Rep. Pete Aguilar joined KQED to talk about the ongoing Republican shutdown and how Democrats are fighting tirelessly to protect Americans’ health care

Recently, Rep. Pete Aguilar (CA-33) joined KQED’s Mina Kim to talk about the ongoing Republican shutdown, why Democrats are fighting to protect health care and how Republican cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act could harm the Inland Empire. You can listen to the full interview here and read an excerpt from Rep. Aguilar’s interview below:

Mina Kim: Joining us now is San Bernardino Representative Pete Aguilar, who’s also House Democratic Caucus Chair and sits on the Appropriations Committee. Congressman Aguilar, thank you so much for joining us.

Rep. Pete Aguilar: Thanks for having me.

Mina Kim: So we’re in a government shutdown, with thousands of federal jobs on the line and billions in federal aid being withheld. But the House is not in session, working with the Senate to end the shutdown. How do you explain this, Congressman?

Rep. Pete Aguilar: You know, I don’t really have an explanation, Mina, other than that the Speaker of the House doesn’t want to convene Members to come back to Washington, but I don’t know why. Clearly, he’s afraid of something. Maybe he’s afraid of Democrats and Republicans actually being around each other and forcing a solution.

The only way that we solve this government funding crisis is for Democrats and Republicans to come together. And Leader Jeffries has said House Democrats will go anywhere and negotiate at any point to avert this crisis.

But our position has been clear: we want to avert the health care crisis that they have created. Republicans created this crisis by passing the Big Ugly Law, and now they want Democratic votes to support them implementing this. That doesn’t make sense to us.

And today, by the way, the Administration just announced a $40 billion bailout to Argentina. So, they’re comfortable not working since September 19th, by the way, twenty-five days in a row—and bailing out Argentina to the tune of $40 billion. But letting fifteen million people lose their health care coverage. That’s not right for us.

Mina Kim: But then, what’s your message to those who are worrying about a prolonged shutdown? The effects of it are trying to come into focus, with hundreds of thousands of federal workers starting to miss their paychecks or receiving partial pay. There’s concerns about, you know, things like everyday, things like airport delays and so on. What is your message?

Rep. Pete Aguilar: Our message to our federal workers and people who utilize federal services is, you know, we support them. We lift them up. We support the work that they do, whether they work for the IRS or whether they work for FEMA or park rangers or TSA workers or air traffic controller – we support all of the work that they do, and we feel that they all are essential. Donald Trump has been trying to use them as political pawns, and he has been trying to fire them and dismantle our federal workforce since January 20th. This isn’t something that’s new for the government shutdown or new since October 1st. He maybe has a different reason. He has a few different talking points, but his attack on our federal workers has been very clear since he took his oath of office. And so our message to them is we’re fighting for you. We’re trying to help you. We want you to be paid, and we will ensure and we will fight to ensure that they get back pay, which has always been the case during government shutdowns. Donald Trump is the one who is saying he wants to pick winners and losers and pick favorites on who gets back pay and who doesn’t.

[…]

Mina Kim: How are you seeing the health care cuts affecting your district specifically?

Rep. Pete Aguilar: This is huge, Mina. Your listeners come from all over the state, but especially for areas like the Central Valley and the Inland Empire, these cuts could be devastating. We have a disproportionate amount of people on Medi-Cal, which out in our way is IEHP and Molina Health Care.

51,000 people in my district are at risk of losing coverage because of Republican cuts to Medicaid. That’s what’s at stake and what’s already happening. Now they want to let premium tax credits expire, and that’s going to raise the rates dramatically.

And let’s just say, for a family of four making $64,000 a year, their rate premiums could go up by $2,500 — that’s almost a 400% increase. Families are just trying to get by. The cost of living in the United States and in California is a lot. People are getting crushed by it. And so this is not the time for Mike Johnson, Donald Trump and House Republicans to raise the health care costs that people are paying. That’s exactly what they plan to do.

So, that’s what this is about. That’s why we’re trying to elevate this conversation. That’s why we’re fighting and pushing for them to come back to the table and to work with us.