MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript Interview with Elizabeth Warren
Interview
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And that will find Joe Biden should he be elected digging the country out
of the recession for the second time in 12 years. The Biden campaign has
enlisted in all hands-on deck approach to craft a vision for that effort.
One of the people they have counted on the most is Senator Elizabeth
Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts. And Senator Elizabeth Warren joins me
now.
It is great to have you, Senator. Let me -- let me start with a question of
diagnosis. You know, I have found it bizarre, frankly, the disconnect
between what you`ve seen from some Wall Street analysts, even the way this
sort of equities markets have acted, and what seems to be the very obvious
cataclysmic economic situation beneath the surface.
And so, when you`re thinking about this, when you were advising Vice
President Biden about how big, what do we need here, how big a hole are we
headed towards? How big a problem is the American economy right now in the
midst of this pandemic?
SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): So here`s what I like about how Vice
President Biden has approached this. He understands we have two kinds of
problems. We have the immediate problem that has been brought on us by
COVID-19. The fact that we have the highest unemployment since the Great
Depression, that businesses have been shut down, that many small businesses
are going to struggle to come back, many are not going to be able to come
back. That state and local governments are suffering and starting in with
layoffs now.
So we`ve got -- we`ve got a big hole from the pandemic. But we were already
having problems in this economy. We already had an economy working great
for billionaires, but not working for a lot of hard-working American
families, an economy that was leaving a lot of people behind, and people
who have jobs who were struggling and trying to hold it together.
So the Vice President took the approach saying we`re not just going to try
to plaster over the cracks and put some props in where it`s falling apart.
His approach was to say, we`re going to build it back better. We`re going
to take an economy that had a lot of problems, and we`re going to make this
economy work better going forward. That`s the right approach.
HAYES: You know, there`s a lot of space right now, it seems to me, because
of the crisis for real out of the box thinking. You know, Congress passed a
huge bipartisan majority, like trillions of dollars in the midst of this
because no one -- no one has ever encountered anything like this, big
public investments on the order of $400 billion, $300 billion. Like big
public investments, something that you call for your own campaign, Senator
Sanders did, other folks who were running called for. Those are now central
to part of what the Vice President`s calling for.
WARREN: That`s right, because the Vice President`s approach is, we`re going
to build it back better. So he`s done a couple of things here that I just
really love. So one of them is, he said, we`re going to make a big
investment for example, in research. We`re going to make a big investment
in innovation. We`re going to be the America not only of the jobs today,
but the jobs for 10 years from now, and 20 years from now, and 30 years
from now. And he`s got a real plan to do that in a real, real money
investment in that.
But he`s doing another thing. He seized one of the powerful tools of
government. The fact that it`s called procurement, the fact that the
government buys a lot of stuff. Think about it. Our federal government buys
steel to build battleships and it buys toilet paper to, you know, put in
federal office buildings. It is a huge buyer, one of the biggest in the
world. And he`s using that leverage in his plan to say, we`re going to buy
green. Think what that will mean to create more market for green
manufacturing, green jobs through the economy.
And he says we`re going to buy American in this time we`re really going to
mean it. We`re going to stop this business of all these waivers, that these
companies say, oh, yes, we`re supposedly buying American, but they`re not
doing it. And we`re going to buy union. We`re going to encourage union
jobs. So he`s going to use this powerful tool and make it work for America.
The second thing that he`s doing in this that`s really terrific, he`s being
very intentional about who`s been left out of this economy. So a big part
of this plan is about making sure that communities of color get a real
chance to participate in a growing economy, that African Americans and
Latinos and Native Americans that women, when they own businesses, that
they`ll get a chance to grow those small businesses and turn them into
something, that when we`re thinking about investment in America, that it
doesn`t just go to the two coasts, that goes all across America and that we
are really encouraging everybody giving them opportunities to participate
in this economy. It will be transformative.
HAYES: So there -- I want to lay out a sort of worst-case scenario and hear
how you`re thinking about it going forward. There were two things the last
time that -- the last time a Democratic president was elected after a
Republican president left the country and ruins, which was just 12 years
ago, there were sort of two constraints on being able to get out of that.
One was, I think, a little bit of intellectual mistakes by people who were
advising the Obama administration about how big the hole was, and how much
had to be filled, how big you should go. Two which was bigger, was that the
Republicans turned around and suddenly got religion on the deficit,
disingenuously and said, no, we can`t spend. They, you know, they tried to
block everything, right.
I mean, obviously, that they`re going to try to do that again should Joe
Biden be elected. How are you thinking through avoiding that mistake,
avoiding allowing Republicans to essentially stand in the way of what will
almost certainly be necessary should Democrats take power?
WARREN: Look, Donald Trump is going to spend this election trying to fool
people into thinking the economy isn`t collapsing around us because of his
failure to lead during this health crisis. But it is.
And Joe Biden wants to build this economy back better than before. He`s
going to have a mandate from the American people, and he`s going to use two
kinds of tools, one of them is just like you said. There is nobody better
than Joe Biden at talking to folks in the Senate, talking to folks in the
House.
We got a majority in the House, we got a majority in the Senate, we`re
ready to run. We`re going to make this happen. And by the way, that`s why
it is important not only to win in the White House but up and down the
ticket. I`m going to be out there fighting for that, a lot of people are.
But the second thing is he`s going to use all of the tools of government.
Joe Biden understands this. He`s been in government for a long time. He`s
got a lot of experience and he`s got a lot of good people who want to help
him.
What I was just talking about on procurement, that`s for the president to
do. That`s his administration.
HAYES: Right.
WARREN: To say, here are going to be the parameters of being able to get a
government contract. You want to sell toilet paper to the government?
That`s a big contract. You want to do that, then you got to be green.
You`ve got to be giving your employees a chance to unionize. You`ve got to
be paying a living wage. You want to compete for those contracts? Then you
have to up your game and you`ve got to make an investment in America and in
American workers.
So he`s got a lot to work with here, and he`s smart enough and experienced
enough to do it.
HAYES: Yeah. I mean, it`s almost impossible to conceive where things will
be four or six months from now, but it is hard to think of them being
great. So everyone is going to have their work cut out for them if --
should Joe Biden be elected. Senator Elizabeth Warren, thank you so much
for making some time for us tonight.
WARREN: You bet.
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