MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Katie Porter

Interview

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O`DONNELL: Leading off our discussion tonight is Democratic Congressman Katie Porter of California.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We really appreciate it with these very important votes in the House today.

So, I have to say I didn`t feel a lot of suspense in the maneuver that the ten House Democrats were trying to use as leverage against Nancy Pelosi. It seemed -- by the way, they seemed kind of reasonable about being willing to compromise. They used ultimatum language but also compromise language at the same time.

And so, you`re now moving forward.

Is it fair to say that the Biden infrastructure bills are on track now in the House of Representatives?

REP. KATIE PORTER (D-CA): Well, today, we took three -- we moved forward three key priorities. These are priorities that House Democrats ran on, that President Biden ran on. And those priorities were to protect voting rights, to repair our infrastructure and to strengthen our economies so it can compete globally. And today`s vote moved all three of those priorities forward.

Speaker Pelosi has been clear from the beginning we were going to deliver President Biden`s Jobs Plan and his Families Plan together because we understand those things are connected, and what today`s vote did is really set that process up, just as we had expected it to go.

O`DONNELL: I want to listen to something that President Biden said today about how this is paid for.

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BIDEN: And this is all paid for. Instead of giving every break in the world to corporations and CEOs -- by the way, 55 of our largest companies in America paid zero dollars in federal taxes on more than $40 billion in profit last year. We can ask corporations just to pay their fair share. They could still be very wealthy. They could still make a lot of money, but just begin to pay their fair share.

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O`DONNELL: This is a concept that is polling very strongly, usually the paid for side of legislation is the part that doesn`t poll so well. But Americans seem to support the concept of the fair share being paid, especially by rich corporations.

PORTER: Well, of course they should. Everybody should pay their fair share. Those largest corporations make extensive use of our infrastructure, our roads, our ports and our bridges. They sell to U.S. consumers. They take advantage of our American workhorse, public education that our workforce receives.

So, it`s not surprising to me that everybody thinks that tax fairness is an important concept. I think this is something you are seeing in polling and hearing on the ground, I`m certainly hearing this that Democrats, Republicans, independents -- tax fairness is about having a strong, stable, healthy economy.

If we want to complete globally, we need to make some of these investments in paid family leave, in child care, in our infrastructure, and that`s exactly what we`re going to do with this bill.

O`DONNELL: Are there pieces that got knocked out of the Senate bipartisan bill that will find their way into the budget reconciliation bill?

PORTER: Absolutely. The bill that the House sent over to the Senate on infrastructure contained a lot more investments in clean energy, in combating climate change, in coastal resilience, in working on drought resilience. A lot of those things came out with the Senate`s bipartisan process.

So those are exactly the kinds of priorities, the things that need to be done to protect our planet, to strengthen our economy that the House is going to be looking to work with our Senate counterparts on to put in the budget process.

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And the committee structure is going to have the ability right now.

I sit on the National Resources Committee. We`re having discussions about not only what we want to put in the budget reconciliation process but also how we`re going to pay for it.

O`DONNELL: And what is the schedule for the committee`s reporting back so that the budget reconciliation bill can be voted on in the House? Is that a September vote?

PORTER: I think that`s going to be a September vote. We go back and we`re going to be there in Washington for two weeks at the end of September. We`re hearing -- I think we`ll see different committees come forward at different times. But I suspect that we`ll start to see some of the contours of this legislation come forward here after Labor Day and up through September 15th or so.

The goal is to give Congress members on both sides of the aisle in both the House and the Senate a chance to be in conversation to flush out these plans. The president has laid out key priorities. He talked about two free years of community college. He talked about tax fairness. He talked about addressing paid family leave, child care.

Now we have to get down to exactly what that`s going to look like on the ground. What are the programs going to look like? Are they going to be universal? Are they going to help everybody?

What can we do on prescription drugs? What can we do to expand vision and dental and hearing coverage to seniors?

We know what our priorities are. Now, we`re going to have to figure out how we`re going to deliver them and how we`re going to pay for them.

O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Katie Porter, thank you very much for starting off our discussion tonight. I really appreciate it.

PORTER: Thank you.

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