Full King Interview: 'Talking filibuster' or 'alternative' Could Be An Option For The Senate

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: And turning now to two big issues in Washington. On President Biden's social spending plan, Democrats are now reportedly nearing agreement on a billionaire's tax rather than raising rates on people making north of $400,000 a year because of opposition by Senator Kyrsten Sinema. And because Republicans denied any debate at all on voting rights, the president says he may now be willing to overhaul the filibuster. One senator who is moving in the same direction on that score is Independent Senator Angus King of Maine. And Senator King is here with us. Welcome back to Meet the Press, Senator King. [00:00:35] Speaker 2: Great to be with you, Andrea. Good morning. [00:00:38] Speaker 1: Good morning to you. I want to talk to you first about the filibuster. You were one of the resistors to going against the filibuster. But this week, when for a third time, Republicans blocked even any debate on voting rights, you began to change and say that you might consider alterations to the filibuster. What are you willing to consider, getting rid of it altogether or having a talking filibuster, which is what they used to do? Where are you now? [00:01:05] Speaker 2: Well, I think we I'm not really ready to say let's get rid of it altogether because I think there are circumstances where it makes sense. So I prefer some alternative to what the present rule is. I'd like to restore the Senate to what it was, where we actually had debates and people had to hold the floor. And so I think some kind of talking filibuster, perhaps a rule that instead of having to have 60 votes to pass something, you'd have to have 41 votes to stop it. So that way, the minority would at least have to show up. One of the problems now is they don't even have to show up. They don't have to speak. They don't have to do anything. It just sort of becomes an automatic supermajority requirement, which isn't in the Constitution. And the framers were diametrically opposed to that concept. But interestingly, I recently learned this. One of the reasons the Articles of Confederation failed back before the Constitution was that it had a supermajority requirement for Congress to do anything. And they ended up not being able to do anything. And so we've got to do something about this, at least when it comes to something as crucial as democracy itself, as voting rights. [00:02:18] Speaker 1: Well, do you think you can get 50 votes, though, to change that rule? Would Senators Mansion and Cinema, for instance, go along with it? [00:02:25] Speaker 2: Well, you know, I've talked to both of them, and I can't say for sure. I don't want to read minds here. I know that both of them have resisted it, as have I, because once you monkey with the rule, then it's going to work both ways. It's going to come back, and it could come back to bite those who want to move things forward right now. Today's obnoxious obstruction tomorrow could be a precious shield. But when it comes to democracy, I think Joe and Kirsten will listen. Joe Manchin's a former Secretary of State. He believes in people's right to vote. He helped negotiate the bill that we brought to the floor the other day that they wouldn't even let us get to a debate on. I mean, it was a filibuster of a motion to just bring the bill to the floor. And I think Joe might be ready to listen to not abolition of the filibuster, but some modification to make it, to allow us to move forward, to give the minority all the rights in the world to speak, to debate, to make their points. But at some point, we've got to be able to make decisions. The trick, Andrea, is respecting minority rights, while at the same time not empowering the minority with an effective veto. That's the needle that we're trying to thread here. [00:03:45] Speaker 1: Now, talking about trying to thread the needle, let's talk about the so-called reconciliation, the social spending bills. And so much focus has been on the trillions of dollars that are being spent and not on what is being cut, and not on what is still in there. But how do you feel right now, for instance, about the billionaire's tax that apparently is one of the things that's being considered to get around Senator Sinema's opposition to raising rates on the wealthy? [00:04:16] Speaker 2: Well, you know, number one, I think you're right. I think one of the mistakes in this has been all the attention has been on what the number is, 3.5 billion, 2.8, 2.2, whatever it is, rather than what's in the bill. Why are we doing this? And, you know, I think back, Andrea, to the 50s, the two most important federal policies of the 50s that propelled us into the prosperity of the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, there were two. One was the interstate highway system, and the other was the GI Bill. I talked to a guy just the other day, 96 years old, enlisted in the Navy during World War II. The GI Bill changed his life. He didn't even finish high school when he enlisted. He came back, finished high school, went to college. And so really what we're talking about is a GI Bill for the 21st century. It's funds for things like childcare, for pre-K, for those kinds of, for paid family leave, for things that will allow people to go to work. You need a road to get to the job, but in many cases, in Maine and across the country, you need childcare in order to go to work. [00:05:26] Speaker 1: Well, let me ask you about Senator Joe Manchin and climate, because right now the climate provision is really out of the bill. The president's going to try to do things by executive order, we're told, but that can always be overturned, challenged in the courts. So you've lost the climate provisions. Senator Manchin is talking about, even at one point this week, becoming an independent like you. How do you feel about Senator Manchin becoming an independent, still voting with Democrats, and losing so much of climate, which is so important to Mainers? [00:05:57] Speaker 2: Well, first, let me take the independent part. Of course, I'd welcome an expansion of my caucus by a third. But on the other hand, I think Joe had a rather colorful response to that. It started with the word bold. So I don't really think that's going to happen. Listen, Joe is the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. I'm on that committee. We've done a lot under his leadership on climate this year, on things like energy efficiency, on energy storage, which, by the way, I think is the real key to a clean energy future. And he's facilitated that. He's worked through it. He didn't like the provisions that were in the president's proposal. But I don't think that necessarily means that he's, you know, death on climate legislation. I think there are other ways to approach this problem to get to the same result. Clearly, we've got to get there. It's one of my major priorities in Congress. I used to carry a card around that shows the gross expansion of CO2 in our atmosphere and what it's doing to the planet. So I'm all in on this subject. But I think there are still going to be paths that we can find to solve the problem, or at least to begin, I shouldn't have said solve the problem, to begin to solve the problem, because it really is a crisis facing this country and the world. The other piece, Andrea, that we've got to remember is we can't do it alone. And I think the most unfortunate part about losing the provisions of the reconciliation bill is that it weakens Joe Biden's hands in Glasgow, the climate meeting that's coming up. Because if we're going to get the rest of the world to take serious steps to remedy this problem, we've got to do it ourselves. So I'm disappointed that we're not going to be able to move forward with those provisions. But I think there are going to be other alternatives. And I think Joe Manchin will be there. [00:07:52] Speaker 1: And in fact, he's going to be in Wilmington today negotiating with the president one-on-one. So we'll wait to see what comes out of that. So great to see you, Senator Antigus King. Thank you very much for joining us today. [00:08:03] Speaker 2: Thank you, Andrea. Great to be with you. Thanks for watching our YouTube channel. Follow today's top stories and breaking news by downloading the NBC News app.