MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Jamie Raskin

Interview

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HAYES:  Joining me now, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland.  So is that my understanding, Congressman, tomorrow you`re going to pass legislation for the eight departments other than the DHS and basically say let`s just do that and sort of cordon off the DHS question?
 
REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D), MARYLAND:  Well, right.  What is the argument for closing down the departments of State of Agriculture, of Interior, of justice, of Commerce, of HUD and so on?  Everybody agrees that they`ve got nothing to do with this conflict.  It all comes down to Homeland Security so let`s pass a special bill dealing with homeland security and we can take it up again in four weeks.  We`ll have time to debate it.
 
But otherwise, this looks like it`s just a completely petulant outbreak of obstructionism by the  Republicans and we`re starting to fear that they`re really just trying to ruin the inauguration of the new House and everything that we wanted to do.
 
HAYES:  Well, they were -- they were sort of trying.  They were sort of spinning it that way.  Although I`m not quite sure I sell that -- I buy that.  I mean, what does it matter in terms of the inauguration?  Like you guys are going to get the gavel one way or the other.
 
RASKIN:  Well, right.  I mean, the whole thing makes no sense.  It`s irrational.  Look, Donald Trump had basically agreed to drop his ridiculous demand for a border wall which you know, the people of Texas don`t want.  There are so many landowners down there who are saying that it will be tied up for years and eminent domain lawsuits because they don`t want their backyards taken away from them by the government.  So the idea this is -- that this is a solution is just absurd.
 
But you know, he had given up on that.  And then he turned on Fox News and he saw Ann Coulter and the right-wing commentators blasting him and then he took it all back.  And so suddenly it became urgent again.  And so we`re looking for some serious responsible people on the Republican side to say this is not a way to run the government.
 
And what we`re giving them is bills that they endorsed either unanimously or by 90 percent, so they`re -- they`ve already been for these pieces of legislation.  Let`s go ahead and pass it.  We can isolate the problem and then we can continue the debate for a few more weeks about the wall.
 
HAYES:  Well, but here`s the thing about the wall.  Like I don`t even understand what we`re debating anymore because the President you know, the wall is this sort of constantly moving metaphor.  I mean Lindsay Graham called it a metaphor.  The President has reinvented the concept of a fence several times through you know, the wall you can see through it which is a fence.  And then it says it`s not actually that, it`s just border security.  Like do you understand what the actual fight is over?  Is it the $5 billion?  Is that the fight?
 
RASKIN:  Well, yes.  And of course, the $5.7 billion is really $35 billion, because it doesn`t make sense to spend $5.5 billion on a project unless --
 
HAYES:  For one year.  Yes.
 
RASKIN:  -- one could go ahead and complete it.
 
HAYES:  Right.
 
HAYES:  But you`re right.  It`s you know, rearranging the silverware on the Titanic.  We`ve got this monumental challenge of climate change which the rest of the world is talking about, record forest fires, droughts, hurricanes, extreme weather events like no one has ever seen before.  This is what we should be focused on.  Instead, we`re talking about this stupid medieval wall which everybody across party lines thinks is ridiculous.
 
And we`re asking the Republican leadership to step up right now and help us get back to the business of government.  We want to reopen the government and then we`ve got legislation to reopen the democracy by getting rid of gerrymandering, by opening up the campaign finance system, and by arming people`s voting rights so they can`t be taken away again.
 
HAYES:  Those -- that`s the first sort of affirmative.  I mean, after the getting the government back and running, that`s the first sort of affirmative slate of legislation that the House Democrats are going to pursue right?
 
RASKIN:  Correct.  But there are other you know, multiple emergencies facing us as a people.  You know, we are in a gun crisis here where tens of thousands of Americans are being lost every year to firearms and 97 percent of the people want a universal criminal and mental background check on all firearm purchases.  If we put it on the floor, we can pass it overwhelmingly.  We`ll have Republican support.  Even if they allow it on the floor in the Senate, it will pass there.
 
We`ve got to go ahead and do that.  We got a deal with climate change.  We got to deal with prescription drug prices by giving the government the power to negotiate in the Medicare program the same power that it`s got in Medicaid and V.A.   I mean, there these are things that are practical problems that we used to know how to solve and we can do it but we`ve got to get all the obstructionism and nihilism out of the way.
 
HAYES:  Have you served in the majority before?
 
RASKIN:  Well, in the Maryland State Senate where we abolish the death penalty in passed marriage equality and you know, passed the toughest gun safety law in America, but not in the House.  I`ve only been in the House for one term so I can`t wait until tomorrow.
 
HAYES:  Yes, exactly.  What are you most looking forward to?
 
RASKIN:  Well, you know, one of the things that struck me when I got to D.C. from Annapolis was that we were voting on all these bills, very big things like repealing the Affordable Care Act without so much as a hearing.  Now, think about that.  The hearing is the heart of the legislative process.  That`s when you collect the data, you collect the facts, you get lots of views coming from lots of different perspectives, and even the people who`ve introduced the bill learn about it and improve it.  But they got rid of hearings in the Republican Congress. 
 
For the most part, we were voting on bills -- we were voting on constitutional amendments like the balanced budget amendment that had never had a hearing before.  So I pushed very strongly and I`m proud to say it`s in the rules package for a provision saying that no bills will go through the Rules Committee to the floor unless they`ve had a hearing first.  I mean, it`s a pretty basic thing.  But I`m excited that we`re actually going to be involved in real legislative process instead of just mobilizing everybody into partisan camps.
 
HAYES:  Yes.  Spoken like a true legislator.  The thing you`re most excited for is hearings which is you have the right job if that`s the case.
 
RASKIN:  Hey, I`m going on the Rules Committee and I can`t tell you how excited I am about that. 
 
HAYES:  All right, Congressman Jamie Raskin, thank you very much.
 
RASKIN:  My pleasure.

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