🔰'They need to pick up the phone'_ AOC, Sanders on efforts to end the Congress stalemate

Senator Bobby Harms is joining us. She's a bartender from Horn Lake, Mississippi. She is a Democrat. She submitted her question via video. A Democrat from Mississippi. All right. There we go. My American dream has turned into a nightmare. My family was only days away from closing on a USDA loan for our dream home. Then came news of the shutdown, and now we face uncertainty. Our lease is up, and now we have to move. The shutdown is costing us our chance to live our dream. What are you doing to end this stalemate and help restore faith in our elected officials, the people I helped to choose to guard my American dream? We're going to do everything that we can to bring an end to this terrible shutdown, which is hurting you and which is hurting a million federal employees and millions of people who use federal services. But also, we have got to be cognizant that if Trump wins this fight, our health care system could well collapse, and tens of thousands of people could die every single year. Do you think Trump could win this fight? No, we're going to win it. But it's not—I don't want to look at it like a political fight. We're going to win it because the American people are on our side. If you are, you're a Republican congressman. You're going to go back to your district, and people are going to say to you, why are you doubling my insurance premiums? Why did you throw me off of health care? That's a fight that Republicans are not going to win. Well, and to Bobby's question, Representative, earlier, you said that House Speaker Mike Johnson said he wants this shutdown to be one of the longest in history. I believe he said it could be one of the longest in history. He was saying that more of a warning about how long it could go on. I don't think it was a threat. But I do think people want to know how long they should brace for this to potentially go on for. Do you think by Thanksgiving, the government could still be shut down? I mean, I would certainly hope not. I would certainly hope not. My hope is that we're able to resolve this as quickly as possible. I'm ready to negotiate. Bernie's ready to negotiate. I mean, we are all open and ready to— Is anyone actually negotiating right now? No. Let me reiterate one point. Republicans aren't in town. How do you negotiate with people who refuse even to show up to do their job? They're on vacation for, what, a month or so? Yes. Yes. House Republicans have been on vacation for over— But the Republican senators are here, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, we've had him on. He said, we've done our job. We passed the clean CR in the House. It's now up to the Senate to make these negotiations. They need to pick up a phone, Caitlin. They need to pick up a phone. They're saying that they're doing all this work. They are twiddling their thumbs and talking to each other. It is actually an unconscionable abdication and refusal to work. They refuse— I've never seen people who hate working so much in my life. I mean, genuinely, they won't even pick up the phone. If I were Mike Johnson, you should be in that office negotiating with Hakeem Jeffries every damn day until we reopen this government. And any day that you don't do that is a failure. It is a failure. And until there is accountability for people who refuse to work, to work, then we're going to continue to be in this cycle. So, you know, in the Senate, the Senate majority leader is John Thune. He should be negotiating with Chuck Schumer. President Trump should be having congressional leaders in the White House. Do you see that every day? No, you don't, because they're playing golf and they're going to Mar-a-Lago and the House and Republicans in the House have been on vacation for weeks now. We are here in Washington, D.C. We are ready to work. We are ready to strike a deal. We're not here to just be my way and the highway about everything. But what we're also not going to accept is the complete collapse of the American health care system so that just just because the Republican Party has decided to take a million federal workers hostage. Can I ask you on that? Because you before have said a government hostage government shutdown is like hostage taking when it comes to paychecks, because you came into office actually during a government shutdown, the longest in U.S. history. So what would you say to Republicans who say you're doing Once again, pick up the phone. They need to pick up the phone. And it's not hostage taking if they refuse to clock in. Right. We're all clocked in. We're all clocked in to do the job. They're not even here. They're not even here. And so it's not hostage taking as much as the fact that they Once again, the law is in the Senate. They need 60 votes. They don't have 60 votes. They've got 53 or maybe 52. That means you have to sit down and talk to the other side. It is not complicated. They are not doing that.