Transcript of Pelosi Interview on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes

Chris Hayes. Democrats in the House are worried we're not testing enough, still. They have new legislation that would mandate a new testing rubric. Here with me now to talk about the House plan for that and much more is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. It's great to have you, Madam Speaker.

Let me start on testing. I know that's a focus of yours, and of House Democrats and Senate Democrats. You know, people will point out we are doing much more testing than we were before. There are even some states, like New York, that say we have more testing capacity than is currently being utilized. What's the failure here? What's the shortcoming that you want to see rectified in terms of testing?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, right from the start, March 4th, the first bill we passed for COVID-19 – we wrote it in February, we passed it in the House on March 4th – testing, testing, testing. Testing to save lives. Testing to open up the economy. Testing to send our children back to school. It never was fully implemented. We had in for – in other legislation, and now in The Heroes Act, we have it in a very robust, rapid way. Testing with a strategy. Testing with a timetable, with benchmarks, with time – with milestones, so that we are able to identify the extent of the problem to treat those who might be a positive, to trace those to stop the spread.

This is essential, and it is such a disappointment that we have not made the decision at the Executive branch to do what is very clearly indicated by all of the scientists, needs to be done. We need to test. We're not testing enough and we should be testing even more people who don't have symptoms, because this is asymptomatic. Some people who have it don't even know it.

But we have failed in this regard because there has not been the execution. The Executive branch has not executed a testing regime. That's why The Heroes Act is so robust, so rapid, in terms of the resources, also, that are necessary to do so.

Chris Hayes. So, what I'm hearing from you is that there's both, sort of, the overall capacity issue and also targeting, right, that there's not enough tests being run, that those tests aren't focused on the people that need to be tested, in terms of contact tracing.

I want to ask about another part of The Heroes Act, as well. And it's interesting, because in between the last time you and I spoke about this legislation and now, there's been some real changes in the noises coming out of the Senate, particularly Senate Republicans and leadership in the White House.

When you first introduced this act, the message from the White House and Mitch McConnell is, ‘It's dead on arrival. Nothing more, we're done. We're going to see how this goes.' That – they seem to have had a change of heart at the Senate, Mitch McConnell and the White House, particularly on aid to state and local governments. Is that your understanding of where things are now in terms of what the Senate or the White House are considering for another round of legislation?

Speaker Pelosi. Well, they can't ignore the fact that states are going to have to shut down services, fire people, raise taxes or all of the above; states, counties, cities, municipalities and the rest. They can't ignore that. And they are hearing a drumbeat, a bipartisan drumbeat across America, that that needs to be done.

And, by the way, in the testing, we had significant funding for the states to do the testing that they need to do at their level, so they can't say that.

But you know, frankly, as I said at the time, when they put forth a bill, everybody said, ‘It's the first offer.' When I put forth a bill, they said, ‘Oh, it's partisan.' No, it's the first offer and we know we have to negotiate.

But we know we do have to have state and local assistance. We need to have – protect our heroes. That's why it's called The Heroes [Act]: our health care workers, our police and fire, first responders, teachers, sanitation workers, food workers, transit workers. You name it, they're our heroes. They deliver our services and risk their lives to save lives and now may lose their jobs.

So, that has to happen. The testing has to happen if we open up our economy. And the money in the pockets of the American people has to happen if we're going to, again, rebound from the terrible place that this terrible virus has taken us.

So yeah, I think that they knew that they would have to. But it was their message: ‘She's partisan.' When they put it forth, they're not partisan, they're Republicans. When we put it forth, we're partisan. But they'll come around.

[Crosstalk]

Chris Hayes. One of the other items –

¬Speaker Pelosi. Maybe it's a girl thing, I don't know.

Chris Hayes. Well, do you think it is?

Speaker Pelosi. Who knows. It doesn't matter. They'll come around.

Chris Hayes. I mean, they are going to negotiate. That's clear, and I think it's interesting, the degree to which Senator McConnell has changed his tune.

One other item that has been the focus of your Caucus, and was in the last CARES Act, was money for states that want to implement mail-in voting. Now, traditionally, vote-by-mail has not been a particularly divisive or partisan issue. Utah uses it. Oregon uses it. The President of the United States used it. Republican campaigns tend to encourage it among people.

The President has gone on this jihad against mail-in voting that is, to me, bizarre, but also dangerous and irresponsible and really quite insidious. He's been tweeting how it's all fraud. How they're going to pick them up. Twitter had to append a fact check to some of his tweets. What is your understanding of what the President is in the act of doing, vis- à -vis the sort of administration legitimacy of the election this fall?

Speaker Pelosi. I don't know what he's doing, and I don't know if he knows what he's doing. But what he's doing is not right.

The fact is, as a former Chair of the California Democratic Party, I can tell you Republicans have always enjoyed much success with vote-by-mail. The absentee ballots have never been a good moment for us over time. So, they know how to use the mail for their voting. And there's no scientific study that says one party or the other benefits from it.

But, this is now a health issue. We talk about saving lives, testing; the livelihood, the economy; and the life of our democracy, vote-by-mail. Now, people have to choose between their health and their vote. That shouldn't be the case. We should always be removing obstacles of participation to the vote.

That is the sacred right of our democracy, to vote. Remove obstacles. But at a time of the health – of a pandemic, even more important to give people an option that is not a risk to their lives, as well.

So, you know, again, I can't, I don't even want to go where he goes. But the point is, this is a very positive initiative that has support throughout the country, bipartisan support. We're asking for $3.6 billion, which is what it will take to make sure that the states have the resources they need to ensure that people have the right to vote. We want them, every eligible voter – registered voter, to get a ballot mailed to them. That when they mail it back, it's postage paid. That if they need to register on election day, same-day registration or even if it's before election day, the same day as they go in. And to have safe places for people to vote should they decide that they want to vote in person for whatever personal reason that is.

Chris Hayes. I want to ask you, you talked about the money that's necessary here. I wanted to ask you how you're thinking about government spending and the deficit at this moment. Just as a context here, of course, the Republicans have showed no actual care for the deficit in terms, of course, of the way they have conducted themselves. And then suddenly, about a week ago, they just decided they were very invested in it, including people inside the President's own, you know, staff and the White House and things like that.

Democrats have generally said look, we need to sort of go big here because of the perils of this moment. But there was a reporting saying that one provision of The Heroes Act was taken out, having to do with the payment of student loans, because of what the scoring from the Congressional Budget Office would be, that is to say, it would add too much to the deficit. And I guess my question to you is, how are you thinking about the deficit as a sort of constraint on the political imagination of the moment, if you're willing to take something out of the bill because of the deficit in the act of this, sort of, unchartered territory that we're in?

Speaker Pelosi. I probably took out about $400 billion, out of the bill. We wanted to put in what was urgent and what was needed by the neediest people. And so we hope in the negotiation that we can get more money back in for student loans. That would be one of our places that we would hope to negotiate and get more. But when the CBO came back with the same amount we sent them, they came back with that number, this is the number – we didn't cut the number. We just kept the number, but it covered fewer people. So, it wasn't cutting any money out of it, it was just it covered fewer people.

But let me say this, what we are doing in this bill is all about stimulus. Paying our heroes, keeping government open, it's paying our heroes, direct payment, Unemployment Insurance, SNAP – they're against food stamps. SNAP is a stimulus. All of those things stimulate, they grow the economy. Much better, in fact. Their bill did nothing at all when you talk about their tax scam of 2017, when they gave 83 percent of the benefits to the top one percent, adding nearly $2 trillion to the national debt for our children to pay with no stimulus whatsoever. No stimulus whatsoever. So, all of a sudden, the extinct budget hawks have a little flutter because other people are paying.

I just want to tell you this one thing, we have this new committee, Mr. Clyburn chairs it, the Select Committee on coronavirus. And it was inspired by Senator, then, Truman, who said he wanted to, in the course of World War II, study how the money was spent rather than waiting, as they they did after World War I, and had 116 committees to study. And when he was President, he was interviewed about it and he said: you know, I wondered then and I wonder now why all these guys are looking at every dime that is spent to put poor people to work, to get jobs that they should have. Every nickel that is spent for poor people they want to examine closely. But when it comes to their defense or whatever, the economy worries just disappear.

Well, that seems to be the case now. When they want to give tax cuts to the high end, as they did in the CARES Act – we are taking it out in The Heroes Act, they gave $120 – $130 billion tax cut to high rollers, retroactive, having nothing to do with the coronavirus. They are true to their nature. They are there for the high end to the trickle-down. We're down there to bubble-up and have it be a stimulus to the economy, because it's money that is needed.

Chris Hayes. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is there right now in the Capitol rotunda, as Congress is in session right now and sort of working through what this next piece of legislation will be. And as you can hear from what she said, it sounds like there is some talk happening with Mitch McConnell and the White House. Thank you very much, Speaker. I appreciate it.

Speaker Pelosi. My pleasure. Thank you, Chris.