New Hampshire senator on voting to reopening the government, releasing the Epstein files and more

(CBS, KYMA) - Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about voting to reopening the government.

According to Brennan, Sen. Shaheen crossed the aisle last Sunday, agreeing to reopen the government without a guaranteed extension of the Obamacare tax credit subsidies, but with a promise to have a vote on an Affordable Care Act bill of Democrats's own choosing.

This prompted Brennan to ask if Shaheen had "consensus among Democrats that this to be a vote simply to extend the tax credits as they stand now," of if she is open to a broader reform of Obamacare, to which the senator said:

"From the beginning of this shutdown, I've had two goals. One is to get government up and running again to end the suffering that too many Americans were experiencing because they lost food assistance or they weren't getting paid federal employees, and the second was to address the high cost of premium...health insurance that people are looking at because insurance companies are setting rates based on the fact that those premium tax credits are supposed to go away at the end of this year. I think people are now very aware of the fact that they are going to see huge rate increases double for so many people, and an unaffordable cost of health insurance if those premium tax credits go away. And what I think we need to do, and these are conversations that we need to have, is we need to work with our Republican colleagues to try and get a bill that can be supported. That can get through both houses of Congress where we've been talking to our Republicans, Senator Cassidy, throughout the shutdown, about what we might be able to agree to. We've been talking to House members on both sides of the aisle, and so now we need to work together. I agree with Senator Cassidy. This should be a bill that is not partisan, but it should be a bill to extend those premium tax credits, because, as everybody has talked about, there is real urgency to get this done. And if we don't address it, then people are going to see huge rate increases. So we can work together, we can extend the credits, but we probably can't implement significant reforms that Senator Cassidy was talking about in the time frame that we've got. So we need to look both in the short term and in the long term for how we address the cost of health care."

During the interview, Brennan and Shaheen talked about the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

When asked if the Senate should vote on it, and if Shaheen will support it, she said, "Absolutely. We need to release the documents. The American people need to see what's in them. And if President Trump says there's nothing there that he's concerned about, then why doesn't he support release of the documents?"

Brennan and Shaheen then talked about President Donald Trump saying he "sort of" made up his mind on Venezuela, leading Brennan to ask the senator if there is a clear endgame or if her understanding that ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power is part of the Trump Administration's plan, and Shaheen said:

"I don't think it's clear what the end game is for this administration with respect to Venezuela. They're relying on a legal opinion, excuse me, in terms of the boat strikes that they have not released. They have finally made it available to members of Congress, but they haven't released it to the public. They are escalating in a way that talking about a land strike through special operations that puts at risk our men and women in the military. We have so much firepower now in the Caribbean, the Gerald R. Ford has been taken from the Red Sea, so that now we don't have any firepower, really, in the Middle East as we look at the threats there. We don't have what we need, I think, in the Indo-Pacific or in Europe. And so what the President has done here is to put at risk other parts of the world and Americans in other parts of the world for this fascination on trying to get rid of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela, who clearly is a bad character. He's been involved in illegal drugs, but he is not a threat to the United States of America, and what the president is doing is raising some real questions."

To watch more of Brennan's interview with Shaheen, click here.