MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Government Shutdown

Interview

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Joining us now is Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York. She is the top Democrat on the House Rules Committee.Congressman Slaughter, thank you so much for being with us tonight.

REP. LOUISE SLAUGHTER (D), NEW YORK: Don`t we live in interesting times, Rachel?

(LAUGHTER)

MADDOW: That is an ancient curse for a reason. You are the top Democrat on the Rules Committee. What has it been like for you watching the Republicans maneuver themselves into the shutdown and now watching them try to get out?

SLAUGHTER: If I tell you that every now and then you have to really be very harsh with your brain and say please don`t try to process that, it doesn`t make any sense and it`s giving me a headache. It`s been absolutely awful. All of this, all of this is about stopping giving 30 million Americans health care.

MADDOW: I just asked Republican Congressman Scott Rigell of Virginia if he sees light at the end of the tunnel there. And he expressed a hope. He says he thinks more Republicans will come around to his way of thinking that the House audit just passed a clean funding bill and --

SLAUGHTER: No.

MADDOW: And into the shutdown. Do you think he`ll --

SLAUGHTER: No. No.

(CROSSTALK)

MADDOW: You think there`s no reason to hope.

SLAUGHTER: As a matter of fact, I learned just before I left the capitol, we`re going in at 10:00 in the morning, Rules Committee, to give Hill`s Bills a rule so they can pass them just by a majority vote. So that`s tomorrow`s assignment. They will then send it to the Senate, and Senator Reid will send it back.

Rachel, you know, what they are so frustrated about is after they got cloture on the bill in the Senate, they didn`t ever have to vote on that party anymore. So all they`re doing are amendments and therefore the Senator Reid only has to get 51 votes. They`re desperate to get out of that.

This whole conference idea was to get them back up to the 60 vote necessary pledge that they made. I really would love to see that go. But that`s what that was about. And did you hear about Cantor`s picture today?

(CROSSTALK)

MADDOW: The eight -- with the appointed conferees and empty chairs?

SLAUGHTER: Eight white guys.

MADDOW: Yes.

SLAUGHTER: Yes. They never learned anything. And they certainly got a lesson today. In fact I went down to the floor to tell them that by this afternoon 7.5 million people had accessed New York state`s own health exchange. How about that? And they had glitches all day long. That`s 10 percent of the population of the state of New York.

MADDOW: Wow. What do -- what do you think about what they`re trying to do -- what they tried to do today and what you said they`re trying to do tomorrow in terms of this piecemeal approach to funding? What`s your reaction to that as a --

(CROSSTALK)

SLAUGHTER: I think they -- you know, they high fived -- they were whatever.

(LAUGHTER)

I`m not that hip. Anyway, they were just gleeful last night, they were giddy, as they said, in their own language, on shutting down the House. I think that this is -- this, as you know, is Senator Ted Cruz`s strategy. I think they will continue doing that. In fact one of their members said that the two agencies they will open will be the EPA and the IRS. They`re enjoying themselves.

But I don`t believe anymore that there`s some wild-eyed group over there making Republicans do want they don`t want to do. That -- we`ve got to (INAUDIBLE) ourselves of that. Whatever they may say about it, they vote unanimously for this stuff.

Yesterday was the first time they had any break at all. Peter King thought he had 25 people. I think he ended up with two. I`ve been around here too long. So I`ve been through this. I went through the Clinton health care bill. And I want to tell you, we went through the same kind of thing. It was trying to stop it.

But, you know, you`ve been on to this for quite a while. What they`re afraid of is success. And I would certainly think with 7.5 million people wanting to find out what it`s all about, it looks pretty good to me.

MADDOW: Congresswoman Louise Slaughter of New York, I -- last night in watching our own coverage flipping back and forth to see, spend the whole night to see you holding court on the floor of the House Rules Committee.

Thank you for being both up there so late and being consistently entertaining in the way that you`re addressing these issues, kept me into it the whole night long.

(LAUGHTER)

SLAUGHTER: Bless your heart. Well, it`s always great to be with you. Thank you for the invitation.

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