MSNBC "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" - Transcript: Interview with Amy Klobuchar

Interview

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O`DONNELL: Senator Amy Klobuchar was in Wisconsin today advocating for the For The People Act to block the Republican assault on Democratic voting rights. She joined Wisconsin Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin for a discussion with community leaders on the urgent need to protect voting rights in Wisconsin and states across the country from Republican efforts to suppress voting and/or meddle with the vote-counting process.

This month Wisconsin`s Democratic governor vetoed bills passed by the Republican legislature that would have added restrictions to mail-in ballots. And the governor warned county officials not to cooperate with Republican-led efforts to conduct an Arizona-style fraud-it.

[22:49:49]

O`DONNELL: Senator Klobuchar is among the group of Senate Democrats, along with Senator Raphael Warnock, and Senator Joe Manchin, who have been working on a revised version of the For The People Act that reportedly will incorporate changes proposed by Senator Manchin.

Senate Republicans have twice blocked the For The People Act from even more moving forward to be debated in the Senate.

Joining us now is Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. She is the chair of the Senate Rules Committee.

Senator, thank you very much for joining us tonight. Congresswoman Val Demings in our last segment just talked about the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights bill last night in the House with zero Republicans votes -- zero Republican votes.

That suggests probably a very similar number of Republican votes in the Senate. What are you going to do about the 60-vote threshold on this kind of legislation in the Senate?

SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN): Well the first thing we`re doing is to get an agreement on our legislation, Lawrence. And we have had really positive, positive work being done over the last few weeks.

I have been in Minnesota, but I`ve talked to Senator Manchin a number of times, as have the rest of the group that you just showed up on the screen. And some of this is public. I mean he is agreed to a bill that would include same day registration as a national standard.

And from what we heard today in Wisconsin, except for the governor they would have really, really messed up a lot of their laws. Two interesting facts, they would have only had one drop-off box for the entire city of Milwaukee, if he had not vetoed that bill. And students with four-year and four-year degrees with those kinds of IDs wouldn`t be able to use those, but two-years could.

So clearly he made some great, great -- some great decisions in vetoing those bills. But it just shows you why we need federal standards because you don`t have that in every zip code, in every state in the country.

As for the John Lewis bill, that is a very important piece of this because that will allow us going forward to have the Justice Department focus on some of those states that have been enacting discriminatory laws.

Where this goes, we know Senator Murkowski has publicly voiced interest in supporting the John Lewis bill. So we have at least one Republican that is very interested in this bill. And there may be more.

So right now, we`ll take what the House has given us, the work that they`ve done in getting it. Some of the requirements put out by the Supreme Court after their Shelby decision and then we will go from there.

O`DONNELL: Senator Murkowski has also said, as the only senator who has been -- Republican senator who`s been inclined to say anything positive about this, that she cannot imagine another nine Republicans joining her on any voting rights legislation so that means never getting to 60.

This kind of legislation normally requires the clearing of that 60-vote threshold. Senator Manchin seems to have suggested at various times that he might be open to some kind of exception to the 60-vote threshold on voting rights. Is there any progress on that -- on that issue that you can tell us about?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, you know, first, we`re getting the bill. We`ve got to have general agreement on the bill, and he`s come a long way on that. And so just work in progress, very closely reaching a conclusion soon.

As for the filibuster, you know, Lawrence, I want to abolish it. I have had it when I`ve got fires raging in the northern part of my state, and we`ve air quality from the Canadian fires worse than it`s ever been in Minnesota`s history one day.

I want to act on climate change. I want to work on immigration reform. And I find the filibuster to be an archaic procedural mess. And so that`s the first thing.

Second thing is where some of the other senators will be on that. As you know Senator Manchin has indicated a willingness to look at the standing filibuster, which is really the talking filibuster, which would require people to actually be there if they`re going to block major legislation going forward, as they did say during the 1960s. So that is a move in the right direction. And right now, getting the bill done, and we go from there.

But every single week, we see more bad bills being introduced in legislatures across the country.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

KLOBUCHAR: Thanks, Lawrence. Great to be on.

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