CNN "Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees" - Transcript: Government Shutdown and Debt Ceiling

Interview

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Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has been in the thick of the bipartisan Senate negotiation on the debt ceiling and the government shutdown. She joins me tonight.

Senator, you've been in the heart of this bipartisan compromise talks. How close is the Senate to a deal right now?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: Well, very, very close. It's been an incredibly productive day after a long, long week. And we feel very good about this. I think the two major focuses were to open up the government again, and then to make sure that we're not defaulting, that we're paying our bills and to get some reasonable amount of time to actually negotiate a long-term budget so we don't lurch from financial crisis to financial crisis.

COOPER: So at this point, what are the major sticking points?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I -- you know, I think it's probably not a good idea to negotiate it on your show, as fun as it would be.

(LAUGHTER)

But I think that the main points, of course, is the dates. And I think it is really important to have a shorter time period to try to get that budget negotiation going. The Senate has passed a budget. The House has passed the budget. And in that old song, "School House Rock," a bill on Capitol Hill, to get the bill done, you have to meet. And that is the process that will be started with this agreement.

Because we're going to have a limited time, you know, whether it's two months, three months, to be able to get that done. And I think that's going to be helpful, as well as a clear message to the entire world that we're going to pay our bills and we're not going to have a stock market plummet like we had back in 2011.

COOPER: I mean, I get whether you don't want to, you know, go into some of the sticking points. As we understand it, the Republicans have gotten some minor Affordable Care Act provisions into the current deal. The president has said he won't use changes to the health care law ransom for either reopening the government or lifting the debt ceiling, so why are the Democrats now on board with this? Are they so minor? Are they symbolic?

KLOBUCHAR: Again, I think we have to wait until the entire agreement is announced. But I think the main point here was the words we were hearing from the House, the bills that were coming out of there were major partisan poison pills, delaying the Affordable Health Care Act for a year. Messing around with birth control provisions. Whatever agreements they're talking -- that the leaders are talking about now, are much more focused on individual issues that have been raised in the past sometimes by both sides.

COOPER: So it's not going to be something like delaying the individual mandate for a year?

KLOBUCHAR: That is not what we're hearing, no, Anderson. It's not going to be something that would significantly change a major policy simply with the threat of a government shutdown.

COOPER: The Republicans in the House are really concerned about Democrats trying to change the sequester. They say that you're moving the goal post. To that, you say what?

KLOBUCHAR: I say that our job is to score a touchdown for the American people. And we do that by opening the government again, so we've got approvals going, cancer clinical trials going, and so that we also send a message we're going to pay our bills.

What happened here if it is similar to the agreements we have been talking about in our bipartisan group of six Democrats and six Republicans is that we want to try to get a date that hits before that next stage of sequester cuts hit, which is January 15th. That will give both sides a chance to make their cases to try to get an agreed- upon budget that could possibly still have cuts, I believe it will.

But we could change the amounts or we could do different things by replacing them with other things, whether it's revenue, whether it's government reforms. Those are the things we're going to be able to look at.

COOPER: The government begins defaulting on loans Thursday, three days. How confident are you that you and your colleagues will reach an agreement by then?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, I'm confident about the Senate, simply because we've already had a strong bipartisan group led by Senator Collins. And we've been meeting throughout the weekend. But also because the Senate is a place where deals take place the last three years. We passed the farm bill, waiting action with the House, passed the immigration bill, waiting on the House.

A number of bills have passed after the midst -- in the midst of financial crisis, like the fiscal cliff on the end of the year last year, that was passed in the Senate first and then had had to go over to the House. It was a very difficult time in the House but they finally got it done.

So this is a pattern that we've seen developed. That despite the Senate hard filibuster rules and despite disagreement, we have in the end found common ground and come together on a bill. And that's what you're going to see in the Senate.

COOPER: Senator Klobuchar, appreciate your time tonight. Thank you.

KLOBUCHAR: Thank you.

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