Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

I mean, listen, I think people can talk a good game.

But until they actually support policy that helps people, I'm not particularly interested.

But if she actually wants to support legislation and expanding healthcare, I've worked with plenty of Republicans as well.

on health care.

I have a bill that I've introduced with Congresswoman Malia Takis, a Republican from New York, on expanding maternal health and reauthorizing the Healthy Start program to help newborns and new moms be able to support their kids.

And so in terms of bipartisan legislation on health care, I'm more than open to doing that.

But it's not just about talking the talk.

We've got to walk the walk.

Particularly as a TSA employee, I represent LaGuardia Airport, and so I know very, very well all the hard work that you all do and put in, and you all deserve a dignified workplace.

You deserve a safe workplace, and you deserve the paycheck that you are working for.

What I believe the best thing that we can do is to reopen the government right now and to ensure and to also call on our representatives and put pressure on individuals like the Speaker of the House to actually pick up the phone.

The problem here is not even that there's a disagreement.

It's that the Speaker of the House and the Trump administration refuses to even have a negotiation.

They refuse to even pick up the phone and talk about this.

And so I do not want us to start to agree with what Mike Johnson is saying and to have them preview for us and normalize the idea that everyone's just going to miss a paycheck, that a million federal workers are just going to go without that and to just warn that in advance and to have us accept that.

This is not acceptable.

This is not normal.

And what is normal is for us to negotiate when one party wants the votes of another party, you negotiate, you come to a compromise, and you pass a bill.

That is schoolhouse rock.

And that is how things should be.