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Interview With Lt. Gov. Josh Green (D-HI); Debt Ceiling Fight. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 21, 2021 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:00:01]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: Top of a brand-new hour. I'm Victor Blackwell.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: And I'm Alisyn Camerota.

This afternoon, a critical congressional vote, lawmakers trying to avoid -- quote -- "economic catastrophe," as the Treasury secretary calls it. The House is going to vote on this continuing resolution that would fund the government through the end of the year.

If that does not pass, the government could shut down at the end of this month.

BLACKWELL: And part of that vote involved raising the debt ceiling. It's critical from keeping the U.S. from defaulting on its loans, which would be an unprecedented failure by Congress.

But most Republicans say they will not vote to raise the limit.

CNN congressional correspondent Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill.

Manu, explain this. And what's the plausibility that this actually gets through the House and the Senate?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Very little. In fact, there's virtually no chance it gets through both chambers.

The House is scheduled to take a vote in just about an hour-and-a-half or so, in order to raise the national debt limit and avoid a government shutdown. That deadline to avoid a government shutdown is September 30, the end of the fiscal year. The deadline to avoid a first-time-ever default on the nation's debt is mid-October.

And there is no resolution to get out of either. Democrats are trying to pair up those two issues. They will pass it out of the Democratic- controlled House today and then it will move to the Senate, where they need 60 votes in the Senate in order to achieve that.

Democrats are insisting Republicans must join them to raise the debt limit, given the debt that was accrued during the Trump era. Republicans say, given all the spending that occurred under the first nine months of the Biden administration, that it's up to Democrats alone to do it. And they're calling on a separate process to be employed in order for Democrats to do that, something that the top Democrats and the White House are rejecting.

Just moments ago, I had a chance to ask the Republican and Democratic leaders if there was any give, and it was clear the lines have been drawn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, aren't you also responsible for raising the deficit and debt as the Biden administration?

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): But, look, even if it adds slightly to the national debt, it pales in comparison to what we're talking about here, massive, massive increase in taxing and spending.

RAJU: Can you guarantee and reassure the American public that ultimately you will raise the debt ceiling, even if it requires just Democrats to do it?

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Secretary Yellen has made extremely clear that it would be a tremendous mistake to deviate from a bipartisan solution when it comes to raising the debt ceiling, and that's what we Democrats are focused on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, that last point, critical. I asked Schumer directly what Democrats would be willing to do it on their own ultimately. He was not able to say that, and McConnell would not take any responsibility for raise -- voting to raise the deficit by $250 billion through the infrastructure bill that was passed last month in the Senate.

So, it shows you guys a long way to go.

CAMEROTA: Yes, and not only a long way to go in Congress as a whole, but even within the Democratic Party, I mean, for President Biden's agenda.

As we all know, he wants this big $3.5 trillion social safety net government spending plan, and Democrats can't agree on this.

RAJU: Yes, this is the progressive and moderate divide that is just threatening to sink the entire Biden agenda.

There is still right -- today, they're planning on moving ahead on a vote on September 27, next Monday, on that House -- Senate-passed infrastructure bill that is awaiting action in the House. But the progressives are warning that they will sink that bill if that larger Democratic-only bill has not passed both the House and the Senate by next week.

Now, there's virtually no chance that they can get that larger package through both chambers next week. They don't even have an agreement among themselves about what that will look like, the size, the scope, the price tag, what to include, what not to include, let alone the steps it would take to move through the legislative process.

So the big, major question right now on Capitol Hill, if the progressives will carry through under threat, sink that infrastructure bill to give them leverage to push through that larger Democratic-only package, and they have no margin for error in the Senate.

They need all 50 Democrats to get on board behind that, which they don't have at the moment. And they can only afford to lose three on the House side. So it just shows you a lot of questions still and uncertainty about whether Biden can get any of that $5 trillion in spending through -- guys.

CAMEROTA: Manu Raju, thank you very much for explaining all of that.

Now, all this infighting among Democrats could put the rest of President Biden's agenda in jeopardy.

CNN senior White House correspondent Phil Mattingly joins us live.

Phil, if this vote fails, and I don't even know where to begin with you in terms of the house of cards that could affect President Biden's agenda.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I'm still chuckling at kind of the convoluted procedural nightmare that Manu so coherently laid out, which is extraordinarily difficult to do. And I give my colleague an enormous amount of credit for that.

But it underscores kind of from the 30,000-foot level just this legislative pile-up that is at a degree that I have just never seen before in more than a decade of covering Washington in terms of every major component that the president cares about, that the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, no matter how bare, promised that they would deliver on running headlong up against extraordinarily consequential deadlines, whether it's a government shutdown or the first potential default on the U.S. debt in the history of the country.

[15:05:20]

All happening at the same time, and none of which, when you talk to White House officials and congressional officials, have a clear pathway forward at this moment in time. And I think when you talk to administration officials right now, they recognize the complexity here. They recognize the difficulty. They will say that they are cautiously optimistic that they will find that pathway forward.

And part of the reason is quite simple. They have no other option, right, guys? If you're a Democrat, and you're looking towards the midterms, you're looking towards what you pledged when you were running for election in 2020, you were pledging to deliver on these items that President Biden campaigned on, that President Biden, particularly in the wake of an economy just ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, that the president said he was going to deliver on.

These are the economic items. Guys, you can put aside issues like voting rights, like gun control, like immigration, like police reform. All of those issues, the White House is very cognizant just don't have the votes right now in the Senate to move forward. Where they do have the votes are where they should have the votes, passing it in a Democratic-only manner, is on this economic agenda, on this social safety net expansion.

And I think that's why there's been some frustration the Democratic side of things as they try and thread this needle between progressives and moderates. And I think that's why you hear the message from the president on down here at the White House of the urgency of this moment. This is what you ran on. This is what you said you would deliver on. Now is the moment to do just that.

And still there's quite a long way to go and time windows are closing extraordinarily fast, guys.

BLACKWELL: Yes, they are.

Phil Mattingly for us at the White House, thank you so much.

Let's bring in now CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash, also anchors "STATE OF THE UNION" on CNN, and CNN anchor and chief national affairs analyst Kasie Hunt.

Welcome to both of you.

Dana, let me start with you.

The progressives say there are a no, many of them, on this infrastructure bill, that there's supposed to be a vote on Monday, if the larger bill isn't passed in both chambers first. That's not going to happen.

So Speaker Pelosi has to either break her promise to these moderates who she said there would be a vote on Monday or get votes from Republicans to compensate. Which is the path of least resistance? What -- is there one that's more likely than the other?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I would not think that there is much of a chance of any of her getting votes from across the aisle on this.

In fact, I have been communicating with some of the potential moderate Republicans in the House, those who have crossed party lines on some issues. It just doesn't seem to be in the cards for her right now on this issue, because it has become so partisan.

And I know we're talking about a lot of issues right now. So let me be specific, this issue meaning the whole the whole notion of bipartisan -- excuse me -- of the partisan spending bill.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, I should say, does -- will have some Republican votes, but not enough to overcome the deficit that she's likely to have if she doesn't strike a deal with progressive Democrats. Now, what is going to be most fascinating, if we can just take it up

again, to the big picture, like Phil just did, is to see how Speaker Pelosi figures this out, because I know Kasie was on the Hill for a long time, as was I.

We have both, we have all seen Nancy Pelosi pull a rabbit out of a hat.

KASIE HUNT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: For sure.

BASH: And whether it was Obamacare, whether it was getting prescription drug benefit on Medicare.

I mean, name your issue, everybody was writing the obituary of that particular policy initiative. And she, with the help of others, but for the most part, she made it happen. It is now on her lap. And it is a question of whether she can do it one more time.

And this might be the most difficult, because her majority in the House is so narrow.

CAMEROTA: Kasie, from the outside, outside of the Capital Beltway, these machinations are head-spinning, the idea...

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: I mean, all of this...

BASH: They are inside too.

CAMEROTA: Yes, I mean, they must be, because it's -- as Phil Mattingly just said, it's so complicated. the house of cards, I was calling it.

And so what does this mean for President Biden's agenda? Is this -- is he going to get what he wants? Or is this all going to fall apart?

HUNT: Well, I thought Phil put it well, which is normally we cover one of these crises at a time and we will spend days or even weeks worrying about whether the government is going to shut down or whether we're going to bust through the debt ceiling without them doing anything or whether a president's agenda is going to get through.

And, right now, the reason it's so hard to explain is because we're doing all of that in an incredibly compressed period. And that's why threading this needle is just so difficult for Nancy Pelosi.

[15:10:01]

But big picture for President Biden, this is his shot right here to actually make his mark. He came into office. He put a bust of FDR in the Oval Office. He thought about those New Deal programs. And he said, this is the agenda that I want to enact.

And if you talk to Democrats on the Hill, they will say, this is a chance to reshape the way we live as Americans in the biggest manner since probably FDR, if not the Great Society. So there is -- everything is on the line right now, because, if he doesn't do it now, we're heading headlong into midterm campaign season.

And you can already see said campaign season making it more difficult for the president here. And this is also a place, I will say, where the president's other troubles, all of the other things we have been covering in the last couple of weeks, what happened in Afghanistan, the things that are showing that perhaps in some places like Iowa, for example, his approval rating has taken a hit, what that does is diminishes the power that he has to strong-arm his members on Capitol Hill.

When Obama was president in the beginning, everybody wanted to be on board with him. By the end, he struggled to get members of Congress on board here. So I know some congressional Democrats are telling me, hey, we want the White House to weigh in a little bit more.

But this is where it all comes together. And the president's other travails may be affecting how strongly he can send that message.

BLACKWELL: Dana, let me turn to the big lie and what we're learning from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa's new book, "Peril," that there was a memo drafted by Trump ally, John Eastman, an attorney, that's a six- point plan on how former Vice President Pence was supposed to have thrown out the electors from seven states, declare that there aren't enough, no one hit 270, and either determine that President Trump has won with 232 or then toss it back to the House and let them choose President Trump for a second term.

CNN now has a copy of this memo.

Unconstitutional. Mike Lee said that you might as well go to Queen Elizabeth with this because Congress can't do it. But there was a plan.

BASH: There was an idea. There was an idea.

BLACKWELL: Better said.

BASH: Yes.

No. I mean, no, but your point is so well taken, Victor, because even, as you said, if you have the Mike Lees of the world saying that's just not how it works, that's not constitutional, that says a lot. I mean, you and a person, in this case, that person was then-President Donald Trump, can probably find a lawyer to make whatever case he was asking for.

And, by the way, we saw that. We saw that in press conferences around the country as they not only moved from that memo, but they moved from that to courthouses, where they were slapped back in trying to overturn the election.

That, in particular, though, is really -- I struggle to find words with this, because every single time we learn a new subplot, a new piece of evidence, a new wrinkle in what we all witnessed, and, in Kasie's case, experienced on Capitol Hill, it just blows your mind.

And it's just a reminder that Mike Pence, the then-vice president who was overseeing the Electoral College count, could have taken that and said, OK, you know what, I buy it, and then it would have been a complete and total constitutional crisis.

CAMEROTA: But it is chilling. It's chilling, Kasie, to see how close it could have come if Mike Pence had just made a different decision.

But, wait, there's more, this just in from "The New York Times." There's more information now about the conspiracy theories about Dominion Voting Systems. We have more information about what was going on behind the scenes. In the Trump campaign that had just lost the election two weeks earlier, the deputy campaign director, Zach Parkinson, said, what is this that President Trump is talking about, the Dominion Voting Systems?

There's something connected to Venezuela? What is all this? Go out. He tasked his underlings, go out and find me the evidence and come back. You have got a couple of days. They couldn't find anything. They came back and said, none of this makes sense.

In other words, internally, within the campaign, while Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell were going out there to hold these press conferences, they knew it was B.S.

HUNT: They did.

And this is exactly what Dana was talking about. And it turns out, according to this reporting in "The Times," that they were well aware that they didn't have anything to back this up.

Now, why does this matter in this moment? Why is it coming out now? Because, of course, Dominion Voting's business was badly damaged by what the Trump campaign and other right-wing media outlets were willing to say about their business and about their credibility.

[15:15:00]

And there are lawsuits that are digging up new information like this, in addition to, of course, the reporting that our colleagues at "The Times" are doing.

And this just underscores again -- and I share with Dana a struggle sometimes to find words for this, because the reality is, we all knew this. You used the phrase B.S. I mean, everybody knew it was B.S. at the time, whether they were part of the Trump campaign, or part of the Democratic opposition, those of us who were trying to make that clear to viewers and to readers in our roles as journalists.

I mean, it was incredibly obvious. But, of course, that's not what Donald Trump is, A, believing. I think we're learning a lot in some of these books that are coming out about the way he thinks about this. And it's clear he believes deeply that he -- this election was taken from him. And that's what he's telling his supporters. And they're deciding that

the only person that they can believe is him, even though the evidence shows that, no, actually they knew that this was wrong. And so, again, we go back to this question of, how do we pull people out of this vortex that's been created and that is apparently perhaps still going to continue if, in fact, the former president decides that he wants to run for office again?

BASH: And if I just make -- quickly, I sent that "New York Times" story to a former Trump official, and I got a one word, three-letter response back: "Duh."

CAMEROTA: Wow. That's my one word, three-letter response to that.

(LAUGHTER)

CAMEROTA: Dana Bash, Kasie Hunt, thank you both very much.

BLACKWELL: Thank you.

HUNT: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, now to this.

Hawaii's lieutenant governor has a message for the federal government, as his state faces COVID onslaught and all of their hospitals are stretched thin. So he's going to join us next with that message to the surgeon general.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:21:37]

CAMEROTA: The lieutenant governor of Hawaii is pleading with the federal government to send more help in order to avoid the nightmare scenario of rationing health care and having to decide who gets medical help.

A surge in cases and hospitalizations statewide driven by the Delta variant had pushed Hawaii's hospitals to the brink over the past few months.

And Josh Green is the lieutenant governor for Hawaii, as well as an emergency room physician.

So you look at it from both angles. Lieutenant Governor, great to see you again.

This weekend, I understand you reached out to the U.S. surgeon general for help. What do you want him to do for Hawaii?

LT. GOV. JOSH GREEN (D-HI): Well, he's doing it for Hawaii. I have so much respect for a Surgeon General Murthy.

He sent us and FEMA sent us with him 650 additional nurses and critical care team members. And that made all the difference for us. We peaked on September 3 with our patients in the hospital. Our ICUs were full. And by giving us that buffer, that 650 personnel, we were able to come off of that peak. We're now down 37 percent with our hospitalized cases, and we survived the surge.

But what it did was, it put us into a place where we began, tragically, to discuss what's called crisis care or crisis standard of care, which is rationing care. And from my standpoint, America is better than that.

We have values to protect all of our elderly, all of our children. We didn't have to do that because the surgeon general and FEMA came through for our state. And so what I have asked Surgeon General Murthy and team members from his side to do is to go into other states and support them.

But what the surgeon general did tell me was they only can go into states when they're asked. And all of these other states that are suffering near their peak, like Idaho, Texas, Alaska, because they have not vaccinated their people adequately and have had surges in their hospitals, they are now beginning to ration care.

And I think this is a chance for us to unite the country. And we have a great surgeon general to help us do it.

CAMEROTA: So you're saying -- I mean, is this your kind of clarion call to other governors or lieutenant governors to reach out to the surgeon general to ask for help? Maybe they don't know that or they're being resistant?

GREEN: They're probably being resistant, but they surely know it if they're good governors or lieutenant governors, yes.

Every state has an opportunity to reach out for help, to ask for nursing support, to ask for emergency facilities, to ask for National Guard support. Every one of them can ask for extra help. And we have an extraordinary, extraordinary surgeon general and FEMA team that I believe will say yes, like they did for the state of Hawaii.

They made the difference between us having to ration care, which would have been catastrophic for our elderly, and not having to do that. Lives were saved because of their actions and their support. But every state out there, especially those states that are reaching full hospital capacity, like Idaho, where their positivity rate was 25 percent, it's incredible the risk for their people.

This is the time for all states to unite and rely on President Biden and rely on our surgeon general and rely on HHS to come in and help, because America as a country should never ration care. That's really my message today.

CAMEROTA: I also want to ask you about something we talked about the last time you were on, and that was that there were protests, I believe nightly, in front of your home of people who were angry that you were speaking out about this, people who were angry about possible mandates or you even suggesting vaccines.

[15:25:03]

And, I mean, it was really -- first of all, has that ended, or are those still going on in front of your home?

GREEN: It seems to have subsided over the last week. It was quite extraordinary, because people were protesting at my home.

Now, I believe in freedom of speech. And so I respect that. But when it's my family involved, like any dad or husband, you can imagine my concern. But we did have a very unusual turn of events. I think, as I shared before, I was worried about those individuals that were protesting, because, one, I was worried they were going to catch COVID.

And, two, they were probably scaring other people from getting vaccinated. Now, Hawaii is now at 88.8 percent of all those eligible have started their vaccination. So, we're doing a very extraordinary job doing that.

CAMEROTA: Yes.

GREEN: But the twist that occurred was the founder of that organization caught COVID and got very sick.

CAMEROTA: I heard that.

So his name is Chris Wikoff. He had been opposed to vaccines. He was opposed to any sort of mandates, and, I mean, really aggressively opposed. And then, as you say, this month, he got really sick and hospitalized. And then he had a change of heart.

And so we only have a very short message that he put out, but here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WIKOFF, COVID-19 PATIENT: Now, all of a sudden, I'm in a bed. I can't move, can't breathe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: So he talked about how he was afraid he was going to die. And he talked about: "We should be more concerned about safety than protesting. I think people should be getting together in large groups."

He said: "I don't think people should be getting together in large groups to protest." And he said: "Before, I thought that Lieutenant Governor Josh Green was exaggerating the situation. But after my experience, he sounds very rational to me."

Is that gratifying to you?

GREEN: Really, I feel heartsick that he got so ill. I hope he gets better. And I hope his wife gets better. It's only gratifying to me that people are focused on getting

vaccinated now. I want him to get well. And I want all the individuals who are protesting to realize that their friend got COVID because they had the wrong priority.

The priority should be for us to pull together and not make this a political issue, get vaccinated, or at least prevent spreading the disease. So I hope he does better. I hope he recovers completely.

But I hope America gets better. And that's really my message. America can do better. Protect our loved ones, get through the rest of this pandemic, not ration care, and then we will see that we're a stronger country.

But this is a pivotal moment for many people like that gentleman.

CAMEROTA: Lieutenant Governor Josh Green, thank you.

GREEN: Thank you.

BLACKWELL: A principal in Texas could soon be unemployed. He's facing accusations of having extreme views on race. The debate about Critical Race Theory is playing out in schools.

We will explain how next.

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