MSNBC "All in with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Rep. Katherine Clark

Interview

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HAYES: Joining me now, a member House Democratic Leadership, which is now  negotiating to try to avoid another shutdown, Democratic Congresswoman  Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, vice chair of the Democratic Caucus.

Do you think Mulvaney and the White House are bluffing on this?

REP. KATHERINE CLARK, (D) MASSACHUSETTS: I certainly hope so. I wish they could have been in the room with me with federal workers as we watched the president address the country from the Rose Garden. They were just sickened. Happy the government was going to open, but just filled with dread that in three weeks we`d be right back in this same situation.

It`s the problem when we`re negotiating with a political applause line.  Nobody knows what the president wants, and he is clearly completely  disconnected from the true suffering that he caused with this shutdown.

HAYES: You know, part of the problem it seems to me is the way forward now  is there`s a conference committee, which is a standard part of the  legislative process. When the House and Senate differ, they put together a  conference committee. They try to hammer something out. There`s Democrats  and Republicans who are going to be in that conference committee from the  two sides, but there`s no guarantee the president just doesn`t rip up the  deal. Am I missing something here?

CLARK: There is no guarantee. But I think one thing really speaks to this  president, and that`s his poll numbers. And he saw those decline. So even  though he has no feeling or empathy for what he did to our economy, the $11  billion figure that the CBO cited today, and to what he did to families,  hopefully his own numbers, and that steep decline that this shutdown  caused, will speak to him and get him to come to reason.

HAYES: Although I should note there is reporting today he got a briefing  today from campaign folks that it actually helped his numbers.

CLARK: Well, we`ve seen no sign of that.

HAYES: I don`t think you`re wrong. I`m just telling you what information  he`s getting.

CLARK: And I think that he only needs to speak to his Republican  counterparts in the Senate. They understand this is very much now about  their elections in 2020. And that, I think, is going to  be the pressure point on this president.

And you know, we in the House, we`re anxious to have this discussion around  border security, and we`re just as anxious to get to those things that the  American people told us loudly and clearly in the midterms they want us to  work on: make sure we`re getting corruption out of politics, investing in  America with our infrastructure, tackling health care costs, specifically  prescription medication, these are the issues that Americans want congress  to come together and work on, not send our front line of national security  to work without pay and take $3 billion permanently out of this economy  with the shutdown.

HAYES: Final question, the president has dangled the idea of declaring  some kind of national emergency for a while now. He`s still dangling it.  There`s a piece in The Atlantic that says he`s destroying his own case for  national emergency, because he keeps delaying it, and it sort of vitiates  the idea it`s an emergency if you can delay it. What is your position on the declaration of a national emergency?

CLARK: Well, I think the president is desperately looking for an exit  ramp. You know, he did a 180 on congress back in December, decided to  listen to "President" Coulter and let her make the  decisions for him. And so I think the emergency is something that he is  trying to use as a possible way to get out of the jam he put himself in.

We will let the courts decide, but as you noted for the last two years when  there has been a  Republican majority in the House and the Senate and a Republican in the  White House, this emergency for the wall did not exist. If so, it would  have been funded.

They waited until the verge of Democrats taking over in the House. And I  think the president got into this on false information, from what you just  said, using the wall as a mnemonic to remember to talk about immigration.  And it really is an emperor has no clothes situation. And we need the  court jesters to remind him that this is real people, real lives, real  national security, and to come together and have a serious negotiation  about how we strengthen our borders.

HAYES: All right, Congresswoman Katherine Clark, thank you for your time  tonight.

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