Read Transcript EXPAND
AMANPOUR: I mean, how dangerous is it right now these aircraft controllers are not being paid and it’s such a stressful job?
KINZINGER: Yes. I don’t know about the danger of it because they’re going to work and they’re being good people and doing their job but they’re not getting paid. They will get paid, they’ll be made whole but many people live paycheck to paycheck. This is stupid. This is the dumbest way to do government. When we take an issue we disagree on, like immigration, that I think is actually really easy to solve, it’s going to take both sides, getting a little something they want and something they don’t want to make this — to get this done. But instead, we go to our corner as we pout and there’s a lot of people that are, you know, casualties of this, not getting paid. It’s dumb. And this is where the American people have got to demand more of their leaders, compromise is not a dirty word.
AMANPOUR: Well, I mean, you know, you say that but there is this unbelievable impasse and a lot of fingers have been pointed towards the president’s own party of which you are a member. But you have broken with sort of the monolithic votes of your own party on certain issues that could keep certain parts of the government open. Do you know think it requies — you know, you say the people but representatives and senators as well to get to step up to the plate of getting back to governance?
KINZINGER: Yes, absolutely. It’s going to take, you know, not staring at the polls and wondering if we’re going to lose a primary if you do something, it’s going to take doing the leadership that, frankly, people invest in us to do here. And that means, taking some votes that may not be popular but you know it’s right for the country. I voted to reopen all the parts of government that have nothing to do with the reason this whole thing is shut down and the disagreement. And I’m calling on both sides, my own party and the other party, to get off our intransigent positions where we’re not willing to move from it, come and find a solution that I think 80 percent of the American people would agree with when we’re done. We’ll take care of the DACA Population. We’ll increase border security, which will be a wall in some places, not from sea to shining sea. And I think we can get this done and the American people would be like, “Finally, we got that — what was that, 30-day shutdown about?” So, it’s disappointing, it’s not fun being out here during this process and it’s especially not fun for those 800,000 people that need a paycheck.
AMANPOUR: Exactly. And you can relate a little bit in some aspects, you yourself are a pilot, you were in the Air National Guard, you served, as I said, in military interventions overseas and it is extraordinary, you know, that some of these people who put their lives on the line having to do so in the most stressful way possible and that’s not knowing whether they can meet the needs of themselves and their families.