MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript Interview with Nancy Pelosi

Interview

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Joining me now is a person who engineered the passage of both those bills,

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Do you have -- Speaker, do you have any

hope that this -- if it passes tonight, would move, be taken up by Mitch

McConnell, particularly after Democrats filibustered the Republican version

of police reform in that chamber?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Well, first of all, thank you for presenting some

of the provisions of the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act. Yes, as we

speak, people are voting. When I leave here, I`ll go there to vote, and to

gavel the passage of that important legislation.

Also, what we voted tonight was the republicans put forth, the Senate Bill.

100 percent of the Democrats voted against that toothless bill with so many

shortcomings. A few Republicans have voted with us on that. But this is a

historic day for us one month -- one month since the sad death, eight

minutes 46 seconds, I can`t breathe. We`ll never forget that.

And since then, hundreds of thousands of people in the streets, day in and

day out, week in and week out saying, enough is enough. That`s what George

Floyd`s brother said when he came to testify at the Judiciary Committee.

That we would hope, as Lincoln said, public sentiment is everything, that

the Republicans will catch the spark of the public sentiment in our country

where people overwhelmingly support the provisions of this legislation and

think enough is enough of the brutality.

We don`t pay every police officer, first responder with the same brush, but

we do need to correct the behavior of those who would engage in brutality

as they`re supposed to be protecting the people.

HAYES: When you say enough is enough, I know the complaints about the

system run wide and deep, and they vary from place to place. But, you know,

there are some who say this isn`t enough, that this particular piece of

legislation wouldn`t have, for instance prevented officer Chauvin from

kneeling on the neck of George Floyd. Do you see this as the beginning of a

longer march in terms of reforming public safety in America?

PELOSI: Well, I do think that we need to do more. This addresses police

brutality. And I`m so pleased that it has the support of Eric Garner`s

mother, Tamir Rice`s mother, John Crawford`s mother, those who have lost

their lives because of police brutality. We have some other issues that we

have to deal with. But in terms of justice in policing, this goes a long

way down the road, and it is very effective, and it gets the job done.

Again, I hope that public sentiment will change the minds of some in the

Senate. Because to do nothing -- well, let`s be hopeful. Let`s hope that

the Senate -- we passed our bill. It`s bipartisan. Some Republicans voted

for it. In the Senate, it`s time for them to sit down together and pass --

prepare a bill that can pass the Senate. They haven`t done that so far. And

in the house, we have rejected overwhelmingly, unanimously and with

Republican support the Senate bill earlier this evening.

HAYES: Obviously, the other --

PELOSI: But it`s interesting because some of the anger is also springing

from other injustices that need to be addressed. And one of them is the

disparity of death in the Coronavirus, and the Coronavirus pandemic. To

have -- we have in the Heroes Act that you mentioned. The answer, testing,

testing, testing.

We don`t have a vaccine or we don`t have a cure. God willing, we pray that

science will get us that soon. But we do have an answer, to test, to trace,

to treat, and to isolate. At the same time, as what`s just suggested, wear

the mask, wash your hands, isolate, keep your distance so that -- so that

we can kill this virus.

And at the same time, I`m a temporal marker, at the same time, as we`re in

a pandemic, the president isn`t going to be in the Supreme Court today,

Republicans are already there to overturn the Affordable Care Act to take

health care away from over 20 million people, the benefit for pre-existing

conditions, not to prevent people from having access because of pre-

existing condition. 130-140 million families affected by that. The

President is trying to take that away today in the middle of a pandemic.

Just to bring it to this point. If you don`t believe in science, and you

don`t believe in governance, you have the tragedy that we have, a pandemic

that has grown in ways that it should never had grown.

HAYES: So you -- in the House today, you`re going to pass this Police

Justice Act.

PELOSI: Yes.

HAYES: You have passed the Heroes Act and you`re proposing expanding

actually the ACA subsidies to make premiums cheaper for folks.

PELOSI: On Monday.

HAYES: And here`s my question for you -- on Monday. So here`s my question

for you. On May 15th, when the Heroes Act -- Heroes Act passed, which is

money for state and local governments crucially, and for beefed up testing

and tracing, basically Republicans said it`s DOA. And more than that, we

don`t need another package. We think we`re on the downward slope. I think

we`re in the clear here.

It`s six weeks later. Do you sense that the trajectory of the legislative

openness is changing there because we`re all watching this outbreak

happening and it looks terrifying? And we`re also watching millions of

Americans are going to lose unemployment bonus checks starting in July. And

it seems like there should be some urgency, but I`m not sure there is. Do

you have conversations with folks on the other side that maybe we`re going

to move towards something?

PELOSI: There is urgency. The urgency is that at the end July, the

unemployment benefits will expire. The urgency is at the end of June, state

and local governments are going to have to balance their budgets, the

urgency is that when McConnell says we want to pause, rent payments don`t

take a pause, food on the table need doesn`t take a pause, all of these

things have to be addressed. And to their peril, Republicans will ignore

this.

I just want to tell you this one thing before I have to go preside to gavel

down the bill, in the Heroes Act, you mentioned one part of the testing,

tracing, you mentioned another part with the unemployment insurance and the

direct checks that are needed. The secretary -- the secretary of the

Treasury even has admitted that there needs to be another bill. The

chairman of the fed has said we really are going to have a bigger, bigger

economic hit if we don`t have another package.

HAYES: Yes.

PELOSI: We know that. They have to come to the table.

But remember this one thing, and I told you this before and I`ll say it

again, in the first part, the first pillar of our bill, the Heroes Act, to

salute our heroes, our health care workers, our first responders, our

transit workers -- food, sanitation, teachers, teachers, teachers -- all

get paid by the public -- many get paid by the public sector, state and

local government -- in that part of the bill, go to speaker.gov/heroesact

and look up where you live, where you may have grown up, where your parents

may live, any place in the world where you went to school, look there and

see how much -- how many resources are going to that state, that little,

that county and you see all that money that`s going to help them pay for

their Coronavirus outlays and their loss of revenue for Coronavirus. Look

at that. It`s dazzling.

And then understand this, it`s one-half of what the Republicans did with

their tax scam to give a tax break to the high end 83 percent of the

benefits going to the top 1 percent in our country, adding $2 trillion to

the national debt, this is half of that and it is a stimulus that will help

grow the economy, pay our workers, meet the needs of the American people.

HAYES: You have to go, finally and quickly before you do, yes or no, are

you in negotiations with

the White House actively right now on another piece of legislation for

rescue?

PELOSI: There are -- let me say it this way, the best way to negotiate with

the administration is in the public domain, that`s how we were able to pass

a Mexico-U.S.-Canada trade agreement, that`s how we were able to keep

governments open with our appropriations bill, that`s how we were able to

pass four Coronavirus bills in a bipartisan way.

You remember when we were doing the more recent one, Mitch McConnell was

like, never, no way am I doing what the Democrats are suggesting, and he

ended up doing it.

HAYES: So you are negotiating in public?

PELOSI: Yeah. Well, we`re not negotiating in public, the public will be

weighing in on this. And now I have that honor, and I salute the

Congressional Black Caucus, Karen Bass, Jerry Nadler, the chair of the

Judiciary Committee, and so many people who made this very historic day

possible for the congress and for our country to make a difference as we

honor George Floyd and his family. Thank you.

HAYES: Thank you.

PELOSI: Bye-bye.

HAYES: Thank you, speaker. Appreciate it.

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