MSNBC "All In with Chris Hayes" - Transcript: Interview with Sen. Chris Murphy

Interview

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Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut is one of the senators who will decide the fate of that social spending package and he joins me now. How are you thinking about today`s development, Senator?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): I think that what you are seeing come together is extraordinary and historic. And I think you are right to look at this year as a whole. I think Joe Biden`s first year will go down as possibly the most consequential and impactful first year of any president in our lifetime.

He has cut childhood poverty in half because of the American Rescue Plan. He will have pass the biggest one-time investment in infrastructure rebuilding roads, bridges, the electrical grid, the biggest investment ever in infrastructure in the country`s history. And through the Build Back Better agenda, universal pre-k, a cap on child care costs, as you mentioned, by a mile, the biggest investment in clean energy in the nation`s history. And by the way, an increase in taxes on corporations and millionaires and billionaires to pay for it all so that we are not borrowing on our children in order to pay for these investments today.

Yes, there are big important things that aren`t in this bill, but taken together with the infrastructure bill and the rescue plan. Man, I don`t know that you can match up another president in their first year who`s made a bigger impact on people`s lives.

HAYES: I want to talk about the drug -- the drug pricing aspect of this because, you know, I got to say, I think you know, you`re on board with this. You`d vote for it tomorrow, right? I don`t think Chris Murphy of Connecticut has been the in the problem here. But this is what Elissa Slotkin said who is in a swing district in Michigan.

"No normal person can understand why we can`t negotiate for drug prices, so what they see when we can`t pass that year after year is greed, and I have no problem saying I`m frustrated the other side of the aisle, but in this case, my own party because that one is just a simple thing to do."

And one of the dynamics I think to think about here is -- which is a little inverted from things that I`ve covered before is you`ve got swing district members saying like please, please this polls well in my district, I ran on this, essentially being voted -- vetoed by like two senators who were like no.

MURPHY: Yes, but that`s the consequence of a 50-50 Senate. I mean, this is the slimmest Democratic majority in the history of the country. And this --

HAYES: Well, definitionally.

MUPHY: -- slimmest of all majorities will have by the end of the year passed -- definitionally -- will have passed the most consequential set of social policies in our lifetime. I think that you need to stay tuned on the question of prescription drug cost controls. We were negotiating throughout the day to add some of those provisions back including some negotiation of prescription drugs.

I would not be surprised if by Monday or Tuesday, when the House brings up this bill prescription drug reform including negotiation, maybe not all of the negotiation the progressives would want but significant negotiation of prices is in that bill.

HAYES: That`s interesting. It gets to another thing. And I`m going to now having done the sausage metaphor going to ask about how like a question about how you stuff the meat in the casing, OK. One of the things that`s fascinating to me here, you know, people who have taken civics or or watch schoolhouse rock of this committee system.

You got these committees and the committees work on different things, their areas of expertise, they have chairs, they have staff that really knows it, the tax writers and ways of means are notoriously expert in how the tax code works which is very complicated.

Here you`ve got a weird thing because you`ve got the committees and they`re doing stuff. But then you`ve got like a Manchin and Sinema. So, the negotiations are happening this sort of weird way where it`s like I had this tax idea and it`s like, well go ask Joe. Go ask Kyrsten. It`s got to go over to them, like the prescription drug plan.

But like, they don`t have the institutional knowledge to write -- to OK this stuff because they`re not the people that are the chairs of the relevant committees. It seems kind of weird in that way.

MURPHY: Well, yes and no. I mean, every single one of us is elected and empowered to make decisions for ourselves notwithstanding whether we`re a committee chair or not. And so, you know, this is always the problem when you are making sausage that you were dealing with legislators that aren`t subject matter area experts.

But, you know, I have been involved in these negotiations with Kyrsten Sinema over the prescription drug negotiation provision. She`s very smart. She does not share my views on this subject but I don`t know that the deficit here is one of her knowledge of the topic.

[20:15:25]

HAYES: Right, no.

MURPHY: Right now, it`s that her opinion is just fundamentally different than some of the rest of us. But again, there are pieces of this that are still being negotiated, not many, but this is one of them. And I still think we may be able to add something.

HAYES: When people look at the political terrain right now, what is your -- how -- what do you look out and see? Because I mean look, we know thermostatic public opinion, right? People -- when party has unified governance, there`s a -- there`s a mobilization in the -- in the opposition. You know, people are looking forward to Virginia, this question about whether Democrats deliver or not. Like, what do you think of as what matters six, nine months from now for the politics of all this?

MURPHY: Well, listen. I think people are openly questioning whether democracy works for them any longer. They are openly entertaining other offers which is why Trump`s neo-authoritarianism appeals to so many voters. And so, this is our opportunity to show people that democracy can demonstrably change their lives.

And so, that`s why it`s important that a few of these investments pretty immediately make tangible changes. The child care investment is one of those. People are going to be paying less for child care next year than they were this year. I mean, they`re going to notice. Second, I think it`s really important for us to show that we are taking something from the haves.

You know, people are not satisfied just to do better, they also want to know that we are sort of rebalancing the economy. And so, I`m going to go out there and just as aggressively talk about the tax increases on billionaires and millionaires, the minimum corporate tax that`s built into this bill so that amazon actually pays something into the federal government just as I am going to talk about the social investments.

So, I think that`s an important script for us to follow moving forward, tell people what they`re getting but also tell people that we`re taking something from the folks that have frankly been fleecing the regular folks in this country for the last two decades.

HAYES: My favorite detail of the ProPublica reporting on Jeff Bezos was him filing to get the child tax credit because he qualified because he had zero income. All right, Senator Chris Murphy, thank you very much. I appreciate it.

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