Spanberger was a former U.S. postal inspector and, later, a CIA case officer who worked counterterrorism and nonproliferation cases in an undercover capacity before being elected to Congress in 2018. Soon after being sworn in, the government was shuttered in what became the longest debt shutdown in early 2019.
She acknowledged that the new legislation isn't getting a ton of support from her congressional colleagues. Some have complained to her, rather bitterly, she said, that they are working day and night to avert a default.
Her response to them? “If losing your salary might be the thing that helps you actually do your job then I'm OK with that threat,” Spanberger said. “A basic, bare-bones function of the job we were sent to Congress to do is to govern the country. And that includes not crushing the U.S. and global economy in deciding that we just want to summarily not pay our bills.”
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