WASHINGTON–U.S. Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Sunday joined MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki to discuss the short term deal to keep the federal government until November 17 and the urgent need to pass a supplemental that includes funding for Ukraine.

“This is an ongoing disaster for the American people. Republicans are simply not fit to govern. They're not serious people. And while the House of Representatives’ Republican caucus is going to go through another round of navel gazing deciding who's going to lead them, people out there are hurting, right. We still have crises that we need to tackle whether it be the record number of people dying of overdoses, the continued gun violence crisis, and House Republicans are going to spend the next couple weeks arguing amongst themselves as to who should be the next speaker,” said Murphy.

Murphy continued: “I'm glad that we are not shutting down the federal government, but what a low bar for House Republicans that we celebrate the fact that they can just barely keep the lights on with hours to go before a shutdown occurs. McCarthy obviously had to reach out and get Democratic votes as he will have to do 45 days from now, but as you mentioned, the price here is that he gave into Republican demands to cut Ukraine off, and ultimately American security is at risk if we don't start funding Ukraine again. And that will be one of the big fights that we have to undertake over the next month and a half. It's not enough to just keep the lights on in the federal government. We actually have to live up to our national security obligations, and one of those is making sure that Kyiv doesn't become a Russian city.”

On the urgency of passing a supplemental that includes funding for Ukraine, Murphy said: “I hope that McCarthy is going to make good on his commitment to bring a Ukraine supplemental funding bill before the House because what we know is that it has the majority. In the Senate and the House, there's a commanding easy majority of members who will support continued funding for Ukraine, and my worry is that if we wait until the middle or end of November to have this conversation about whether we're still supporting Ukraine, it may be too late for Ukraine by that point. So my preference is in the next few weeks to bring a supplemental funding bill before the Senate, send that over to the House, and really dare McCarthy to make the decision to abandon Ukraine, even though he has a majority of Republicans and Democrats who will support Ukraine.”

Murphy highlighted the irresponsibility of House Republicans and potential for future shutdowns: “The reality is this is terrible for the American economy. If these hard right Republicans claim to be fiscal conservatives, it's just not fiscally conservative to shut down the government because we ultimately pay federal employees who are furloughed when they come back to work, but it also costs the American economy billions of dollars when the federal government shuts down. So I think the next year and a half are just going to be a series of ongoing disasters in the House of Representatives. And I think we're going to have to try to do a better job of making the case to them that there's nothing fiscally conservative about threatening shutdown or actually going through a shutdown.”

On Saturday, Murphy released a statement on the short term deal to keep the federal government open.

###