DPCC Co-Chair Matt Cartwright: Shutting Down the Government is Not Acceptable
WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Matt Cartwright, Co-Chair of the House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee (DPCC), appeared on CNN Right Now With Brianna Keilar to discuss the possible budget compromise and the importance of preventing another federal government shutdown. Below are excerpts from the interview. Click here to watch the video
"[The negotiators] have an agreement in principle and I congratulate the great appropriators who came together and landed this deal because the alternative is not acceptable. Shutting down the government is not acceptable. The American traffic controllers are not coming to work, calling in sick or operating over stress, that affects our safety, and we can't shut the government down just because people can't make a deal. I congratulate the appropriators who understand the give and take, the push and pull of negotiation and compromise. I'm so glad they left it up to appropriators to work out this deal, and let's go forward with it and make it work."
"What I've always been in favor of is evidence-based spending. For people who don't think about the border for longer than five seconds at a time, a border wall from sea to shining sea sounds great. But what you have to realize is that there are a lot of details. For example, most of this land is privately owned. That means the government would have to buy this property and pay fair market value for property to put walls on or whatever. I got elected to Congress on a promise that I would fight to keep government expenditures reasonable and appropriate, not to waste money. I served six years on the Oversight Committee fighting to combat waste, fraud and abuse. I think all of us have taken that oath…Let's make sure we're spending money wisely and not putting barriers in places where it doesn't make sense or is cost prohibitive."
"Declaring an emergency is obviously an extreme thing. And as I think about the issues involved here, there is one emergency and it is the opioid crisis. It is the thing that affects every state and every county and every town, village. And we have opioids coming in and wrecking lives and hurting families. And we know that something like 90% of the drugs coming in, come in through the ports of entry. One of the things I've been saying again and again, is that we need to beef up the scanning technology at the ports of entry. If you look at the money already being spent, it's about retrofitting legacy technology. In other words, writing software so that the old equipment there can do a better job of scanning the trucks and buses coming in. Any time you hear legacy technology, you know that money is being wasted. What we ought to do is go in and buy new technology because then you have competition, you have all the market forces in play, and you know you're getting a better bang for your buck. Let's have the cutting edge technology at our border scanning and keeping out all of those horrible drugs coming in and killing our kids in this country."