Sen. Warner joined host Kai Ryssdal on public radio’s Marketplace to address Congress’ failure to act in the face of the broad sequester cuts scheduled for March 1.  He continued to emphasize the mindless inefficiency of the across-the-board cuts, and his exasperation with the political dysfunction preventing a deal from being reached.

“In the name of cutting, we’re actually going to cost the taxpayer more…because each account will be cut equally, some of these contracts will have to be broken, and [not receiving] the discount that we would receive will end up costing us more than the savings.  When you do this across the board without regard to merit, I think the American public will have a definite right to be outraged at all of us from top to bottom.”

Sen. Warner noted his longstanding efforts to bridge the political divide, and his frustration that often those in Congress looking for bipartisan solutions are outnumbered by those looking for short-term political advantage.

“As somebody who has lain out and taken the arrows from both sides, we laid out a plan that was kind of Simpson-Bowles on steroids, the Gang of Six plan. I think if we’d gotten it to the floor, we would’ve gotten a majority.  But there are a lot of folks in Washington that quite honestly, I’m not sure want to reach the kind of compromise that we need…There seems to be a lot more going on about who’s going to win the political argument.”

Congress’ lack of leadership is the single biggest thing holding the American economy back from a full recovery, said Sen. Warner.

“With this economy, which is so poised to take off, the single biggest thing holding back job growth and economic growth is the failure of our political system…There are some in Washington that say, ‘well, it just has to get a little bit worse before it gets better.’  That makes no sense to me.  For the 20 years I spent in business, if someone would’ve said ‘we’ve got to make our product a little bit crummier before we’re willing to actually change’… I’d fire [them.]”