Senator Warner joined CBS This Morning to discuss the impending across-the-board sequester budget cuts scheduled to take effect on Friday.  Asked about the status of current negotiations, he again criticized the failure of Congress to find common ground before the 11^th hour.

“We should have been able to deal with this earlier… I was part of the so-called bipartisan Gang of Six that said ‘let's do entitlement reform, with more revenues and targeted spending cuts.’  Limping from one budget crisis to another doesn’t do anything for this economy…The Senate actually has a plan, half cuts, half revenues, but what the House will do – who knows?”

Asked to explain the Senate Democratic plan, Senator Warner noted it would cut one-dollar in spending for every one-dollar in new revenue.

“The revenues in the Senate plan are targeted at closing down a certain number of tax loopholes for the most successful Americans. It will also have half spending cuts, so it is a 50-50 balance.  What’s remarkable is the New Years’ Eve deal had about $600 billion in revenue.  Every bipartisan plan before that had about twice the amount in total revenues… In addition, we need to do entitlement reforms… but there’s no reasonable plan out there that at a $4 trillion number didn’t have north of a trillion dollars in [total] revenues.”

“I don't get it,” said Senator Warner, who noted that outside of Congress, calls for a bipartisan plan to avert sequester continue are becoming more urgent. “I was a governor before I was a member of the Senate. I think you've seen governors in both parties the last couple of days say, ‘Hey, come on, guys: get your act together’ …Why we have to wait until the last hour on the last day before a crisis, I don’t understand either, quite honestly.”