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Have to go back to those states and explain many supported donald trump, voted for donald trump, still staunch reporters why a government is shut down and they can't afford to buy milk or mutt gas in their cars. to pay taxes, to pay debt, to pay credit card debt. how do you explain that to those folks? the reality is you can't. some are going to start defecting and saying, mr. president, this cannot continue. we have to find a compromise. >> particularly if they're in states that have a large base of government employees or contract workers with the government, which is also an unforeseen, unt...

Department of agriculture, and think about what it means for the federal employees who are public servants and can't work. and i'm very focused, along with some of my colleagues on the impact this has on contract federal workers, the almost invisible people who clean federal office buildings, work in the cafeterias. and they are contract workers and they have no way of getting paid and they are living paycheck to paycheck. just like most americans do. and it's just wrong that they're being used as a bargaining chip here. >> so but they are. the question is, what changes the equilibrium. what y...

Even years i'm thinking how clueless he is about the impact this is having on people's lives. the bill i'm working on with my colleagues in the senate would be working to address the impact of contract workers by making sure that they get the back pay that they deserve. but meanwhile what ought to happen is the bills that have pass it had house and the senate, they ought to be passed by the senate again and sent to the president and he should sign them into law. >> did you notice today, it was weird, senator mitch mcconnell, john cornyn, senator thune, none of them were in the white house rose...

What is the role? what have we learned from past shutdowns about the role of empathy when it comes to the potential political pain of one party or another? >> well, first you have to have some. i think this president has demonstrated that he doesn't. the billionaire private citizen, donald trump, did not pay workers. and now the person whose first job in government is as president of the united states is not paying workers. i think the lack of empathy comes because he's never lived paycheck to paycheck. he's never faced hardship. as evidenced in "the new york times" article that laid out his h...

White house, the reality is you were deputy secretary of labor. the 800,000 federal workers, some on furlough, some working and not getting paid until whenever this is over, went through the holidays and are going through now where not only are they waiting on delayed checks where some are saying you can write your landlord or mortgage holder, but what about buying gas? and buying food and a bottle of milk? all of this now is up in the air and getting more and more of a situation that is certainly not palpable for a lot of these federal workers. >> that's exactly right. i think the popular con...