CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Sen. Tim Kaine said he remains optimistic a federal government shutdown can be avoided – if President Trump will sit down and negotiate with Democrats.

“It was disturbing when the President said, ‘No, I won’t even meet with you,’” Kaine said Thursday after holding a roundtable on healthcare issues at the Charlottesville Free Clinic. “It’s like, ‘Hey, this is a negotiation. That’s the way all budgets are done.’ When you say, ‘I’m not even willing to meet, I’m not even willing to compromise,’ that’s a little unprecedented. But he said he’d meet on Sunday. Yesterday, he said he wouldn’t. Maybe he’ll change his mind again. That’s what I’m hoping.”

Kaine the Republican bill and the Democratic proposal are not that far apart, and that the most significant area Democrats are out to change is the deep cuts to Medicaid and healthcare funding, something Kaine said he believes some members of the GOP in Congress support.

“That is basically the difference between the Republican proposal and the Democratic alternative,” Kaine said. “Much of it would be the same except the Democratic alternative has healthcare investments in it. Even our Republican colleagues, Speaker Johnson, and then in the Senate, Sen. Hawley, Sen. Murkowski, and Sen. Cornyn, who voted for the President’s bill, have said, ‘You know what. We went too far on some of the healthcare cuts. We’re going to need come back and fix it.’ Well, if they’re saying that, we kind of feel that we’re pushing on a door that’s already open.”

Kaine also noted that since the passing of the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act of 2019, there has not been a government shutdown, and he hopes that law – which guarantees backpay to all Federal employees in the event the government closes – will further help persuade Trump and Republicans to negotiate to avoid this potential shutdown.

“That has turned out to be, not a guarantee, but a guardrail against shutdowns,” Kaine said. “You kind of look people in the eye, like, ‘Hey, wait a minute.’ You’re going to shut government down. You’re going to tell employees to stay home and not serve their fellow Americans. But then you’re going to pay them anyway? That’s not physically conservative. We haven’t had a shutdown since we got that backpay guarantee in law. My hope is that will be one of the ingredients that will lead us to avoid what would really be unnecessary.”

Concerns about the impact of the budget on healthcare in Virginia were the topic of Thursday’s roundtable. Kaine heard from executives and caregivers at the Charlottesville Free Clinic, as well as representatives from clinics in Orange and Greene Counties.

The group expressed their concerns about what will happen to free clinics as the budget cuts force people off the Medicaid rolls and prompt the closing of hospitals, like the three that are shutting down in Augusta County, and potentially flooding into free clinics and overwhelming them.

“It’s a scary time. It feels like we’re headed backward in time 33 years,” said Dr. Mo Nadkarni, a professor of internal medicine at UVA and a Free Clinic board member. Nadkarni said the clinic was established during the Clinton administration, with the anticipation it would be a stop-gap until universal healthcare went into effect.

“Here we are 33 years later, and with these latest Medicaid cuts, we’re looking at 17 million more people across the country losing their health insurance,” Nadkarni told Kaine. “We’re looking at the subsidies for Obamacare going away, and people dropping off those rolls.”