MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Debbie Dingell

Interview

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Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan. She`s a senior Democratic Whip in the house, a voter counter for Nancy Pelosi.

Thank you very much for joining us tonight. How many votes do you have tonight?

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): Lawrence, we`re not vote counting right now because we`re figuring out where we`re getting it. And we`re not doing numbers in public, we`re talking substance.

What we`re talking about, figuring out how we`re going to get back and what we`re going to do -- building back better.

O`DONNELL: You were with the president again today in Michigan. He`s gone to Michigan more than once on this same subject. Why Michigan? Why is that one of his favorite places to go for this subject?

DINGELL: Well, Michigan is reflective of the country. We -- it was a state that Donald Trump won five years ago now, four years ago, which I predicted and everybody thought I was crazy. But it was a state that he won in 2020.

We have people that look at issues, think about them thoughtfully. We have people dug in on both sides. And where he went today Howell, Michigan is not the heartland of Democratic territory. As a matter of act, it`s got a lot of people who supported Donald Trump. But that`s where he`s got to go. He`s got to go and talk to the American people about what he is trying to do, layout out that vision and that`s how we`re going to get this done.

[22:39:48]

O`DONNELL: What is the right mix for the president now between these meetings he`s having with sometimes individual senators, sometimes with groups of house members and going out there in speeches like the speech today?

DINGELL: So he gets a combination. First of all, I think -- you heard me and I said this for a number of weeks that they were only having conversations with few people, three (ph) senators from the Senate and most of the House members didn`t know what people were talking about, what the programs were.

We all know what the Build Back Better vision is and we need it. And by the way, the American people were on it. They want our roads and bridges fixed. They`re worried about child care. I could go through the whole list again and we need to be doing more of that.

But the president is didn`t -- people now understood after you came to the Democratic caucus on Friday, what is it that he wants us to do? Laid it out very clearly. Laid it out. Said I don`t want to talk about numbers right now. I want to know what your constituents what, what are the programs? He`s starting to have those conversations. It`s not only he -- the speaker and the others are talking to the caucus as a whole.

We have to quit this pity (ph). I`m totally with them. Everybody loves it. Ok. What can we realistically get done? This is the vision that he laid out when he ran for president and now we`ve got to deliver it to the American people.

O`DONNELL: One reason why the numbers in these bills are so big is that this legislative arena has been ignored for so long if you don`t do infrastructure repairs and building for many years then you have many years worth of expenses building up under you.

And there is a future benefit to this kind of expenditure so it`s always big when you finally get around to doing it. The president made that point today about how this is not spending for one year. This is spending for the future.

Let listen to what he had to say about that.

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BIDEN: The only thing we`ve been missing is the will from Washington to finally build an economy around you, an economy that gives you and your family a fighting chance to get ahead, gives our country a fighting chance to compete with the rest of the world. We need to prepare for ten years down the line. That`s what these bills do. Both these bills spend out over ten years, not in the first year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O`DONNELL: What is your sense of the way swing voters in Michigan hear a speech like that?

DINGELL: I think by coming to Howell, Michigan, being covered by the Michigan media, they`re hearing it. You know what they heard him say today? And they know it.

Those voters that voted for Donald Trump five years ago didn`t think Washington cared about them. Didn`t care about their jobs. He talked about how 75 percent of the batteries right now for electric vehicles are being built in China. And we can`t let that stand. We`ve got to build those batteries here in this country.

He talked about what happened (INAUDIBLE). We know. We are -- my district is one of those districts that has close steel plants across the riverfront. Those steel workers have been out of jobs for ten or 20, 30 years. They want their jobs here in America.

And that`s what he`s laying out. How we`re going to get there. How we`re going to keep those jobs. And by the way, how are we going to bring that supply chain back to this country? What is in build back America is part of getting that done.

O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, thank you very much for joining us. Always appreciate it.

DINGELL: Thanks, Lawrence.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

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