CNN "Newsroom" - Transcript Interview with James Clyburn

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Joining us now, House Majority Whip. Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina. Leader Clyburn, good morning to you.

REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC): Good morning. Good morning. How are you?

BLACKWELL: I'm doing well, thank you. Let me start here, picking up where Sunlen just left off, that from Senate Republicans, they say that this is going nowhere because, in their words, it spends money arbitrarily and is not connected to a larger relief or stimulus legislation. What's your response to that?

CLYBURN: Well, I think that's poppycock. The fact of the matter is this legislation that we're presenting today is already in the Heroes Act. We dealt with the same thing in the Cares Act. We have always been trying to support the post office in order for postal services to operate efficiently, effectively, and equitably, since we're talking about rural versus urban in so many instances. So what we're doing here now is taking pieces out of -- that's already over there, sending it back in an independent pieces of legislation, and hopefully they will take it out.

BLACKWELL: So let me understand this then. If it's already part of the Heroes Act and it's part of the Cares Act, is this a redundancy? If I'm hearing correctly, because I'm trying to work this out, this is the first time I'm hearing this from you, if the Republicans in the Senate say it is not part of a larger piece of legislation, but you already sent it over in a larger piece of legislation and they rejected it, now you're bringing into a single piece, and they're saying nope, it's not in the right form again. Am I getting this right?

CLYBURN: Partially. They never rejected it because they never put it on the floor. Mitch McConnell has rejected it. He laughed at it when we first sent it over.

[10:05:02]

And he is now saying the same thing for this legislation. He says he is not against the Postal Service doing its job. But the fact of the matter is they need the resources to do their jobs. We know that because of the virus more people are going to be voting, I might call it from home than they have usually done so. And we also know they will put their health at risk going to the polls.

So we are trying to make it convenient for people to vote, and make it safe for them to vote. He says that's a concept that he buys into. There's splendid. That's what we're trying to do now, fund that concept. But what we also want the American people to understand, it's not just about voting. It's about veterans getting their benefits checks. It's about Social Security checks going out on time. I have seen and I have personally experienced -- I dropped something in the mail 12 days ago, and as of yesterday I was told it had not been received. And that's running the risk of me paying a bill that has not been paid on time. I had to call my daughter yesterday and go down to the bank to pay this bill because they have not received the check. I put it in the mail myself, and I'm getting that same complaint all over. There are people who are telling me that their mortgage payments have been late. They have had children on the Internet trying to pay bills that they usually pay by mail.

So this stuff is widespread. And it's not just about voting. It's about people being able to stay connected to each other. And that's what the Post Office has always been.

BLACKWELL: Congressman Clyburn, let me ask you this. Congresswoman Debbie Dingell was on this morning with me, and she told me that there will be a substantial number of Republican votes for this. No one better than to ask the majority whip. Do you have a count or an estimate how many Republicans will cross over and vote for this?

CLYBURN: No, I don't. I have always been trying to whip Democrats trying to get to 218. I do know there are more than 218 Democratic votes for this. I have no idea. I'm told there are some Republicans who will vote for it. But that is beyond the 218, and I don't get too occupied with whipping votes on the Republican side.

BLACKWELL: Do you believe that Louis DeJoy should resign?

CLYBURN: No question about it. I don't think he should have been appointed in the first place. The Postal Service is a postal service, and it ought to have people experienced in providing service. When people bring their profit-making motives into the government, that is a problem. I have been saying for three or four decades, ever since I've been in public office, that we ought not be running government like a business. Businesses are there to make a profit, government to provide service. That's why so many students are over their heads in debt now, because we started trying to make profit off student loans. We ought to start making a profit off a people and provide service.

BLACKWELL: Congressman Clyburn, let me switch to the convention at which you spoke and nominated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this week. I want you to listen to, this is Nina Turner. She was national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders campaign, and she was on with Anderson Cooper yesterday. Let's watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NINA TURNER, CO-CHAIR, BERNIE SANDERS 2020 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: I think what was missing from that is really the whole tail part in terms of how the poor, the working poor and the barely middle class in this country, are going to be taken care of. What is the vision for the provision, Anderson? That was missing.

There is so much suffering going on in the country. The Democratic Party has an awesome opportunity to be the party that is going to stand in the ready position and implement policies, not just words, but policies that will help to lift the least of these in this country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLACKWELL: The vision was missing. Policies, not just words. The convention focused a lot on Joe Biden, decent man, good man, someone who understands you. Did the convention, did the party fall short, as Ms. Turner suggests, of policy?

CLYBURN: The first thing this party did before we ever got to convention was to adopt a platform. A vision of this party is there embedded in the platform that we presented to the American people. Now we're going to get a chance over the next several weeks to flesh out that platform for the American people. And there is a tremendous vision there. I would ask anybody who wants to know the vision of the party to go online and click onto the Democratic Party platform. I can just tell you --

[10:10:00]

BLACKWELL: Congressman Clyburn, let me interrupt here, because if you had such a large audience, more than 100 million people watched live on air, to then send them to a website to read what you really want to do, isn't that ineffective? Shouldn't that have been part of every night, giving specifics of policy?

CLYBURN: It was part of every night. It certainly was a part of what I had to speak about. I stood there in front of, across the street from Emanuel AME Church, across the street from, down the road from Gaston (ph) Walsh (ph), and I talked about the vision of this country and what we're doing, wish to do to bring in order to bring that vision to fruition. Speaker after speaker after speaker spoke to that. Joe Biden himself spoke to that. He may never have used the words and phrases that you may be more

familiar with or you may want to hear, but policy was throughout his speech. And he talked about the vision for the future of this country, for leaving the country for our children and grandchildren.

But the first thing you've got to do is create a climate within which you can get policy developed. That's the problem we've got now. We're after each other's throats. We don't have a climate within which people can sit down around the table and find common ground. That's the first thing you've got to do. I have been in this business a long time, and I know climate is very, very important.

BLACKWELL: Representative Jim Clyburn, Majority Whip, thank you so much, sir.

CLYBURN: Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source