Senators Kaine and Warner discuss Russia, inflation and infrastructure

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WVIR) - Between tensions with Russia, infrastructure, and supply chain issues, there’s lot of common ground between Virginia’s Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine.

“The next few weeks should be some of the most challenging, I believe, to the European stability literally since the Second World War,” Sen. Warner said.

For both Kaine and Warner, the threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine is dangerous for many reasons: “It could have enormous repercussions in terms of energy prices. In particular, we could see higher gas prices, we can see higher other energy prices as the energy market and other markets are disrupted,” Warner said.

Sen. Kaine says sanctions need to be announced ahead of time as a prevention measure.

“I would prefer that we sort of announced it in advance,” he said. “‘If you do this, this is the consequence that you’ll see because I think that’s more likely to have a deterrent effect.”

Then there’s the recently passed infrastructure bill. Millions of dollars is slated to come to Virginia, but there’s a chance the commonwealth could lose out on some cash.

“If we don’t get a comprehensive budget bill called an omnibus, Virginia could lose literally hundreds of millions of dollars,” Warner said.

Both senators also took time to address supply chain issues and the hike on inflation that are putting a strain on Virginian’s wallets.

“The pandemic is still affecting supply chains and that’s shrinking production is making production of some basic business services harder and so quantities go down and where things go get shifted around transportation becomes more difficult,” Kaine said.

Warner says raising interest rates could provide some relief to inflation.

“This is the most traditional tool to bring down inflation. as they’ve indicated they will start acting that way in March that may take a little air out of the stock market,” he said.

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