Good afternoon, everybody. How are we doing?
Good. Good, sir.
Good, good. Well, let's let these guys file out here. But, you know, what we just did was a little roundtable with leaders in the aviation industry. We've got leaders of labor represented. We've got leaders of the businesses that are of course making the airline industry run. And I just wanted to hear from people about the stresses of the aviation industry in light of the fact of the shutdown.
And here's what I found out. It actually worries me a great deal because I think that as much as delays have gotten worse over the last couple of weeks, everybody here is very worried that we're going to see more delays, more stresses on the people who are actually making the aviation system run, and more problems for both the consumers, but also the workers who actually make this incredible shining jewel of the American economy actually work and work on time and work safely.
Here are the things that I worry about. I worry about the people who are scanning our bags and making us get through the security line. I worry they're not getting paychecks. They're starting to get worried about how to feed their families and how to pay school tuition and everything else. I worry about the pilots who haven't gotten paid in a long time.
I worry about the air traffic controllers who of course make this entire system extra safe. I worry about them, more worried about their credit card bill than they should be because they're not getting a paycheck because Democrats refuse to open the government. Now I understand that a lot of Americans are sick of partisanship in Washington D.C. Trust me, I've been here for nine months in this job.
I am sick of partisanship in Washington D.C., but this is very, very simple, every partisan dispute, every policy, disagreement, all of these things we can talk about, we can reason through. We can disagree. We can shake hands and compromise on some of those issues, hopefully. But this is something that every single American, Democrat or Republican or independent should be able to agree on, open the government.
Stop this craziness and open the government. It's causing way too many problems and some of the folks behind me are the people who are dealing with the problems. Now let's just recap exactly what's happened politically in this town related to the government shutdown. We have had now multiple votes to reopen the United States government.
The House of Representatives has voted affirmatively to reopen the United States government. 52 Republicans and three Democrats consistently vote to reopen the United States government, but we need 60 votes. So all we need to end the craziness, to pay the air traffic controllers, to pay the TSA agents, to pay the pilots, to make sure that food stamp benefits continue to go out to the American people who need them, all we need is five reasonable Democrats to join three moderate Democrats and 52 Republicans to reopen the government.
I want to let Sean Duffy say something, but before I do, I just want to say to any Democrat in the United States Senate, we are happy to talk about any policy issue. We're happy to talk about health care policy. We're happy to talk about tax policy. We're happy to talk about regulatory policy, but not at the point of a gun.
You do not get to take the American people's government hostage and then demand that we give you everything you want in order to pay our air traffic controllers, it's a ridiculous set of demands. Let's reopen the government and then let's sit down and talk about how to compromise on policy for the American people.
Sean?
I appreciate it, Mr. Vice President. So first, I want to thank you for calling this meeting of the aviation industry. We have a great coalition, a bipartisan coalition, and so thank you for that. I just want to tell you, we look at the aviation system and we've seen blips and blurbs, whether it's LAX or it's Atlanta or it's Dallas, you're seeing impacts of this shutdown on our airspace.
And that means travelers are delayed, travelers are canceled, it has real problems. So our air traffic controllers, their first paycheck they missed, well, they got 90 percent, 80 percent of the paycheck, that was in early October. They just missed their full paycheck. And you got to think, well, then the second paycheck comes, that's now when we have real disruption because every single day, as all of you people know, as we all pay our bills, right, it's not just the mortgage and the car payment, which is very real, but they're buying food.
They travel 30, 45 minutes into the towers or the centers, so you have to buy gas. They have kids that want to play football or volleyball or tennis, and they can't afford the very life expenses that they need those paychecks for. And so though we've maintained the safety, I'm grateful for our controllers who are coming in every day.
But I do think as this shutdown continues, you're going to see more pressure on controllers, more pressure on TSA workers and that's going to have real impact. One group that we don't talk about a lot is we have technicians that work in our centers. I've talked to you all about how old our equipment is. We have technicians that come in every single day to make sure this equipment actually works.
They too aren't getting paid and this is burning and it's having a real impact on our men and women who serve our airspace. And so I would join the vice president and say, don't hold us hostage, don't hold American families' travel hostage, don't hold air traffic controllers hostage. Open up the government, have a conversation, let's get it resolved.
But again, every day. it gets harder. Every day, there's going to be more challenges. And the last point I'll make before I turn it over to Sean O'Brien's really great hair day today, is the fact that a lot of our people can go through the myths of one paycheck and it's hard for them, but a lot of them can get through it. None of them can get through two paychecks.
And so again, if Democrats don't get their act together very quickly, you're going to see huge problems. And again, I just -- I would come to them with a clean heart and say, open up the government and then let's have a conversation, I'll give it to the Teamsters, Sean O'Brien.
Thank you very much, Secretary Duffy. Thank you, Vice President Vance. Look, the bottom line, and we took a position, I represent 1.3 million working men and women in this country for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. We took a position three weeks ago, pass a clean CR, get to the table, negotiate a deal.
Do not put working people in the middle of a problem they should not be in there. And we got to think about the families that are going to be affected. Think about when you have to tell your son or daughter, they can't play sports because you're not getting paid. Think about when you can't pay your mortgage.
Think about when you can't pay your tuition. Put the politics aside, get to the table, negotiate a deal, pass a clean CR right now and then figure out the problems moving forward. And I want to thank the air traffic controllers. I want to thank the Aviation Administration for all their hard work and sacrifice they make.
And look, security and safety of the airlines is paramount. Let's not compromise the safety and security, pass a clean CR. Thank you.
Amen. Thank you, Sean. Great. Anybody else? Come on. Yeah.
Well, thank you, Mr. Vice President. Thank you, Secretary Duffy. Thank you all for being here with us today. And I want to start by really thanking the professionals, the air traffic controllers, the folks at the TSA, also the FAA, the people in management. They're working hard. They are keeping the skies safe.
They've minimized delays. Fewer than two percent of flights have been delayed so far because of air traffic control shortages. So they've done a great job, but it's putting stress on people. It's not fair to those people. It's also putting stress on the economy. You know, the first couple of weeks this had no impact on the economy, but as every day goes by, the impacts start to grow and airlines are a pretty good real-time indicator of the economy and we start to see, still minor, but steep booking impact.
And you see that happening in the economy. We put the whole economy at risk. And so it's been 30 days, and while I don't have a position on which partisan side and how things should be settled with health care, it has been 30 days. I also think it is time to pass a clean CR, use that as the opportunity to get into a room behind closed doors and negotiate hard on the real and substantive issues that the American people want our politicians on both sides of the aisle to solve, but let's get a clean CR and get that negotiation done behind closed doors, without the pressure and without putting the American workers and the American economy at risk.
Hear, hear. Great. OK, guys. We'll take a few questions. Yeah, go ahead.
Thanks, Mr. Vice President. Mary Margaret with Daily Wire. We're coming up on the one-year anniversary of this really tragic plane crash in D.C. Should Americans be afraid to fly while the shutdown continues?
No, I don't think Americans should be afraid to fly because we've got great airline professionals who are keeping the safest aviation industry in the world afloat. But they're doing it with incredible stress. What I worry more about is that if you have, let's say, a pilot who's now missed two paychecks, who's now telling his kids that they can't do things that they'd like to do, who's now worried about feeding his family, maybe that guy doesn't show up to work.
Maybe he goes and gets a different job. That means greater delays for the American people. I worry about the air traffic controller who now has missed two paychecks who's got to pay his credit card bill or his mortgage, but can't pay both and decides, you know what, this industry is not for me. The secretary of transportation made a great point in private.
I'm going to steal it right now because we got to get people into the air traffic control industry. We had a shortage of 2,000 people. How many of those people look to the future, see the Congressional Democrats can't get their act together and say, you know what, we're not going to join air traffic controlling at all, which is going to further extend the delays.
I think that we have a safe system because these guys are doing heroic things in the midst of this terrible shutdown. But why do we ask them to do so much without getting paid? Why don't we pay them so that they can be happy, they can do the best job they can do and they're not worried about feeding their families while they're doing a very important job for all of us. Yeah.
Could you let us know your understanding of the president's comments that he wants to resume nuclear testing after more than 30 years? Does he mean the warheads themselves, the distribution, the missiles and so forth? What's your understanding of his intention?
Well, look, I'll answer that very briefly, but I really do want to focus on the shutdown that is affecting the American people. I think the president's truth speaks for itself. We have a big arsenal, obviously. The Russians have a large nuclear arsenal. The Chinese have a large nuclear arsenal. Sometimes you've got to test it to make sure that it's functioning and working properly.
We've been working very closely, even with nations that we don't have the best relations with, to try to limit nuclear proliferation. The president is going to keep on working on that, but it's an important part of American national security to make sure that this nuclear arsenal we have actually functions properly.
And that's part of a testing regime. To be clear, we know that it does work properly, but you've got to keep on top of it over time, and the president just wants to make sure that we do that.
Mr. Vice President, [Inaudible] News Nation. And my dad was a pilot, so thank you for what you're doing to keep the skies safe. I wanted to ask you, I know you said you're going to talk with folks on Capitol Hill after they open the government back up. If this keeps going on, would you consider getting everyone together like you did before the shutdown here at the White House to talk?
And just quickly on nuclear, does the new testing make the world less safe?
So I'm not going to answer -- I've answered all the questions about nuclear testing that I'm going to answer. I want to talk about the government shutdown here and I'd like to focus the questions there. But to your point, look, I've never said we're not going to talk to Congressional Democrats until they reopen the government.
What I've said is we are not going to give in on policy demands under the threat of hostage-taking. I mean, if any moderate Democrat or any Democrat period from the United States Senate wants to comb over, they're welcome to walk into these doors in an hour. I'm happy to talk to them about how to end the government shutdown.
But it's actually very simple because there's a clean CR, as you heard from everybody, that would reopen the government. What we're also saying is that we're not going to tell -- we're not going to allow anybody, Democrat or Republican, to effectively threaten any policy demand and to place that upon reopening the government.
You don't reward hostage-taking. If Democrats want to talk about health care policy, let's talk about health care policy. If they want to talk about tax policy, let's talk about tax policy. They don't get to come in here and say, you give us everything we want or we're going to shut down the government and not pay our pilots and not pay our air traffic controllers.
It's ridiculous, disgraceful, irresponsible behavior. There have got to be five more moderate Democrats in this entire city who are willing to work with us to reopen the government.
Mr. Vice President, on the issue of the shutdown, there is the concern about 42 million people losing SNAP benefits --
Of course.
-- over this weekend. The administration's moved a lot of money around to pay troops, to pay federal law enforcement and is telling Congress they can't move money around to pay at least some of those benefits. Why not? And would there be some push perhaps in the next 48 hours to try to do that, so Americans don't go hungry?
Well, here's the problem. If you go back to previous government shutdowns, what has happened is that sometimes the president has tried to make the shutdown as painful as possible on the American people. I give the president of the United States great credit and the entire team for trying to make this as painless as possible.
The Democrats are acting irresponsibly. He doesn't want the American people to suffer because of it. But look, right now, this government, this administration, we're like guys running around, you know, with a leak in a dam wall trying to plug it with bubble gum and we plug one spot with bubble gum and we plug another spot with bubble gum and we plug another spot with bubble gum.
Why don't the Democrats just stop this entire charade and reopen the government so that we don't have to try to make this thing work on a shoestring budget, which is what we're trying to do? The unfortunate reality and we're starting to see this with our aviation industry, we're going to find out the hard way with SNAP benefits.
The American people are already suffering and the suffering is going to get a lot worse, not because the president of the United States has failed to make the shutdown painless. He's tried to do everything that he can to make it as painless as possible. The reason that pain is coming and the reason it's building is because we're not passing the clean bill to reopen the government.
It's a very easy thing to do.
Thank you, Mr. Vice President. I'm Monica Payton, Frontlines Turning point USA. On the government shutdown, of course, we're approaching Thanksgiving, we're approaching the holidays. What could travel look like, you know, if the Democrats don't open the government in time?
So I'm going to let our great Secretary of Transportation answer this question. Look, it could be a disaster. It really could be, because at that point, you're talking about people have missed three paychecks, they've missed four paychecks. How many of them are not going to show up for work? You take the TSA lines that are already too long even right now and say half of those people don't show up for work, not because they're not hard workers or good people, but because they've got to find a different job to feed their families.
What happens when the security lines are not an hour long, but they're four hours long? What happens when pilots start not showing up for work because they're so focused on paying the bills, they can't fly the plane safely? That's going to lead to massive delays. We want people to be able to get home for Thanksgiving.
We want people to be able to travel for business to make this entire engine of commerce work. We want the aviation industry to work. It's not going to work unless the Democrats reopen the government. These guys are doing heroic things to make it work as well as it possibly can, but every single person that I talked to, to a word, they are worried that the delays are going to reach a point where it makes it very, very hard for the American people to fly.
Sean?
So listen, so to answer your question, our traffic will be snarled, right? It'll be a disaster in aviation. And just, I'm going to steal -- you stole my point, I'll steal one from Scott Kirby from United. October is a slower air travel month and we have great weather in October. And so you've seen minimal disruption because of good weather and slower travel.
But as we go into November, travel picks up as people start to look at going to see their families, kids come home from college. And if you don't have air traffic controllers who are being paid, they may want to stay on the job, but they cannot. They're going to have to go take a second job and you're going to have mass issues throughout the airspace.
People will not be able to go from one place to the other because of the government shutdown and I hope Democrats don't take it to that point.
Great. Yeah.
Alex [Inaudible] from ABC News. I'm curious, you know, as we move into this holiday travel season, is the administration working on a plan to keep airports running smoothly? The other thing that I wanted to ask you is we got 20 million Americans who are set to see their health care premiums skyrocket with those ACA tax credits expiring, curious your response there.
Is the administration working on a plan to expand them?
Why don't you take the question about what we're trying to do to try to limit the effects of the shutdown on aviation? I think Sean is a great person to address that. And then I'll address the health insurance premium question.
Yeah, so we are -- we're working closely with NATCA, our air traffic controllers' union, our are technicians who work to keep the equipment safe and operational. I know Kristi is working with TSA. So we are doing all we can to partner with and talk to our government employees who make this system run smoothly.
But we can only ask so much. And I as a guy who had a lot of kids and didn't make a lot of money early in my life, I know the pressure that these families are under. And by the way, think when these families go home, the fights that are had over the fact that you don't have money for basketball this season, the family strife that happens because they don't have money coming in the door is very, very real.
So we are doing all we can to work with our partners to keep things running smoothly, but in the end, we can only go so far. And if I could just, before I turn it over.
Please.
I love that you guys are asking these questions about what we can do to make this less painful. There's an easy, painless solution, pass a clean CR.
Exactly.
And by the way, I think you all -- I mean, I was part of some shutdowns myself in Congress and the tone of the press corps is very, very different in this one. You are rabid against Republicans who voted not to open the government up and it seems like everyone is so docile. And so like, what is the president going to do to alleviate the pain?
[Inaudible] anyone can go see the World War II museum. They can all go see the Vietnam Memorial. Again, we didn't close those down. This administration is doing everything they can to alleviate the pain on the American people. Go back to Barack Obama, he did everything he could to shut down parks and memorials across the city.
And so again, it's an easy, easy answer. Go ask the Democrats that question. Say, what are you going to do to make sure that people get SNAP benefits this Saturday or they have health care assistance for their Obamacare? What are you going to do? Because we're doing everything we can on our end, but there's not much more we can do because the rules of the road by which we have to play.
And so again, I'm grateful for this team because they care about the American people. I just wonder, do the Democrats care the way we do? And if they do, open it up, sit down and negotiate.
Hear, hear. That's a great point. I want to answer the question about health insurance premiums, because look, we don't want the American people's health insurance premiums to go up. We're very worried about this. The president's been talking about this since before we even took office, that we're inheriting a health care system that has suffered some real problems under the Biden administration.
Because of that, you're seeing health insurance premiums skyrocket. Now here is our very simple proposal to the Democrats. Let's sit down and come to a compromise and work it out. And you know what the Democrats response to that is, give us everything we want or we're going to shut down the government and keep it shut down.
That is not reasonable behavior. That's not how you do compromise in this town. That is the way that the Democrats have operated. They are trying to take a hostage and we can't reward that behavior. If we do that, if we say yes, of course we'll give you everything that you want if you reopen the government, you know what's going to happen, in three months, they're going to come back to the administration and they're again going to say, we're going to shut down the aviation industry, we're going to deny people SNAP benefits unless you give us exactly what you want.
That's how a child behaves. That is not how a responsible governing party behaves in the United States of America. And let me make one final point and then we'll cut out of this press conference. Look, I actually -- I've been a little bit unfair and I want to correct this because when I say the Democrats have shut down the government, it's actually the far-left side of the Democratic party.
Because to their great credit, three moderate Democrats joined 52 Senate Republicans to vote to reopen the government. We need five more reasonable Democrats to put the American people first and reopen the government. That's all that we're asking. Let's talk about health care policy. Let's make sure that we ensure that Americans health insurance premiums don't go up. We want that and we're willing to work with people for it, but they've got to reopen the government first.
Sean Duffy came from a background not that dissimilar from mine. Sean O'Brien came from a background not that dissimilar from mine. There are moms and dads who are fighting right now because they're worried about not being able to pay the credit card bill and the mortgage bill. There are parents who have to look their kids in the eye and say, you know what, we're not going to do football this year, we're not going to do basketball this year, because I can't pay for it because the federal government is shut down and I'm not getting a paycheck.
Do we want those people who keep the aviation system running to not be able to feed their families, to not be able to pay for some of the things that make life worth living? The answer to that question is absolutely we want them to be able to afford a good life. The only way for that to happen is to reopen the government.
It will be good for those who fly. It will be good for those who work in the aviation industry. It will be good for the whole country, just do the commonsense thing, Democrats, reopen the government. We need five Senate Democrats to join us. I hope that they will. Thank you, guys.