I'm looking for video and/or a complete transcript [
UPDATE:
here's the transcript] of Mark Warner's appearance on CNN's "State of the Union" this morning. For now, here are some highlights of what Warner had to say,
courtesy of CNN's Political Ticker:
Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who also sits on the Senate Budget Committee, said Sunday that he supports the proposal ["that would create a bipartisan task force charged with making recommendations to Congress for reining in runaway spending that threatens to overwhelm the federal budget"].
“On a longer term, I actually believe this process [of federal spending] has totally got out of control,” Warner said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“I came from being a governor where we actually had to balance our books each year,” Warner explained.
In the long term, Warner said he believed the only way Congress would be able to get spending under control is through the bipartisan commission proposed last week by Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota, and Sen. Judd Gregg, R-New Hampshire.”
“Democrats and Republicans [should] come together, go ahead and put revenues and spending both out there and then come back and vote it straight up and down,” Warner said, in much the same way Congress handles the sticky political issue of closing military bases across the country.
“I don’t see how this process where everybody kind of lards on is going to actually ever come to an end unless we finally have the discipline to do a straight up or down vote across the board,” Warner also told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King.
“This is a moment of crisis” that requires both parties to put partisanship aside, Warner also said Sunday.
Personally, I'm starting to think that given the nearly complete dysfunctionality that we call the "U.S. Senate," and also given the long-term budgetary pressures caused by health care and retirement costs, a bipartisan budget committee, as proposed by Senators Conrad and Gregg, might actually have some merit. If not, does anyone seriously think the Congress will be able to tackle entitlements - Medicare and Social Security - in a way that will accomplish anything? Having watched the Congress' dismal performance the past year on important issues like climate change and health care, I'm not optimistic that it will. The problem is, if we
don't deal with entitlements, sooner or later - most likely sooner - we're going to go bankrupt as a nation. Obviously, that's not acceptable, but do we have the political will and institutional strength to avoid it? I'm dubious; hence, the suboptimal idea of tossing it all to a bipartisan committee.
