MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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SEN. AMY KLOBUCHAR (D), MINNESOTA: It"s great to be on. My first midnight show, Rachel. The bewitching hour.

MADDOW: We could do it El Vira style, but it would require a very dramatic wardrobe change.

KLOBUCHAR: Right. And we don"t make fun of witches anymore.

MADDOW: No, that"s right. That is over since the midterms. What did you think of President Obama"s speech tonight, compared to his last State of the Union and given what the country needs to hear right now?

KLOBUCHAR: I thought it was a very good speech for these times, a very serious speech. And clearly the attitude and that atmosphere was more serious in House chamber. I thought that was a good thing.

Mixing it up, I think it was less of a partisan pep fest. There weren"t the groans. There weren"t quite the cheers. But people were listening and he found many points of common ground where every single person stood in that chamber. I think that was important.

It was a very forward-looking speech, where he is talking about innovation, something near and dear to my heart from a state that gave the world everything from the Pacemaker to the Post-It Note. The fact that he see this is as a way we can mobilize people and bring them together.

The education part of it I thought was really important, where he is challenging not just high school students, but families, as well as our education system to actually start giving kids degrees that they can use to get jobs. I have seen this all over our state. I just visited a number of technical colleges, 96 percent placement rate, helping kids learn high level computer skills so they can run assembly lines.

These are some of the jobs of the future in science and math and engineering. That piece was good. And just the culmination of it, where he told the story of that small company in Pennsylvania that made the drill that helped get through to get those miners out in Chile, and how he talked about how the owner--one of the employees of that Pennsylvania company said we may be a small company, but we do big things.

Using that as the overarching theme for what America has done and must do going forward--I thought it was a very good speech for our times and really set out a challenge, not only to Congress, but also to the people in this country.

MADDOW: Is there something that the president described tonight or prescribed tonight that you didn"t know before this speech he would like to pursue? Did he make any news in terms of policies that he would like Congress to adopt or things that he will do from the executive branch that you didn"t know that he wanted to move forward on?

KLOBUCHAR: Just today, it came out with the five-year freeze. I think I have supported caps in the past. That"s got to be part of this. I was actually glad that he brought up tax reform, that he just didn"t limit our work on the debt to spending caps, which is important, but he also talked about tax reform. His recommitment to bringing back those tax rates to the Clinton levels for people making over 250,000 dollars a year, how important that is going to be as we look at both sides of the ledger, and how we are going to make up for this debt that we have.

The oil subsidies, closing the oil subsidies--well, he said that before. I thought that was a clear message on energy. I don"t think people expected him to focus on energy quite as much. He did that. There were a number of things in there, while they may be things he has talked about in the past, he framed them differently as part of a competitive agenda, which I think is a way you can Republican, Democrats and independents together.

MADDOW: I was here with Ed Schultz, my friend Ed Schultz, who was a football player at the University of Minnesota, and who is from your neck of the woods. He said ahead of the speech, when we had seen excerpts, I can"t believe the president is calling for corporate tax cuts.

Then when we saw it in context, we saw the president calling for a reduction in the corporate tax rate, but pairing it with this idea that all the corporate tax loopholes have to be gotten rid of. Is that a reasonable way forward? Is that something where there could actually be common ground for tax reform, Republicans get what they want but Democrats do too?

KLOBUCHAR: It really is. If you really want our country to be able to compete internationally, you have to look at the overall tax rate. As the president pointed out, a bunch of accountants, lawyers can play the system. Certain groups get tax exemptions. Certainly, individual citizens in America, most of us aren"t using some of the exemptions he"s talking about that these corporations can use.

So bringing down that overall tax rate so we can be competitive, while at the same time, with an eye on the deficit as--I thought it was very smart. And I think we all know now we have come to a point where we are going to have had to add private sector jobs. We do that through education and export.

We have to acknowledge--Democrats have to acknowledge that there are some rules and regulations out there that can be looked at. One of my favorite moments--and he delivered it so well--was when he talked about the salmon, how the Interior Department regulates the fresh water salmon, Commerce Department regulates the salt water salmon. Who knows what happens to the smoked salmon.

Just this point that there are things we can do better with governments. It brings back some of the ideas of Al Gore, with reinventing government and the duplication. I think that"s right to look at again.

MADDOW: Senator Klobuchar, I would be remiss if I did not ask you if you had a chance to see your fellow Minnesotan, Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann"s Tea Party Express response tonight, which CNN hyped to the point that they made it essentially equivalent to the official Republican party response. Were you able to catch any of that?

KLOBUCHAR: No, but I read some reports about it. I was still ending my date with Jeff Sessions, my paired couple for the event. We walked out together and did some interviews. When I think about this, having not seen the entire thing, is I was really quite actually somewhat surprised that there were two rebuttals to the president"s address. I think, you know, we are trying to bring people together here.

I will have to look at what she said exactly. But it was--that part of it interested me, that there were two rebuttals instead of one.

MADDOW: I"m with you on that. Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, it"s always a real pleasure to have you on the show. I"m glad your date went well.

KLOBUCHAR: Yes, it was really--we went well. We didn"t agree on everything in the middle of the speech. But at the end, we ended strong. He was quite the southern gentlemen and everything went well.

MADDOW: Spectacular.

KLOBUCHAR: I"m sure you are jealous.

MADDOW: Well, I have been waiting for a call, but it"s all right.

It"s OK. I"m getting over it.

KLOBUCHAR: He was a good guy.

MADDOW: Thank you. I should mention that Ed played for Minnesota State, for Moorehead. And now there is--apparently a whole lot of football players in the hallway who are really mad at me.

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