Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) continued on Sunday to stand by his vote to reopen the government, citing approval from his constituents.
Kaine was one of eight Democratic senators to side with Republicans on an agreement to fund the government and end the shutdown a week ago. Since the government reopened on Wednesday, Kaine has become the recipient of backlash from his own party.
“My concern is that the lesson that [Republicans are] learning is that Democrats are weak and that next time, we just need to hurt working people and working Americans more to get them to fold. I don’t want them to learn that lesson,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) told reporters earlier this week.
Kaine appeared on NBC News’s Meet the Press on Sunday to respond to the veiled criticism from Ocasio-Cortez.
“I have 320,000 federal employees in Virginia, and together with their families, that’s probably 700,000 dependents. Getting them all back to work with two paychecks that they’ve missed restored, with protections against future firings. Some folks like AOC may think that’s nothing. Virginians think it’s an awful lot,” Kaine said. “I’m getting great feedback from Virginians, and those are the 8.5 million people I represent.”
Kaine then went on to note that senators were in charge of negotiations, as the continuing resolution passed the House of Representatives, where Ocasio-Cortez serves, without a problem back in September.
“[Ocasio-Cortez] was not at the table with the Republicans in the Senate. So maybe she thinks that the Republicans would have caved. Would it have been another week of SNAP recipients losing their SNAP benefits? Another month of air traffic or air travelers enduring chaos and even danger? Another two months of federal employees losing paychecks?” Kaine said.
“I was at the table with the Republican senators, and I knew if we wanted to get to the healthcare discussion, we had to open up the government. And that was a vantage point I had that a lot of folks lobbying criticism didn’t,” Kaine added.
The Virginia senator notably voted against funding the government, which extended the shutdown through Virginia’s election earlier this month. The weekend after Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) won the governor’s office and her Democratic ticket also won the lieutenant governor and attorney general seats, Kaine voted with his Republican colleagues.
DEMOCRATIC SENATORS STAND BY VOTE TO END SHUTDOWN
As a result of negotiations, Republicans agreed to reverse thousands of planned layoffs the White House has announced since Oct. 1, when the shutdown first began, and prevent more from happening through January.
The last time this continuing resolution was up for a vote was in March, when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) voted for it to keep the government open. This continuing resolution has a deadline of Jan. 31.