CGTN Europe interviewed Rina Shah, Political Strategist
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00:00Well, Reena Shah is a political strategist and distinguished commentator in the United States.
00:05Reena, welcome, lovely to see you.
00:07Look, we're all sitting around here waiting for something to happen.
00:10We were hoping to see live pictures of voting.
00:13There aren't any, presumably because lawmakers are not voting.
00:16What are you hearing? What's going on?
00:19A lot of moving parts at this moment on Capitol Hill.
00:22Certainly, it seems that Speaker Johnson does not want to be embarrassed yet again today
00:27with just hours ahead of a deadline that could shut down our government
00:31and create really big problems that essentially punish innocent federal workers
00:36as well as our active duty military members with a range of implications that many are not even aware of.
00:43Just explain to us, why did the House reject this Trump-backed funding bill?
00:49And what does that say about divisions in the Republican Party?
00:55Well, simply put, the debate about raising the debt ceiling is about two opposing visions of what is fiscal responsibility.
01:03And I think Congressman Chip Roy of Texas, a Republican, put it best yesterday in his remarks on the House floor
01:11that he could not believe his party thought this was a fiscally responsible bill to put forward.
01:17On the one hand, you have staunch fiscal conservatives saying that, you know, this is reckless,
01:23that if we're not going to rein in federal spending, what kind of country will we be?
01:27Spending into oblivion, as we've been doing.
01:30On the other hand, people who say we need to raise the debt ceiling say we need to do so
01:35because we risk economic calamity if we don't do that.
01:39We would be defaulting on our financial obligations for the first time in history if we do not raise the debt ceiling.
01:46So again, you've got two factions there within the Republican Party that have created a huge problem for Johnson.
01:54And frankly, what I think happened last night was that he did not have his finger on the pulse of his own Republican caucus
02:01when they put forward that second, quote-unquote, renegotiated bill that was backed by President-elect Trump and Elon Musk
02:09at the 11th hour, but did not include any Democrats as the previous bill earlier in the day yesterday did.
02:15Obviously, this excites journalists and people into politics.
02:20For the ordinary American, what does a government shutdown mean?
02:26Well, let me put it this way. Good things and bad things.
02:30On the one hand, you've got folks saying that they want to see Washington, D.C. behave differently with our federal taxpayer dollar.
02:37But on the other hand, those folks most affected by it are not huge in number.
02:44One thing that many people have been really concerned about is Social Security checks, Medicare checks.
02:50These are entitlement programs that help those who need it.
02:54And those who receive that kind of pay are typically, again, older Americans, indigent folks,
03:00people who rely on these government entitlement programs.
03:04Slashing them doesn't make sense, and in the event of a federal government shutdown, those checks do not get affected.
03:09They still go out.
03:11Reena, don't go away, because you never know. Something might happen, and we might talk again very shortly.
03:16But in the meantime, thank you for that.
03:18Reena Shah, the political strategist and commentator in the United States.