MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Van Hollen

Interview

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HAYES:  Nada, nothing.  Instead of trying to solve the problem or which should be clear simply endorsing the Senate bill that passed with broad Republican support two weeks ago, the President is digging in. 
 
Today he presided over a bizarre cabinet meeting in which he held court like the loudest guy at the bar without concern for truth or accuracy or any discernable through line.  In front of him for some reason there was a large Game of Thrones style poster featuring Trump posing dramatically.  It`s a very poster he used back in November to announce sanctions on Iran.  I guess he just thinks it looks cool or he likes to look at it.
 
Later on Trump had congressional leadership come to the White House for supposed negotiation that by all accounts went nowhere as well as a briefing from Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen that Senator Dick Durbin said was chock-full of misinformation about the situation of the border.  Durbin adding and I "it was preposterous."
 
So that`s what happened today and then there`s what happens tomorrow when everything will change for this President and for the country.  Around noon, Nancy Pelosi is expected to be elected as Speaker of the House and assuring the new reality in Washington.  House Democrats will not be able to pass legislation into law on their own since Republicans still control the Senate and the presidency. 
 
But after two years in which Republicans have obstructed efforts to hold Trump to account, the Democratic majority will have the power to conduct real oversight.  They will be able to demand testimony, to issue subpoenas to generally investigate an administration that has largely avoided any kind of accountability from Congress whatsoever. 
 
Resolving the shutdown and reopening the government will be of course the first big fight.  The Democrats finally taking power, there will be many more fights to come.  Joining me now, a man who`s been 14 years in the House before being elected at the Senate two years ago, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland.
 
Senator just some recent news just now.  Mitch McConnell saying that the bill that will pass out of the House tomorrow to reopen the government is DOA in the Senate.  What`s your reaction?
 
SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND:  Well, Mitch McConnell can say that and I`m sure that tomorrow after the House passes that bill Mitch will say that he`s not going to take it up but he`s going to have a hell of a time explaining how it is that he refuses to take up a bill that came out of the House.  It`s virtually identical in many ways to the bill that passed the Senate with a big bipartisan majority just before the break two weeks ago.
 
And as the shutdown goes down, he`s going to have to answer a lot of Republican senators who are going to feel the pressure back home and just saying that well, Donald Trump told me not to bring it up, is not going to be a very satisfactory answer for many of them.
 
HAYES:  Here`s a question.  Do Republican Senators feel pressure?  Is that
* I mean, one of the weird things about the way that our political dynamics work is that it`s unclear to me they do based on the ways in which they vote and sort of act together and the levers of the media that actually affect them?
 
VAN HOLLEN:  Well, I`ve heard actually over the -- over the break from a number of Republican senators who are hearing especially from their small business contractors who do business with the government.
 
HAYES:  That`s interesting.
 
VAN HOLLEN:  So some of them don`t care so much about federal employees although it`s a reality that 80 percent of the federal employees in this country actually work outside of the Washington Metropolitan Area.  They work in places around the country but the folks who were really get squeezed and who will never be made whole after the shutdown are a lot of these small business contractors.
 
And so I`ve heard from a number of Republican senators about that predicament, and again what the House is planning to do is send over two bills.  One will say OK, let`s isolate our disagreement to the Department of Homeland Security.  Let`s pass a bill to keep it open till February 8th and have a negotiation. 
 
But for goodness sakes, the other eight departments of government that have nothing to do with the wall or for homeland security, why are we going to keep those shutdown?  Why are we going to deny the American people those services?  Why are we going to keep those 600,000 federal employees out of work and with no pay?  And that`s going to be a harder and harder question to answer.
 
HAYES:  You were there in the House, I think you were in leadership actually back in 2006 which is the last time Democrats took majority in the House.  It was the first time Nancy Pelosi ascended to Speaker.  She`s now re-ascending.  It`s something that not many people have done in American history.  What didn`t you learn and what a Nancy Pelosi learned from that time around in terms of thinking about how it works this time around?
 
VAN HOLLEN:  Well, I think there are a lot of lessons.  The House now has the ability to take the initiative on two fronts, right?  First of all, as you were saying in the intro, you get the gavel, and that means the power to hold a hearing.  I mean, think about it.  Democrats now if they want to have a hearing, they couldn`t have it in the House.  They`d be relegated to the basement right, to have their rump hearing that no one paid attention to. 
 
Now they have the gavel.  They have the power of oversight.  They`ll also have the power of initiative, being able to pass legislation like their electoral reform and campaign finance reform bill.  Now, it`s very true that that will have a hard time in the Senate, but it will give us in the Senate Democratic senators an opportunity to call upon Mitch McConnell to bring up that legislation. 
 
It will show the American people not only what we`re against and making it clear we want to stop Trump but also that we have a positive agenda.  And so she`ll be rolling that out.  I will say, Chris, that one difference of course between now and 2006 is in 2006 Democrats also won a majority in the Senate so they were able to have both Houses moving in tandem.
 
HAYES:  Well, also someone who`s been in the majority and the minority, I was reading some interesting clues from sort of fun quotes today from members who were about to go on the minority for the first time which is significant part of the Republican caucus.  What`s your advice for them on what`s what changes?  How does -- how does the shape and the culture of Capitol Hill change when a house changes hands?
 
VAN HOLLEN:  Well, I can tell you it`s always an honor to be an either house, the House or the Senate but the worst place in Congress to be is in the minority party in the House of Representatives.  Because the reality is that the majority, when they can keep party cohesion, when they can keep people together, can essentially do what they want.
 
Now, you`ve seen Republican speakers like Paul Ryan, even Speaker Boehner before him who couldn`t control their far-right wings and therefore we`re not able to get a lot of stuff done.  But I believe that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will be able to seize the initiative.  They`ll be able to pass out of the House lots of important legislation.  And then the question goes back to what you were asking.  What is the impact of that on Republican Senators? 
 
There are a lot of Republican senators who are going to be up for re- election in two years in 2020.  And we`ll have to see whether or not their loyalties will continue alight with Trump which is where they lie in primaries, right?  They`re all scared -- they`re all scared to death of Trump supporting someone in the primary.  But ultimately they got to get into a general election.  And going all-in with Trump on things like the government shutdown and other things that will be coming up in the coming months will probably be a losing strategy for them in many of those states.
 
HAYES:  It`s going to be very interesting.  Cory Gardner in Colorado comes to mind.  It`s Trump list.  Senator Chris Van Hollen, thanks for being with me.
 
VAN HOLLEN:  Good to be with you.
 
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