WASHINGTON – Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) joined MSNBC’s Ali Vitali to discuss the latest on the ongoing Republican-led government shutdown, the Republican leadership crisis, and the urgent need to prevent health care premiums from doubling for millions of Americans.
Watch the full interview here and read excerpts from the conversation below:
On protecting SNAP and ensuring every federal workers is paid, not just the ones Republicans pick and choose:
Vitali: “There has been some idea from a Republican Senator to put forward a bill that would effectively make it that SNAP wouldn’t lapse, which has never happened during a government shutdown before. Would you get on board with that bill?”
Gallego: “I think so, you know, yesterday we actually proposed two bills that would take care of all government employees, as well as contractors that are not being paid right now. And it would just straight up pay them during this shutdown while we do negotiations. So something like this is something I think that in a bipartisan manner with certain details, we would probably get behind.”
“We’re not going to give the power to the president to basically pay the federal employees that he likes versus the federal employees that we all want, which is across the board, everybody. And number two, this goes back to the most important thing. We understand people are going to be in pain and hurt, and it is temporary. What’s going to be really painful is for 24 million Americans to see their insurance rates double starting November 1st, and that is going to be permanent. So we need to have a solution to that that takes care of two things. Number one, funds the government in a bipartisan manner. Number two, deals with that. And we can also do that in a bipartisan manner with negotiations and reforms.”
On Republicans’ plan to do nothing while health care premiums rise for millions of Americans:
“I can’t do a show vote. A show vote doesn’t deal with people’s real problems that they’re going to have. And we’re talking, for example, in Arizona, the average family of four is going to have their insurance rates doubled to almost $3,400 more. So that’s almost $7,600 a year. They’re going to be paying $760 [more in] premiums essentially a month. That’s very hard to do.”
“What we’re looking at when it comes to true leadership coming from Thune, and the lack of leadership coming from Donald Trump, we don’t see anything. And then you have Mike Johnson, who has just absolutely disappeared, has put his Congress out of session now. So even if we had any type of solution, he wouldn’t be able to call them back in time to get anything done before basically November 1st. So there’s a whole lack of leadership that’s coming from the Republican Party right now.”
“All we want is two things. Number one, keeping insurance premiums very low for as many Americans as possible. And number two, having a good deal when it comes to reopening the government, which again, we agree has to be a compromise no matter what.”
10/24/25