Copyright Live 5 News WCSC
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - Senate Republicans and Democrats remain in a standoff three weeks in to a federal government shutdown. Republican Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) sat down with Rhyan Henson this week to talk about the difficulties of a shutdown. RHYAN HENSON: First question, government shutdown, what are your thoughts on everything? Where do you stand? SENATOR JERRY MORAN: Well, I’m opposed to the government shutdown. I’ve been through a number of them, sometimes Republicans have caused them. In this case, in my view, the Democrats are in the lead in trying to extract something in order to keep government functioning. I’ve never seen any victory that comes from a shutdown. It’s a bad image for the United States. Our adversaries see us with chaos, and our allies wonder if we’re capable of meeting our commitments. So, from an international/national security perspective, a shutdown is a bad thing. HENSON: So far, the Republican approach has been, you know, ‘hey, this is the bill, we’re going to continue to vote for it.’ The Democrats are saying, ‘hey, we want health care guarantees, then we’re open for a vote.’ SEN. MORAN: Well, I think it is important for us to get government open. I think the fastest way to do that is for there to be a realization that we will need to talk about health care and health care issues. Let’s learn the lesson that a shutdown is a bad thing, and then have the conversations, negotiations to figure out what we do next with health care. HENSON: Airports are one thing that many Americans kind of experience, that impact of the shutdown, whether it be TSA or folks who run the control towers... What kind of guarantees do you give, as a senator to Americans, that they’ll be able to travel safely and efficiently when they move through airports and obviously up into the air? SEN. MORAN: This is really a good question, a really important one. The shutdown is damaging to the efforts that are underway, currently underway, to increase safety in the skies. The flight that crashed on January the 29th, at DCA with a helicopter, originated it from Kansas. It’s something that we’ve experienced as a state, as a people, and it’s really important. And I chair the Subcommittee on Aviation and we’ve been working to try to make things safer, which means more air traffic controllers, more technology... There’s more knowledge between pilots, between various aircraft. And the shutdown is a component of slowing down the progress that we’re trying to make. And so it’s really discouraging to me at a time in which, because of that crash and other things that have happened across the country in regard to air safety, that the shutdown is interfering with a concerted plan to make certain that people are, when they fly, they’re flying more safely than in the past and as safe as it can possibly be.
