CNN Newsroom: Interview With Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL)

Interview

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Well, look, I mean, I have no reason to believe that the Treasury Department has their numbers incorrect and I don't think this is something that we should be messing around with or trying to test out.

For the country to default would be incredibly harmful to working families across this country. We're talking about people not receiving their Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, students on Pell not being able to go to school. That's not something that you mess around with, so this does need to get figured out.

But the problem here, Jim, is that Republicans have manufactured this crisis and created it when under Trump and they raised the debt ceiling three times, no if, ands, or buts, and no conversations about the budget like this.

And so I think that we need to move forward and do what the American people have sent us to DC to do, lift this debt ceiling, move on. The budget process is a separate process and the things that Republicans are fighting for, food stamps -- taking away food stamps from people, work requirements when we already have work requirements attached to these programs. It's just not the right thing.

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Yes. We will have to see what to see what it is, but a hundred percent, it's not just progressive Democrats, the Congressional Black Caucus spoke out against work requirements and I want people to know too, recent work requirements, but we already have work requirements attached to these programs. What the Republicans are looking for are cuts to these programs, and we, as Democrats want to fight to ensure that working families have the resources that they need.

The Congressman was just talking about balancing the budget. I agree this is important. But the only conversation they want to have, have to do with making cuts to working families and the programs that they depend on and they don't want to have a conversation about making the top one percent actually pay their taxes, the revenue that taxes bring in. And that just shows, you know who these parties are serving right now.

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Well, the president and the White House has done a good job of keeping us up-to-date over the past couple of weeks. And I also understand, when you're having discussions like this, you don't want to have too many people in the room.

But again, I have to say that this entire thing that we're talking about, this impending economic collapse on our country is something completely made by the Republican Party, and I think we have to keep this in mind as we move forward because we're hearing this narrative that we have two sides negotiating, and we'll see what happens. That's really not what's going on.

It's not like Democrats are getting things in these talks. It is the Republican Party holding a gun to the American people and saying, look, if you don't cut programs that working families depend on, we're going to pull the trigger and put the economy into a recession. That's what's going on right now.

And so, of course, the president's going to continue these talks. The White House said yesterday that they weren't in favor of these work requirements, and that they were discussing. I agree with that.

And so I have faith in the president. We're hoping that he'll hold the line on work requirements. But again, it's not just progressives, it's Democrats across the entire House who don't want to see these programs cut.

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Well, you know, something I was just thinking about that we were talking about with some other members is the fact that this probably should have been done last year when the Democrats still had the House and the Senate.

But you know, 20/20 is hindsight, and right now we just need to focus on how we move forward and get through this crisis, and ensure that the American people can actually have faith in their government and so, I'm confident in the work that the White House is doing. House Democrats are here spreading this message so people know that, again, this narrative that it is two sides duking it out is not really what's going on right now.

The American people are being held hostage by the Republican Party in Congress. And on top of that, they've said as much, Matt Gaetz, just a few days ago said, you shouldn't negotiate with your hostage and the hostage, you know, it's not the president, it's the American people.

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We are hostage right now. That's exactly what's going on. And I think the president has made the right decision to engage, but I will say we shouldn't even be here in the first place, I do believe that, and it is difficult, because we are talking about something very serious, the default of this country.

And Democrats and the president, we care about that. We don't want to default. There are some in the Republican Party who don't care and maybe they're kind of curious to see what would happen. And we understand how much of a burden that would be on the American people.

So look, it's difficult to say, these are really difficult times right now, especially when people are you using a default to push a political agenda forward and so people at home know the budget process is separate from this. They are combining it because they understand that they can't get through these type of cuts through the actual normal process that Congress usually takes, and so they've combined these two things and they're saying, hey, it's my way or the highway and that's not right and that's not the way we're supposed to govern.

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Yes, I mean, we do care about the national debt. But again, this has to be a holistic conversation. And there's many ways that we can deal with our budget, deal with the debt to ensure that future generations in this country have the resources that they need.

And there's a huge part of this that Republicans don't even want to talk about and that's ensuring that corporations and the wealthy actually pay their fair share in taxes. There are so much that we can do in terms of that, but they don't even want to hear it. It's not even a part of the discussion right now. And I think it really shows who that party is serving and we need to ensure that we do everything we can to balance the budget, yes, but not like this.

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Thank you for having me on.

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