MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Van Hollen

Interview

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Leading off our discussion tonight in this segment is Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. He`s a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Senate Budget Committee.

Senator, I want to get your reaction to this ruling by Judge Pitman. Judge Pitman is a President Obama appointee to federal court, a district judge in Texas saying this law in Texas denies women an established constitutional right.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-CT): Lawrence, good to be with you.

This Texas law is blatantly unconstitutional. It clearly violates Roe v. Wade, and that`s what Judge Pitman found, and he laid it all out there in the over 100-page opinion, I think a very airtight argument. I do agree with some of the comments on the previous panel, which is the best way to deal with this once and for all and prevent state legislators in Texas from trying to strip away women`s right to choose is to pass a federal law. The House has done that. The Senate should follow suit.

O`DONNELL: And, of course, Senator, in the Senate such a law would come up against the 60-vote threshold, which has the Senate tied up in knots once again as it kind of always does. This time over the debt ceiling, and it seems that Mitch McConnell blinked today in his standoff with you Democrats where he had been saying that they -- Republicans were going to absolutely block any attempt by the Democrats to expand the debt ceiling to cover the debts that were incurred during the Trump presidency.

What is your assessment of where that situation stands tonight?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, the good news, Lawrence, is, as you say, he blinked for now, and that`s really important because what we want to focus on during this month is passing the Build Back Better agenda, right? We want to pass those important provisions to provide, you know, families with kids with those tax cuts, that we want to reduce the cost of prescription drugs. We want to deal with the climate change and put people to work generating clean energy, and that`s really hard to do when you have a debt crisis hanging over you.

So we bought a little time into early December. But if McConnell really wanted to do the right thing for the country, he would have let us do this on a, you know, two-year basis, not put the economy on sort of month to month warning of another debt crisis. In December, as you know, we`ll also confront another government shutdown from Mitch McConnell. So again, it is definitely good news in the short-term, but in my view, the better way, Lawrence, to your earlier point would be just to rip the band-aid off, get the 51 votes to waive the filibuster, which is the rule that he`s using to obstruct this and where he`s holding the country hostage, that would be best both for this and for other things.

O`DONNELL: Yeah, the -- McConnell made that move today of basically saying let`s just extend this for a few months. After President Biden had a session with treasury secretary and some prominent Wall Street types, including the head of Citibank who were all saying basically what McConnell is doing, without saying his name, is disastrous for the economy predicting worldwide recession if McConnell was to continue to hold to his position. And so, McConnell at some point, it seems to me decided that the line that you were all using, which is just have the Republicans get out of the way, get out of the way, let the Democrats do the job, it seems McConnell believed that that line that you were all using against them was really working.

[22:25:11]

VAN HOLLEN: I think that`s right because we were making the point that, you know, Republicans really should help the Democrats raise the debt ceiling to pay for the bills that Republicans themselves voted for, you know, things like expanding high speed internet, but for goodness sakes, if you`re not going to do the right thing to protect the economy, at least get out of the way so Democrats can protect American families.

And I think you`re right, Lawrence, that that ultimately carried the day along with a concerted effort to make McConnell understand that we are pushing all of our colleagues to waive the filibuster for this purpose. So we will revisit this entire conversation in December, but as you say, we bought some time, and let`s focus on delivering the Build Back Better agenda.

O`DONNELL: Senator Chris Van Hollen, thank you very much for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it.

VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you. Thanks.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

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