MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript: Government Shutdown

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Joining us is Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado.Congresswoman DeGette, thank you for your time tonight. I guess I want to pick up that point because this is sort of the forgotten fight, if it`s forgotten, it is because the fight really has not been waged. But it seems to me, we talk so much about how Republicans were able to -- I try to hesitate to use the term "sequester" here, but how much Republicans have been able to reduce the size and scope of the government through the sequester. What sort of is forgotten here if the government reopens, the sequester is still in place. That`s part of this fight.

Did Democrats make a mistake here, did your party make a mistake by not having that fight as part of the shutdown battle?

REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D), COLORADO: Well, the problem is that the Republicans have insisted on putting this completely irrelevant issue, one that they know the White House won`t compromise, one that they know that the Senate won`t compromise on, and that`s the Affordable Care Act. It has nothing to do with the budget.

And so, now, a lot of people are saying, well, you know what? Just take the so-called clean C.R. But it is not clean at all, because it does have the sequester in it. And so --

KORNACKI: But, Congresswoman, it seems like you have ended up in a situation, I don`t know if this is by grand design on their part or just a happy coincidence for them. But you ended up in a place where exactly what you described is happening, where Democrats are saying, wow, this is so spectacularly unreasonable, fine, have your sequester, we just want Obamacare to be left alone, we just want the government to open, we just don`t want a debt default -- should Democrats have been applying pressure the other way so that the terms are not just that, they are oh, by the way, do something about the sequester, too?

DEGETTE: Well, don`t forget, this C.R. is only six weeks. It only goes into the middle of November. In my opinion, what we should be saying is, OK, you can have your
sequester for six weeks. But in the meantime, you`ve got to reopen the government, and you have to raise the debt ceiling with no limits -- without putting all of these ridiculous extraneous issues on the debt ceiling, too, like they`re talking about. So, for six weeks, if we can open the government and do that, and come up with what our appropriators call really a grand bargain, which is a budget for 2014. That would make a lot of sense to me. And even I, somebody who vociferously opposed the sequester from day one, I would hold my nose and vote for a six-week extension, but I`m not going to hold my nose and vote for anything more than that.

KORNACKI: Well, actually, we were talking with Robert Costa about his earlier, the idea maybe sort of we`re not sure yet, that Republicans and John Boehner are open to pursuing some kind of grand bargain. Again, you look at the history of John Boehner and the Republicans on the lines they have drawn in this, which is basically absolutely no new revenue.Do you think if those talks reopened again in any way, do you think anything is going to be different in terms of the Republican bottom line, which is absolutely no new revenue, which sort of blows up this whole idea of the grand bargain?

DEGETTE: Well, actually the people I talk to on a private basis think the only way out of this box is a grand bargain, because if you look at the effect of the sequester on the National Institutes of Health, on all of the programs that we care about for our districts, Head Start for the kids, and for seniors programs, the only way out of the sequester which gets very much worse on January 1st, 2014, is by doing a grand bargain.

And more and more people are privately talking about that. So, in a way, as much as I abhor this shutdown and think that it`s really political malpractice, I think it maybe the path towards a much bigger issue. And you know what I tell my Republican friends is I say, look, if your business community wants this, your constituents want this, what they want is certainty for a year, not just for six weeks, not just for two weeks, not just until the debt ceiling comes up, because they want to know that they can hire employees and that we will have a federal government operating. And that we will be paying the debts of our government.

And so that`s what people want to see.

KORNACKI: All right. Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado, thanks for your time tonight. We appreciate it.

DEGETTE: Thank you.

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