CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript: Interview with Debbie Dingell

Interview

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BROWN: Yes. To say the least. All right, Arlette Saenz, Joe Johns, thank you both.

And I want to bring in Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan. She's the deputy whip of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Well, Congresswoman, good to see you. First off, you told me Sunday it was going to be the week from hell. Was it even worse than you expected?

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): No. It's good to see you. It's good to be with you on this Saturday night. It was the week that I thought that it might be. But I actually think, while everybody else is running around doom and gloom, I think what finally happened at the end of the week is it became clear exactly what the president wants, we know where we stand with the reality of two senators that are going to keeping things and are only going to agree to certain things, though we've got to keep them at the table and keep working with them.

But I do think that what you miss is that Democrats are unified that failure is not an option. And it's not. We have to deliver for the American people. I suspected we were going to see the kind of -- whatever the creativity of something last week. But I ended up, this is what legislating is.

People finally started talking to each other. They were exchanging ideas. You know where people stood, and for too long last week people weren't exactly sure where was the bottom line, what did the president want, what more are we going to be able to get done? Friday the president laid out --

BROWN: Is that problematic that it took until now to understand what the president really wanted and some of these key questions answered? I mean why wasn't it earlier that you had that?

DINGELL: I think the president was focused on two senators. He talked to the House. He talked to the full House this week. I think it's good that people have gone home, are getting some rest. It was a very intense week. And I don't think that the speaker is laying out this deadline.

The fact of the matter is we extended service transportation through the end of October and when that expires there are a lot of programs that a lot of people care about in every state that are going to have to get dealt with. So I think we all know what we have to get done now. We're united on failure is not an option and we'll do what it takes to get it done.

BROWN: So you say failure isn't an option. Congresswoman, but it's not just Senator Sinema who's coming out with a statement tonight saying that she is unhappy with all of this. I want to read part of your colleague Josh Gottheimer's statement late last night. And it says, "It's deeply regrettable that Speaker Pelosi breached her firm public commitment to members of Congress and the American people. We cannot let this small faction on the far left who employ Freedom Caucus tactics destroy the president's agenda."

I mean, this is the Democratic co-chair of the Problem Solvers Caucus, a bipartisan group, ripping the speaker and comparing your wing's tactics with those of hard-lined conservatives. How do you expect to get a deal with this kind of infighting to your party realistically?

DINGELL: OK, first of all, Pamela, I'm a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus. I belong -- there are several of us that belong to both.

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BROWN: You are. And you're also in the Progressive Caucus. Yes. That is true.

DINGELL: That is correct. So I work with everybody. And I talk to everybody.

BROWN: You do.

DINGELL: And listen to the end of what Josh said which is we cannot let this hurt the president's program. We have not been this close to everybody in this country agrees that we have got to fix our roads and our bridges, and our infrastructure and get lead out of pipes and get internet into rural areas and urban areas.

Now everybody needs to take a deep breath, everybody is tired, there is a lot -- quite frankly probably not as much straight mutation as needed to be last week. We've had this great communication. Now let's get back to trying to figure this out and getting to what we could get an agreement with, which, by the way, is an incredible amount of resources going into things that this country needs. And people want to see us deliver on.

BROWN: So here's the reality, though. And we heard Congressman Jayapal say that she understands that they're going to have to go down on the $3.5 trillion number.

[19:10:03]

The question is what. And it raises a number of sacrifices that Democrats are going to have to look at to decide on what are they going to do, make cuts to homelessness, climate crisis, childcare? If you do have to cut substantially what programs would you pull back on first?

DINGELL: First of all, we're not going to negotiate in the media.

BROWN: I know you don't want to negotiate on air. But --

DINGELL: We're not going to. Everybody has got to realize that we've got to come to the table, look at what -- and the program, the president was very clear on Friday. Don't give me numbers. Don't talk to me about dollars. Tell me what programs matter the most. What do your constituents care about. This is going to be approached by, I know, the House Democrats, what are the programs that we've got to get done now.

And it's also been made clear by everybody that we could go back and look for, if there is more issues that have to be addressed. I don't think anybody has made the decision about how much is going to be in there or what the length of period if anything is going to be.

It's what do we need to do. What do people need us to deliver. Childcare is, you know, one issue that everybody knows it's critical. Three million women have left the work force for the simple lack of childcare and elderly care. We've got a lot of problems we've got to address.

BROWN: So just really quickly, I know you don't want to negotiate on air. But we've heard some of your --

DINGELL: And I won't.

BROWN: I know you will not but let me just ask you this. Because Congresswoman Chu said to me last hour, we've heard it from others, Congressman -- we just lose her, darn it. I was going to ask her Congressman Dingell who we really appreciate coming on about -- oh, she's back. OK. Having some technical difficulties there. So let me get right to it.

Congresswoman Chu said to me that she would open to maybe limiting the timeline for the financing for some of these categories like instead of 10 years of financing perhaps limiting it to five. Is that something that you would be open to?

DINGELL: I think everything is on the table. I think we're going to have to look at how we deliver and what are the programs that the American people need right now at this time in our history. That is what the discussion is going to be. It's going to be program based, and we need to -- like there was way too much speculation and way too much of pitting of everybody against each other which is one of the reasons I called it the week from hell.

I knew what it was going to be like and right now we've got to figure out because we do know failure is not an option. We have to deliver to the American people.

BROWN: And by the way, that line really got some pick up when you said it on my show last Sunday. But you did call it.

Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, always great to have you on the show.

DINGELL: Thank you. Good to see you.

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