CNN "The Situation Room" - Transcript: Interview with Bernie Sanders

Interview

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BLITZER: Important issues indeed. All right, Jessica, thank you very much. Let's discuss this and more with the Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Bernie Sanders. Senator Sanders thanks, as usual for joining us. As you know, the Senate is starting to consider various amendments to this $1 trillion plus infrastructure bill, but you only have a handful of days before the Senate recess. So how do you get this done?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): By working very hard and working long hours. My hope and expectation is that this hard infrastructure bipartisan bill will get done by the end of the week. And then we will immediately turn to what we call the reconciliation bill, a bill which I think will have an extraordinarily positive impact on working families. And that will deal with the issues of extending the child tax credit, the $300 a month, a check for working families for their kids, which has cut childhood poverty in America by 61 percent, will reform in a very comprehensive way.

Child care, we're going to expand Medicare, to cover dental care, eyeglasses, hearing aids, we're going to finally get the United States have paid family and medical leave. We're going to put a whole lot of money into affordable housing. And of course, in the midst of this horrible climate crisis that we face, we're going to begin the process of transforming our energy system away from fossil fuel. And when we do all of those things, Wolf, we're going to create millions of good paying jobs.

BLITZER: You say, Senator, there could be no infrastructure bill, and that's a $1 trillion plus bill. Without a reconciliation bill, that's another $3.5 trillion. But can Moderate Democrats trust Progressives to deliver the votes for infrastructure? And can you trust the Moderates to back that $3.5 trillion deal that you want? This is really complicated?

SANDERS: It is. It is extremely complicated. And we look forward to the White House playing an active role in terms of making sure that we have the votes that we need to pass reconciliation, unlike obvious the bipartisan bill, the reconciliation bill, which is really transformative. It begins to address the reality that for decades, Congress has paid a whole lot of attention to the rich, and the powerful and campaign contributors and ignore the needs of the working class in this country. So having said that, and demanding that the wealthy stop paying their fair share of taxes, we're not going to get any Republican support. So we have zero Democratic votes to spare. But at the end of the day, the House and the Senate are going to have to come together to do something which is overwhelmingly popular among working families.

People are sick and tired of seeing the rich get richer and everybody else struggling. They want action. And we're going to give them what I think is long overdue.

BLITZER: Are you worried senator that the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bow to pressure from Moderate Democrats to decouple the infrastructure deal from the $3.5 trillion spending then?

SANDERS: Well, Speaker Pelosi I think has been very strong. And what she understands it is that it is imperative that we pass both that we cannot go forward with just the bipartisan bill. Look, to be very honest with you, Wolf, a physical, I'm a former mayor, so I know a little bit about roads and sidewalks and bridges and all that stuff.

It is terribly important. We have an enormous amount of work to be done in that area. But human infrastructure, the needs of working family, families, and our children and our elderly, that's actually more important. So, both of these bills have got to go forward together. And when we do that, we will create many, many good paying jobs.

And one of the things I'm really excited about as we go forward in transforming our energy system and trying to reverse climate change, we're going to create a civilian climate corps, which will provide hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs for young people, and give them the opportunity to lead the effort in trying to save this planet.

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So there's just a lot that we have to do, now is the time to do it. And I will tell you, that you got a lot of special interest the drug companies were going to lower the cost of the prescription drugs, the health care industry, the fossil fuel industry, you name the big money interests, they're going to try to defeat us. But it's important that we hang in there together, and that we pass this bill.

BLITZER: We'll see what happens this week and in the coming weeks. Senator Sanders thanks as usual for joining us.

SANDERS: Thank you.

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