Senator Brian Schatz

Donald Trump's economy is already hard as it is because of his choices to create shortages of electricity, of lumber, of food, of healthcare.

Electricity prices are going up at twice the rate of inflation.

Vegetables are up nearly 40%.

Grocery prices are at their highest in three years.

And now people are supposed to find hundreds, if not thousands of dollars to spare every single month

or give up their health care coverage and hope they don't get sick.

Yeah, I think Mike Johnson is a little bit in a bubble, an information bubble, and he's getting praised by the people that he's seeking praise from.

But I think the thing about this shutdown is people know exactly what it's about.

They know that we're fighting to prevent 114% increase in healthcare premiums for about 22 million Americans.

And that's just the people who are on the ACA market

place, there are basically the rest of us who are not on the ACA exchange who are going to pay the increased costs as a result of healthcare everywhere becoming more expensive.

And so we're just saying, can we help to avert this catastrophe?

And in any functioning government, if you had a

catastrophe where tens of millions of Americans were facing these precipitous price increases, both parties would just get together and cut a deal.

Mike Johnson has no idea how to cut a deal.

John Thune, I think, is still working on that skill.

And I think different than

In Trump 1.0, Trump really views himself as an elected monarch and he finds the legislature to be annoying and to be a nuisance and to be people who should just shut up and get in line.

And I think so part of this is about the healthcare piece.

It's definitely the driving issue for all of us that unites people across the country and unites Democrats.