MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Elizabeth Warren

Interview

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Joining me now, Democratic Senator who is 100 on board with passing the entire Biden agenda, both the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package and the bipartisan infrastructure bill together, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Well, you`re one of a hundred votes in the U.S. Senate. You`re very committed to this uh agenda in tandem. Maybe you understand where we -- better than I am. Where are we right now?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): We`re still working on it. You know, I think of it this way. We`ve got 50 Republicans who`ve said no, they don`t want any part of this. But we`ve got 50 Democrats who are all in their own boats trying to row in the same direction.

And what we`re trying to do is we`re trying to get roads and bridges we`re trying to get sewers and water. We`re trying to get broadband. We`re trying to get child care and home and community-based care, community college, housing help. And most of all, we`re trying to take a real, real effort to fight back against the climate crisis. And we`re trying to put all that together and move it forward.

And yes, it`s a little bumpy but, I tell you, I`d rather be where we are. We`re rowing, we`re trying to make it happen, and I think we`re going to do it.

HAYES: OK, I can`t tell if you`re spinning me or you are more confident than some other people. I honestly can`t. I mean, I guess, if I were you, I would say like, look, we`re going to get there, so there`s that.

WARREN: Why? I don`t have to say that. Think of it this way.

HAYES: Well, because you want it to happen, and saying it`s not going to happen isn`t going to help.

WARREN: But think of it this way. You`re right, I do want it to happen. But I also recognize that the values of who we are as a Democratic Party, but also the values of who we are as a nation are deeply tied up in this bill.

You know, you see bills that appeal to this group or that group or some people have a specific problem, not this one. This one has it all. And we understand the only way it`s going to go forward is if all of it goes forward if the things that all of us have been working on have a chance to be in there and to move forward.

And we`ve got it. We are moving that. It is the very fact that it is big and complicated. It makes the negotiations hard. But it also means there`s more on the line and that increases the odds that we`re actually going to get this done.

HAYES: You know, so this is a kind of a bit of a theoretical point but worth exploring here. When you think about how politicians act when in office, I think there`s a bunch of factors, right? They have -- they have constituents, they want to get reelected. Those constituents public opinion views matter a lot.

The median voter, the swing voter, the person that might hold their fate, there are local institutions and groups. You know, you got hospitals or you got a big -- you know, a big factory that makes a certain thing or you got you know big ag in your district. That matters. Lobbyist, corporate pressure, donors matter.

But one thing that I think really matters that is underappreciated is just the individual views, the political ideology of the people involved. It strikes me that like that`s part of what`s happening here that part of the holdouts just aren`t on board with the agenda.

Yes, they`re getting pressured by big interest groups. Yes, there`s a lot of money flowing through. Yes, that`s part of it. But that strikes me as part of the hiccup here. What do you think of that theory?

WARREN: You know, I still just look at the content of what we have here and how many folks in our caucus really want to see us provide child care. And look at it this way. You know, if you`re -- if you take a look at what`s happened to women just over the last couple of years, so that today we have millions of women not in the workforce, one out of four says the problem is child care.

So, if you care about women, then you care about this bill. If you care about babies to being taken care of, you care about this bill. But also, if you care about child care workers who are so often paid barely above poverty wages, you care about this bill because it raises their wages.

But here`s the thing. You cannot like mamas, you cannot like babies, you cannot like child care workers and you still care about this bill because you`re hearing from all of the small businesses in your home state who say they can`t find workers. Well, they can`t find workers if mamas can`t find child care.

So, this is one of those where it`s kind of like every piece of what`s broken, what we`re trying to put in here helps make it better. And can I add one more thing?

[20:10:10]

HAYES: Please.

WARREN: And besides that, we got fabulous ways to pay for it. The pay fors in this actually saying that billionaires are going to have to pay a fair share that giant corporations are going to have to pay a fair share and that we`re going to put enough money into the IRS directed toward going after those billionaire and giant corporation tax cheats and make them pay what they owe.

That`s how we pay for this by getting more fairness into the system. So, there`s a lot to love here. I love that the House progressives are in there saying we love this bill, we just want to see the whole thing go forward together just like we all agreed on.

HAYES: Final question for you which is about -- I`ve covered the 2009-2010 period on the Hill, I was a Washington editor of the Nation Magazine. I watched that play out. And there were three very big bills. There was the ACA on health care. There was Dodd-Frank financial reform, and there was Waxman-Markey which is the climate bill.

Democrats went two for three. They got two of those across the finish line. The one that didn`t was the client one. Ten years passed with no significant climate legislation. Does everyone over there understand the urgency here? That this isn`t like other stuff, that there`s a clock ticking and that you`re going to get one shot maybe every decade?

WARREN: You know, in fact, I think it`s even worse than that. It`s that every time the scientists go back, take another look at the data, run the numbers again,. they come back to us and say the problem is worse than we thought and we have less time than we thought.

The good thing about this big package is how many different ways we attack the climate crisis. Everything from changing the power grids so power is all green, wind and solar, to moving -- to getting rid of diesel-fired school buses and public buses and train engines and replacing them all with electric all the way to a bigger investment in research.

Because we recognize that if we do everything in this package, it`s still not enough. We also need to double down on the research into this and figure out how to move faster in this crisis.

HAYES: Senator Elizabeth Warren, that was really illuminating.

WARREN: We got to do it.

HAYES: Thank you very much. I`m -- I guess sort of cheered by your diplomatic equanimity this evening, so thank you very much. We`ll talk soon.

WARREN: Good to see you.

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