MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Unemployment Insurance

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Your "Polar Star" at your service here, ma`am.

MADDOW: When it comes to the unemployment insurance issue, specifically, 1.3 million Americans cut off from unemployment benefits. We`re learning tonight at least three Republican senators are saying they will vote with you, the Democrats, for that extension. Do you think it`s possible it can pass the Senate?

SCHUMER: I think it is possible. The pressure is mounting on our Republicans because what`s happening is this. The tectonic plates beneath our politics are changing. The issues that dominated the first five years of President Obama`s term, "A," the deficit, "B", health care, Obamacare, are giving way to a new issue and that is the decline of middle class incomes, the lack of good jobs and the increase in poverty. And the public is feeling that.

And so, on an issue that used to get bipartisan support like unemployment insurance, the fact that it`s deadlocked and gridlocked now makes no sense. It shows you how far the Republicans have moved over. In 2007, when the unemployment rate was 5.6 percent, now it`s 7 percent, George Bush, mainstream conservative, put in place the present regime we have for unemployment insurance, the present amount of weeks and everything else.

And yet these Republicans are trying to block it. But I think enough of them are beginning to say they can`t follow the Tea Party, the hard right, over a cliff. And I`m very hopeful we can actually get an unemployment insurance done, if not in this vote, where right now, we`re only a vote or two shy.

If we do it again and again, the pressure mounts and we`ll get it done. I think the same will happen for reducing the costs for tuition and Pell Grants so kids can go to college.

The middle class is hurting and yearning for us to end the gridlock, to stop this freeze and get things done for them. And it`s becoming clearer and clearer to them that it`s the hard right Republicans who are stopping everything.

MADDOW: Senator Schumer, let me ask you about one procedural reference you just made there. You said, if we don`t have the votes tomorrow morning, we`ll keep doing it again and again. Should I take that to mean that this vote on extending unemployment insurance is something that you will keep putting up for a vote until you can get the votes?

SCHUMER: And I would recommend we do the same with minimum wage, we do the same with the kind of low-cost student loans that Elizabeth Warren has advocated. We`ll win every one of these. It`s becoming clearer and clearer to the American people that gridlock is not being caused by both parties but by one party.

The turning away from the middle class is dominated by one party. The refusal to do things that even mainstream Republicans did, like unemployment insurance, like minimum wage increases, even five years ago, is hurting them.

And our politics works. It works slowly. It`s like ice melting, unfortunately. But it does work, and I can sense signs where it`s really beginning to work. As I walk the streets of New York this weekend, average folks said to me, get that unemployment insurance done. And these were people with jobs. They were middle class people. But everyone now knows somebody who`s been out of work.

And one other point, you know, one of my colleagues, Rand Paul, said that unemployment insurance is a disservice to the American worker. Well, I find that insulting. What he`s saying is that people would rather not work. And collect these meager unemployment benefits.

That is not true. There is a work ethos in America. It`s part of our American being, and it doesn`t just apply to CEOs or nuclear physicists. The guy who cleans the floor late at night has a pride in making sure that floor is really clean. The woman who will organize an office has a real pride in making sure it`s extremely well-organized and everything`s in its place.

So this idea that the hard right has that if we extend unemployment benefits, people will stop looking for work, is just bunk and insulting to the American worker and to the American ethos.

MADDOW: Senator Charles Schumer of New York, vice chair of the Democratic conference -- thank you for helping us understand this tonight, sir. It`s nice to have you here.

SCHUMER: Great to be here. Thanks.

MADDOW: Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source