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Infrastructure Negotiations; President Obama Speaks Before Breaking Ground on Presidential Center. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired September 28, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:03]

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our daughters were born here right down the street at the hospital. We bought our first home here a few blocks away.

It's where I taught law and Michelle worked with students at the university and patients at the hospital. It's where I announced my first campaign for public office at what at least then was known as the Ramada Inn on Lake Shore Drive. It's where I first had the honor of serving constituents.

All of that happened within a few-mile radius of here. Chicago is where almost everything that is most precious to me began. It's where I found a home.

Now, obviously, Michelle and I have been on a fairly extraordinary journey since then, one we could have never imagined all those years ago. But as far as we have come, I have never lost sight of some important lessons that I learned right here in Chicago.

And the first involves the power of place, the need to anchor our efforts to build a better world not in theories and abstractions, but in neighborhoods and communities.

Now, by now, most people know that I come from a pretty diverse background. I was born in Hawaii. My parents are from Kenya and Kansas. As a child, I lived in Indonesia. I have got family whose gene pool stretches from Ireland to China. I have got lifelong friends who come from just about every corner of the world.

And that background helps explain my core belief in the oneness of humanity, a belief in the God-given dignity and worth of all people and the underlying bonds that we share.

It's why I believe America's diversity is a strength, not a weakness, and that the only way we can solve our biggest challenges, from climate change, to economic inequality, is if we recognize those common bonds, and learn to work together across divides of race and religion and language and culture.

But, as strongly as I hold to that belief, Chicago taught me that change doesn't start on a global scale. Change starts one person at a time, one school at a time, one neighborhood at a time, one community at a time. The Internet and social media can connect us and raise awareness about

issues that matter, but it's only when we root ourselves in specific communities that we can understand the realities of people's lives and their complexity.

That's where we build relationships and the trust that change requires. It's how we test our commitments and our assumptions and we learn to navigate our differences and refine the strategies and programs that ultimately transform the world.

The second thing Chicago gave me was a faith that ordinary people working together can do extraordinary things. Rarely in our history has progress arrived from on high. The abolition of slavery, the expansion of the franchise, better working conditions, cleaner air and water, women's rights, LGBTQ rights, all these things gained traction because a critical mass of people got involved, got engaged, and came together to make their voices heard.

And, yes, that process can be contentious, as I'm sure the governor and the mayor are aware. It can take time. But, in the end, it's the most effective, most inclusive, most durable way to move the world as it is towards the world as it should be.

And the idea of participation, of active citizenship also happens to be at the heart of our American experiment in self-government. This country was built on the belief that any of us, no matter who we are, where we come from, how much money we have, what our last name is, any of us can recognize where our nation has fallen short, challenge the status quo, and pull America a little closer to our highest ideals.

[15:05:03]

And that same faith and participatory democracy has overthrown tyrants and liberated countries and delivered greater opportunity and freedom and dignity to billions of people around the world.

So, my experience in Chicago made me believe in the power of place and the power of people. Those beliefs guided me all the way through my presidency. And they have shaped our vision for the Obama Presidential Center. We are about to break ground on what will be the world's premier institution for developing civic leaders across fields, across disciplines, and, yes, across the political spectrum.

A forum for those who want to strengthen democratic ideals and foster active citizenship. A campus right here on the South Side where we hope to convene support and empower the next generation of leaders, not just in government and public service, but also those who intend to bring about change through the arts or journalism or who want to start businesses that are inclusive, socially responsible, and responsible and responsive to the challenges of our time.

We want this center to be more than a static museum or a source of archival research. It won't just be a collection of campaign memorabilia or Michelle's ball gowns, although I know everybody will come see those.

(LAUGHTER)

OBAMA: It won't just be an exercise in nostalgia or looking backwards. We want to look forward. We want this to be a living, thriving home for concerts, cultural events, lectures, trainings, summits, topical dialogues, and conversations.

We want this to be a hub for in-house fellows with real-world experience to share what's working and what's not in solving the big problems of the day. We envision this as a place where residents and visitors from all over the world come together and restore the promise of the people's party.

So, that will be the core mission of the center and our foundation programming, inspiring and empowering citizens and communities to act on the biggest challenges of our time, giving leaders the tools they need to be effective, and preparing young people everywhere to pick up the baton and help change the world.

And along the way, we want the Obama Presidential Center to change Chicago for the better. This center will support thousands of jobs during and after construction, many of them right here on the South Side. It will help spark economic growth in this community by bringing as many as 750,000 visitors to this area every single year, visitors who will eat, shop, explore, and spend money, strengthening the South Side and making it an even more attractive place for businesses to grow and to hire.

The center will also preserve and enhance all the things that make Jackson Park special. We will reunify parkland, plant new trees, provide new habitat for birds and wildlife. But, as Michelle noted, we are also going to open this park up to the community, creating a community rec center, another branch of the Chicago Public Library, creating new spaces for folks from the South Side and all over the city to gather and to connect and to learn.

I will close by saying that it feels natural for Michelle and me to want to give back to Chicago and to the South Side in particular, the place where she grew up and I came into my own, where our children were born. Where we made so many friends, and where I launched my political career.

We will always be grateful for that. And the Obama Presidential Center is our way of repaying some of what this amazing city has given us. But we're also building the center because we believe it can speak to some of the central struggles of our time, for we are living through a moment of rapid disruption in technology, in the global economy, in our social arrangements, in our environment.

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And those disruptions can be scary. And, too often, it feels as if our major institutions have failed to respond effectively to these disruptions, to help people find economic security, or manage our differences, or protect our planet.

What we have seen is that, in the breach, a culture of cynicism and mistrust can grow. We start seeing more division and increasingly bitter conflict, the politics that feeds anger and resentment towards those who aren't like us, and starts turning away from democratic principles in favor of tribalism and might makes right.

This is true in Europe and in Asia. It's true in Latin America and in Africa. And it happens to be true here at home.

But the good news is, we can reverse these trends. I don't believe it's inevitable that we succumb to paralysis or mutual hatred or abandon democracy in favor of systems that reserve power and privilege for the few.

As has been true throughout our history, I believe we have it in us to reimagine our institutions, to make them responsive to today's challenges and to rebuild our societies in a way that gives more and more people a better life.

And I believe it because I have seen it. I have seen it in the work of young activists and social entrepreneurs right here in Chicago from the North Side to the South Side to the West Side, from Oakland to Johannesburg, from Ho Chi Minh City to Rio de Janeiro, from Amsterdam to Port-au-Prince.

Around the world and right here in Chicago, there are young people who are not waiting for someone else to solve big problems. Instead, in the face of sometimes impossible odds, they are rolling up their sleeves and putting down stakes and making a difference, one neighborhood, one school, one community at a time.

They're building health clinics in urban slums and educating girls in rural villages. They're reforming policing and challenging corruption. They're inventing new ways to cut carbon emissions and providing clean water to those who desperately need it.

They're building businesses on principles of equity and sustainability, and they're giving workers a real stake in their company's success.

This coming generation, this generation of Zel (ph) and Trent (ph) and others, they are the source of my hope. It's their imagination, their resilience, their embrace of diversity, their belief that every voice counts, their deep commitment to protecting the planet and challenging longstanding injustice that I believe will save all of us.

And, through this center, we intend to give these young people and those who are coming up behind them whatever training, support, resources and platforms they need to fully realize their potential, to collaborate and share ideas, and to bring their dreams to scale.

Michelle and I cannot imagine a better legacy than that. We cannot imagine a better investment than that, for, in this next generation of leaders in Chicago and around the world, we see ourselves.

We didn't start out in Washington. I didn't start off as president. I started off right down the street. And the lessons I learned in these neighborhoods ended up shaping the rest of my life. The Obama Presidential Center is our way of showing young people

everywhere that they can do the same. And I could not be more excited to officially break ground and get us one step closer to making that vision a reality.

Thank you very much.

Now we're going to go grab some shovels and break some ground.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Thank you, everybody. .

(APPLAUSE)

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: OK. You have been listening there to former President Barack Obama talk about -- basically, it was his own trip down memory lane and why Chicago and that area in particular, that neighborhood is so important to him and his family.

[15:15:13]

It's where he and his wife met. It's where his children were born. And he talked about what a long journey it's been getting to this point about -- of the Obama Presidential Center, and what his hopes are for it.

So, let's bring in CNN chief political correspondent Dana Bash, as we continue to watch some of this groundbreaking.

Dana, it was interesting to hear President Obama there talk about this era we're living in of rapid disruption and distrust and division, and yet it sounds like he's still, I guess, optimistic that there's an anecdote to those things.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

And as we watch this kind of classic image of any groundbreaking, even more so for a presidential library, that was the message that he was trying to get across, that that is his hope, to use a word that's very familiar when you're talking about Barack Obama, his hope, that there can be more people who can forge a path from -- coming from basically nowhere up through a neighborhood like the one he is in right now, the South Side of Chicago, and learn to listen to others, learn to reach out to others, and so forth.

But this speech was also a very typical and kind of old-school Barack Obama, not the President Obama that we heard on the campaign trail over and over for President Biden, because -- now President Biden, because he was talking about the horrors, from his perspective, of the Trump presidency.

But this is the hope and change Obama that we first heard from in 2007 and 2008, talking about the need to end tribalism, talking about the fact that he wants this center, this presidential library, to be a place where people can try to bridge divisions and conflict and get over the anger and resentment which he said is in the breach right now because institutions haven't done a good enough job finding a way to cure those problems.

Very, very interesting and very noteworthy, and a long time coming, this library, Alisyn. I know that you know this has been kind of in the courts, as any library is -- prepares and takes a long time raising a lot of money. But this, because of the location, because it is in Jackson Park, it is part of the National Historic Registry.

It took a lot of time and a lot of legal battles to get to where they are right now. Some in the neighborhood said that they were worried about what it would do, that it would gentrify the neighborhood. Some said that they were worried it would disrupt the historical nature.

But that's also why you heard the president and -- the former president and the former first lady before him speak to what they think will benefit that community, benefit the community with jobs, with visitors, and with the knowledge and the awareness of what the South Side of Chicago really means to them, and they hope should mean to people who come and visit.

CAMEROTA: Yes, you're so right, Dana. It was a trip down memory lane in more ways than one. And hearing President Obama again invoke his sort of vintage lofty rhetoric about his goals for this and what he hopes for, for the country, it feels like a long time since we have been in that place.

But we will see if his presidential center can do that kind of nonpartisan or bipartisan thought-provoking work that he talks about.

Dana, thank you very much.

BASH: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, let's turn now to the fast-moving developments on Capitol Hill, with President Biden's agenda hanging in the balance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi telling her colleagues that passing the Democrats' massive spending package is -- quote -- "a moral imperative."

But the speaker has shifted her approach to getting things done. Pelosi has decided to move forward with a vote on the trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill before striking a deal on that bigger $3.5 trillion social safety net reconciliation package.

And progressives are pushing back. The decision to separate the two bills is a major reversal for Pelosi, who had said for months that she would do them in tandem. Today, the president is holding meetings at the White House with two key Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, about the future of the bills and his agenda.

So, here now to bring us the very latest -- it changes by the hour -- CNN chief congressional correspondent Manu Raju and CNN senior White House correspondent Phil Mattingly.

[15:20:00] Manu, Democrats decoupling these bills, that is the opposite of what the progressive have told us for weeks and weeks that they want. It would be a deal-breaker for them, they told us. So, now what?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

And she is -- Pelosi is facing significant blowback from the left for reversing course here. And it's uncertain whether she can get the votes to pass this infrastructure plan now that she has separated these two issues going forward.

Remember, Pelosi herself dug into the strategy, along with Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader. They said that the Senate needed to pass that larger Democratic-only plan to expand the social safety net first before the House would move on that bipartisan smaller infrastructure plan.

But now she says it's de-linked because those negotiations over the larger plan are ongoing, she is facing pushback from the left. Now, I am told from multiple sources that Chuck Schumer himself told Democratic senators at a lunch just moments ago that he was not consulted by this decision, and he faced pushback from Democratic senators who are concerned about going this route.

And I also asked Schumer at his press conference whether he agreed with the speaker, and he did not go and say that explicitly.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: You stood with Speaker Pelosi on the initial strategy to wait until the infrastructure, the reconciliation bill is passed before acting on infrastructure in the House.

Now that she has reversed course, do you support her strategy?

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Look, the bottom line is, I think we certainly I nation Senate believe in a two-track process. I believe Speaker Pelosi believes in a two-track process as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: So, not saying explicitly that he supports her strategy.

Significant. These two leaders are typically always on the same page and are talking frequently, but, at a key time, not here. And there is significant blowback from the left. Liberals that I talked to today said that they are ready to vote no to potentially sink that infrastructure bill, unless that larger package moves further along the legislative process.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: What's your concern with this strategy right now? REP. JESUS GARCIA (D-IL): The concern is that it is quite possible that if we call the smaller infrastructure bill and pass it, that we could be hung out to drive by not passing the larger reconciliation bill, the one that has all the good things that will benefit so many people across the country.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): Our caucus is strongest when it's unified, and decoupling these bills, it starts to pit priorities against one another.

And that's why I don't -- I disagree with separating them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And just moments ago, Senator Bernie Sanders, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, tweeted his opposition to this strategy of separating these two out.

So it shows you the challenges Pelosi has here going forward .The House' Congressional Progressive Caucus had a conference call. They overwhelmingly supported blocking that infrastructure plan going forward if the larger bill is not moving it forward by Thursday.

And, Alisyn, there's no chance that bigger bill can move by Thursday, so major questions left for the Biden agenda.

CAMEROTA: OK, Phil. So, at the same time, we know that President Biden is meeting with these two key Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin.

Any sense of what's being said in there?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Let me frame things this way.

Everything that Manu laid out is the exact reason why these meetings between the president and these two moderate senators are so critical. They hold the key. If they agree to a top line, if they make a firm commitment on something, that may be what gives progressives what they need to move forward and support the infrastructure bill on Thursday.

To this point, that hasn't happened. Now, the president met with senator Sinema earlier. He then met with Senator Manchin. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki referred to the Sinema discussion as constructive, said they moved the ball forward, and said they agreed on the fact that this was an inflection point moment, not anything else, wouldn't detail any more private discussions here.

Now, interestingly enough, Senator Sinema actually came back to the White House about an hour-and-a-half after her meeting ended. That, I'm told, was to meet with staff to follow up on a series of issues that she went through with the president.

Look, at this point, there have been no commitments from either senator. There have been no clue as to whether or not they reached any agreements with President Obama -- or President Biden about next steps.

But I can't stress this enough. That's the way out of this. And I think -- or at least the only likely way out of this at this point in time, because they're not going to move this $3.5-trillion-or-less climate and economic package through either or both chambers by the Thursday vote.

And I think what you have heard from Democrats -- and Manu has reported a lot on this as well -- from Capitol Hill is this desire to have the president weigh in more, to be more firm, to demand commitments from both of those senators.

There's been no sense that that's happened up to this point. Obviously, conversations are ongoing. We will have to see what happens over the course of the rest of the day, but critical meetings between the president and these two senators today, Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, come back to us when anything breaks.

Manu and Phil, thank you.

Meanwhile, the defense secretary and top generals facing tough questions on Capitol Hill over the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. We will tell you what they answered quite directly next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:29:36]

CAMEROTA: It's being called the most significant televised testimony from the military in years.

Senate lawmakers demanded answers from top Pentagon officials about what exactly went wrong during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley, and U.S. CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie each giving his first public testimony since last month's exit.

Milley told the Armed Services Committee that he agreed with General McKenzie that 2, 500 troops should have stayed in Afghanistan.