive things in that plan that are very good. For instance, we are talking about opening the government again and doing it in a smart timeframe.

We're talking about not having a default on our debt and being actually able to pay our bills again. We're talking about doing something in the long term on the budget, something this country has cried out for, a balanced approach is what I'd like to see with this some spending cuts but also revenue and doing some smart things

I think that's what we need to do as a country, and I see this with a lot of women leading the way. Positive. And I think the fact that these guys are now negotiating is positive for the country.

CROWLEY: And, yet, we're now hearing that Democrats want to break the force the budget cuts in the absence of any kind of budget deal.

COLLINS: Well, that's problematic, but what I think we could do and the reason that I've included a provision that requires a budget conference, a long overdue budget conference, is there could be a substitution of some of the mandatory spending cuts such as the farm bill which would save $23 billion over ten years for some of the cuts in defense and biomedical research that are very troubling to me personally.

CROWLEY: Have you spoken, either one of you, spoken to Senator Reid since he rejected this compromise proposal?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I have talked to a number of people in our leadership. And I think you'll see today as negotiations continue, elements of this proposal which I think is really important and I wanted to add what Susan said here. When we have a situation, when we have a farm bill that had strong bipartisan support in the Senate that brings the debt down, we have a number of bills, immigration bills brings the debt down by $160 billion in ten years.

There are some important work that we need to do in the Senate. We need to open up the government, make sure that we're paying our bills and then we can go on to do this work.

CROWLEY: One of the other things that really interested me when I listen to Senator Reid yesterday was his saying, well, I hope that America and around the globe, people are reassured that I sat down with Senator McConnell, the Republican leader, today, because we haven't sat down on this before.

We are 13 days into a government shutdown. We are four or five days away from busting through the debt ceiling. And the two main leaders in the United States Senate have not sat down to discuss this yet. How can the American people see that as anything other than a huge failure of leadership? COLLINS: Well, certainly they're talking now and they are the leaders and that is positive. But I think also that the president should have brought the leaders to the White House far earlier than he did. And that's why many of us have tried to step into the breach and put together a plan and offer it to the leaders as a starting point, because real harm is being done.

As this shutdown goes on, the consequences go far beyond the unfortunate furlough of thousands of federal workers. It affects the private sector. It affects our economy. It affects America's place in the world.

CROWLEY: And yet, Sen. Klobuchar, these are two grown men in Senate. They don't need the president to force them to meet. And I just think from the outside looking in, people are going, wait, in the Senate, they haven't even talked about this.

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I think first of all, many people have been talking about this in the Senate. And when you look at the history of the Senate the last few years despite their disagreements, the Senate has been a place where we've gotten things done. I mentioned the farm bill and the immigration bill. It was the Senate that averted the fiscal cliff at the end of last year and then it went over to the house.

It was a Senate that passed the transportation bill that had so much support across this country. So, I actually think no matter when they met or what they're talking, the fact that it's in the Senate right now where there is a group of bipartisan work that has been going on, people that have been work together for so long, I think that's a positive.

And I just like to echo what Susan has said here. We have situations now where plane manufacturer in Duluth, Minnesota can't get their inventory out of a warehouse to be able to try to sell it overseas where there are new exports all the time because the transportation department is shut down and they can't get approvals.

We have fishermen off Alaska that are going to lose their market on crab to Russia. It's an unbelievable thing. We have to get this government open again.

CROWLEY: And I want to ask you quickly about that, because congressman Mark Sanford said -- wait a second, the House already passed a bill that will pay back pay to these furloughed workers. The president put out a press release and said he'd sign it. I can't imagine the Democratic-controlled Senate saying no to that.

And he decided to just bring back his furloughed workers saying they're getting paid. There's no sense them sitting at home, bring them back in. Why not just do that?

COLLINS: We should, and that's what I did in my office after that bill passed the House. I had furloughed most of my staff, but if they're going to be paid, they should be at work. CROWLEY: Transportation people should be at work. I mean, if they're going to get paid --

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KLOBUCHAR: I think the constitutional interpretation of what it means when there is a shutdown and the point is is that right now we have a shutdown going on. And we need to end it. We need to put people back to work and we need to also pay our bills.

CROWLEY: Did you bring your staff back?

KLOBUCHAR: I have about two-thirds of my staff that's out right now and shut down. I think they're going to be back, because I think we're going to get this done.

(CROSSTALK)

CROWLEY: Do you think that this is going to be resolved before we hit the magic date, apparently, of October 17th when we crash up against the debt ceiling? Is it going to be done by then?

KLOBUCHAR: I do think it's going to be done. I think it's going to be done in part because of the kind of work that's getting done where some people said we have to work for the people of America. We're not just going to play these games. We're not going to just speak in metaphors. We're actually going to put a framework out and move forward and that's what we're doing in the Senate.

COLLINS: I agree. This is about our responsibility to govern. And, it's taken far too long. We never should be in this situation. But I do believe we're going to see a resolution this week.

CROWLEY: You two may have single-handedly calmed the markets tomorrow morning when they open.

KLOBUCHAR: I hope so.

CROWLEY: Fingers crossed and all of that, because you're right. I mean, the people that aren't going to get back pay are all those workers that are affected by the government shutdown but don't work to the federal --

KLOBUCHAR: Exactly. The little stores that are right next to the parks. All of the people that are just trying to get by and make it in this country and we're not doing the jobs for them. And that's why we got to get this done.

COLLINS: And that's not right.

CROWLEY: So are there on going meetings about Collins plus? And whose -- how many people have you gathered in your office?

COLLINS: Well, we had 12 people meet yesterday, but just last night, I had two more Democrats and a Republican contact me to offer suggestions and say that they wanted to be part of our group. So, I think that's very positive. We're going to keep working, offering our suggestions to the leadership on both sides of the aisle in an attempt to be constructive and bring this impasse to an end. Surely we owe that to the American people.

CROWLEY: Senator Susan Collins, Senator Amy Klobuchar, thanks for joining us this morning.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you, Candy.

COLLINS: Thank you.

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