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

Interview

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And joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of the state of Washington. She is the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Thank you very much for joining us tonight. We always appreciate it.

REP. PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-WA): Lawrence, it`s great to see you.

O`DONNELL: And you know, you began this hour in my little chat with Rachel. Where we talked about the recent revelation that after an appearance that you made on Rachel`s show, you got a call from the president of the United States.

I believe you checked your voice mail. And there he was with his review of how thing went with Rachel.

JAYAPAL: Well, that`s right. That is the case. It was September 21. And I had a great interview with Rachel. And I went down to my little birthday party and came back up and found the voice mail from the president.

And I`ll tell you, Lawrence, this is all about the president`s agenda. The Build Back Better Act is the president`s agenda. And the progressive caucus has been fighting so hard for months to make sure that we get that agenda across the finish line. And that is what we are going to do this week in the house. We will pass the Build Back Better Act as agreed to by our colleagues that were waiting for some fiscal information from the CBO.

But in the agreement that we have, it says no later -- no event later than the week of November 15.

So I`m fully expecting we`ll pass it through and then, of course, it will go to the Senate where the president has said he`s confident he can get 51 votes in the Senate to pass the Build Back Better Act.

O`DONNELL: Let me take a step back because I want to get into more detail about what you just said especially the November 15 deadline and how that`s going to work.

But let me take a step back to where you were earlier today at that bill signing for the infrastructure bill. Your district and what it means to your district. Seattle is a city of bridges, 124 according to the official count and dependent on those bridges. What is this bill that the president signed today going to mean for your district?

JAYAPAL: Well, it`s just huge, Lawrence. $8.6 billion is going to flow to Washington state. We are going to have in my district Sound Transit, which is our light rail. Our public transportation system is going to get $380 million plus additional grant pools.

We are going to have money for our port. It`s going to be one of the first investments that is made into the port. And the Seattle Port is a very important port along the West Coast.

We are also going to get money for electrification of our ferries. We`re going to get money to build up our EV network across the state. Money for bridges, the West Seattle Bridge very important priority of mine. I`ve spoken to Secretary Buttigieg many times about the West Seattle Bridge.

But we have many more as you said.

But in addition, restoration of Puget Sound. The EPA is going to money to really clean up our Sound and restore our Sound. That`s very important. As well as removal of fish passage barriers that is also funded in this.

So there`s just so much. It is really an important bill tonight. It is part one of two parts, as Vice President Harris said. But it is a critically important bill that is going to deliver real results for people.

And I just have to say, I have to shout out Heather Kurtenbach who was the Seattle iron worker who spoke so beautifully today at the ceremony.

And of course this is the work that we had done in the state Senate even earlier to fund free apprenticeships that help get women, folks of color and people who are incarcerated into free apprenticeship programs.

Heather is the perfect example of that and man, was she just fantastic today. Really, really tremendous.

O`DONNELL: Yes. She actually was very unusual for a bill signing to see the president and the vice president walk out and have someone coming with them. We had no idea who she was until she made her own statement as you just described. And so that was unusual.

It was also unusual for a bill signing to have members of Congress speak. It`s usually -- on the big ones it`s usually just the president and you get down to business pretty quickly.

But clearly, President Biden is trying to share as much credit as he can in the hope that this will help the sharing of credit and attention and all of that -- will help get all 50 votes that he needs in the United States Senate for part two.

[22:49:59]

JAYAPAL: That`s right. And I think we should be clear, the president is incredibly generous with sharing leadership as you said.

But let`s just be clear here. This is President Biden`s victory. It is a massive win for him. As the chief of staff was saying earlier on your show, he had numerous meetings with these legislators in the Senate, in the house, and just as he has done on the Build Back Better Act.

And this is really, I think, the leadership that the president chose every day in trying to get people to the table. And again, pushing on his agenda -- the agenda he laid out to Congress back in February now divided into two bills.

But, listen, the whole Build Back Better Act is about lowering costs for American families, about giving people more opportunity, about providing universal child care, pre-k, so much more, and the roads and bridges, clean water -- everything that was in the bill that he signed today.

And so as much as he is generous with sharing the credit, really the credit belongs to the president of the United States.

O`DONNELL: So all of you House Democrats are going to gather tomorrow morning, and you`ve made this point, that there is an agreement in place that says you would vote on build back better even without a CBO score as of a certain date. Is that agreement holding, or are you waiting for the CBO score?

JAYAPAL: Well, look, I think we want to get that CBO information to the members. There has already been a tremendous amount of fiscal information provided by CBO. All of it has been consistent with what was provided by the White House and by the joint committee on taxation.

But in our agreement, it does say in no event later than the week of the 15th. So that was regardless of whatever information came. We just didn`t want this to be delayed again and again and again.

And those individuals -- those Democrats who signed that statement, and we agreed that that would be in that agreement. So I am very confident we`re going to vote on this this week, and you know, maybe it`s the end of the week, but it will be this week. And hopefully it will be sooner than that because I think everybody wants to get this done, Lawrence.

We want to cut costs for families. We want to show people that we`ve got their back. We want to have the biggest investment in housing, plus, of course, we just came off of COP26. And the reality is this is the bill, Lawrence, this Build Back Better Act, this is the bill that really takes on climate change. And we should just be very clear about that.

The United States will not be able to lead on climate change or fulfill even the promises made at COP26 without the Build Back Better Act. So we`ve got to get it passed, we will get it passed through the House this week, and then on to the Senate and hopefully done and a great Christmas present, if not sooner, for the country to see that America is moving forward and government has your back.

O`DONNELL: And House Democrats are prepared to deal with what the Senate parliamentarian rules on what can and cannot be in a Senate reconciliation bill?

JAYAPAL: Well, you`re a Senate expert, Lawrence, so you know how this works. We`re going to have the parliamentarian scrub, the privilege scrub. That will happen very soon, and, you know, anything that the parliamentarian says cannot be in there unless there is a decision to overrule the parliamentarian will have to be scrubbed out of there.

And that`s the problem with, you know, the parliamentarian pretzels we twist ourselves into because of the filibuster. This is the only way we can pass the bill with 50 Democratic votes and the vice president to tie.

O`DONNELL: Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, thank you very much for joining us again tonight. Always appreciate it.

JAYAPAL: Thank you, Lawrence. Always great to be with you.

O`DONNELL: Thank you.

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