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I'm Mark Baumgarten, Managing Editor for Crosscut and your host for this edition of "Northwest Newsmakers."

In a minute here, I'll be speaking with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal about her role in securing President Biden's agenda, the state of progressive politics in America, and the future of our democracy.

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Now let's turn to our conversation with Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

Representative Jayapal has been getting a lot of national attention lately.

As the leader of the Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives, she played an instrumental role in turning the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law earlier this fall, as well as the passage in the House of a related slate of social and environmental policy known as Build Back Better.

That bill, though, is still hanging in the balance, awaiting a Senate vote.

While Democrats hold majorities in both houses of Congress, as well as the White House, passage of the infrastructure bill remained uncertain heading into this fall.

Part of the reason for that was the Progressive Caucus that representative Jayapal leads.

In the end, the congresswoman delivered most of her caucus.

And we'll talk about that.

Now, Jayapal and her Democrat colleagues are pressing for passage of Build Back Better, which has been held up by some key moderates.

Looming over all of this is a midterm election that's predicted to deliver a shift in power.

But we're going to start closer to home with how this historic bill affects Washington state.

Congresswoman Jayapal, welcome to "Northwest Newsmakers."

- Thank you, Mark.

It's great to be with you.

- So let's start with what has been done, which is this infrastructure bill.

Huge historic bill.

$8.9 billion going to Washington state.

Billions more in grants possibly coming to the state.

What is the legacy of this bill going to be, looking into the future, do you think?

- Well, there are so many things, and I think it starts with the fact that the United States has disinvested in our infrastructure for so long.

And so if you look at the bill and all the things we're achieving with this bill, it's quite remarkable.

We are making the biggest investment in our bridges since the mid 1900s.

We are making the biggest investment in electrification and addressing the fossil fuel emission that comes from not having an electrified grid in this bill.

We have, close to home, we have money for electrification of our ferries.

We are addressing the ports.

Very important for us, the Seattle port.

We also have money for Puget Sound restoration.

There are so many...

The biggest investment in transit that we've seen for a very long time.

So I think if you look at the different pieces of the bill, we're replacing lead pipes.

There isn't enough money to replace all of the lead pipes, but we'll be able to get a significant start on this, and we hope to be able to finish the job.

I think there is so much in this bill that is saying to people we are creating good union jobs, we are investing in our infrastructure, and we are investing in taking on some pieces of climate change.

The bigger climate change bill is, of course, Build Back Better, but there are significant pieces in this that are extremely important.

- So infrastructure is really complex.

Even with shovel-ready projects, there's still a lot to go between passing a bill like this and then actually putting people to work.

How can your constituents and other Washingtonians, how will they know that this bill is having the effect that you say it's going to have in the near term?

How do they judge it in the near term, especially as we're looking at midterms coming up?

- Well, there are some investments that Secretary Buttigieg and President Biden have already determined can be made quickly.

So the port investment is a good example.

You know there's a lot of discussion right now about the backup in the supply chain and how we need to address the ports moving efficiently.

And so the port is already gonna get a big investment.

In fact, we're doing an event with them next week to highlight that, so that you will start to see.

There are many infrastructure projects that are shovel-ready and the money is gonna go directly to the states for those projects.

So that I know Mitch Landrieu has been brought on in the administration.

I was just exchanging calls with him the other day because we wanna make sure that the way the dollars are spent matches what we had in mind.

There's a Presidential initiative called Justice 40, which is part of this bill, which says that 40% of all federal investments will go into frontline communities that are most effected.

And we're gonna see those projects happening immediately.

A lot of the restoration projects will be able to get funds immediately.

Transit, we've already seen, and I was up at the light rail station a couple of weeks ago when the bill passed, because we are going to see an unprecedented investment in transit, which means that we here we'll be able to hopefully speed up what we had initially anticipated because we'll have assurance of those bills.

So people will be able to see jobs right away.

They'll be able to see these investments in their communities, and they'll be able to see projects, some projects started, hopefully a few projects finished, before the next year is over.

- So you mentioned Build Back Better and how there are some things that you want that are in that bill, especially that deal with climate, but then a lot of social policy and support.

You were instrumental in the negotiations in getting this passed.

And I was wondering, you've talked about a theory of change that you bring to your work.

You wrote a book about it.

And I was curious.

This really had to be a major test of that theory.

And we're kind of still in the midst of seeing how that test works out.

But I just wanted to get a sense from you about whether this experience, this negotiation that you went through, has changed the way you think about turning progressive ideas into law.

- Well, I think the theory of change that I ran on, coming as an organizer, a community organizer for many years before, is that you can organize on the inside to build a more powerful force.

And the test for that, of course, was developing the Progressive Caucus.

We have 96 members, but it really operated like a social club for a long time.

And when I got there, the work had already started with Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva, who were the two co-chairs before, but we really put in place a whole new theory of change.

We started to build an infrastructure.

We brought in more staff, we raised dues.

We put in rules.

We also built a very powerful pack that has gone from raising $300,000 to raising 4 million a cycle.

We helped build a 501 C3 and C4 to do research and policy.

That was all the infrastructure that had to be put in place over the last four years in order for us to show the power that we were able to show this time.

And that power was to say that the progressive movement has already accomplished a lot through the campaign.

Bernie Sanders campaign, Elizabeth Warren's campaign.

You see it with President Biden.

This was not a progressive agenda we were pushing for with Build Back Better in the sense that this was the President's agenda.

There's no distinction between the two, which is not something we could have said for some time.

The American Rescue Plan was the first example of progressive's leveraging our power to get checks in people's pockets.

We got those survival checks, even though there was a big fight about it.

That was one of our big priorities.

We've reduced child poverty in half with the Child Tax Credit.

So big wins in the American Rescue Plan.

But Build Back Better originally was both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better Act together.

And when they got separated, our fear was that the 85% of the President's agenda that's in Build Back Better would be left behind.

We would do the easy thing, which was not that it was easy, but we would do the easier thing, which was the infrastructure bill and then we would forget about Build Back Better.

And so I feel so good about the fact that we knew we would pass the infrastructure bill, and I knew we would deliver the votes to do that from progressive's, who frankly weren't that excited about passing that on its own.

But to do that, we had to remind people that the two had to go together, and that's what we were able to get through the House.

Now there's a final step, which is the Senate.

And my hope is still that they're gonna get it done before the end of the year.

There have been some delays because of the parliamentarian having to go through the bill and see what provisions fit and what don't fit.

So we're running up on a clock for sure, but I do believe we're gonna get it done.

the President personally promised me that he was gonna deliver the votes in the Senate.

I trust the President after much discussion.

And most of the bill has been pre-conferenced, meaning it was worked out between the President, Senator Manchin, Senator Sinema.

I wanna remind you and your viewers that this is not a progressive versus moderate fight.

96% of Democrats in the House and the Senate, including many of the people who are in the most difficult districts across the country, were behind this agenda.

This was the President's agenda that we were trying to deliver on.

But we have very narrow margins in the House and the Senate.

We need every vote.

We can't afford to malign anybody who's not voting with us.

And so there were many times when I felt like people rolled grenades at us and we had to pick it up, put the pin back in it and say, nope, we're all working in the same direction, we're all moving the same direction, and we're gonna get it done because at the end of the day, Mark, this is about lowering costs for American people.

Lowering childcare costs, universal pre-K for every three and four-year-old.

It's about the biggest investment in housing we've ever made.

The biggest investment in climate, taking on climate change.

And, of course, immigration, which has been near and dear to my heart.

And lowering drug prices.

$35 for insulin capped versus hundreds of dollars.

- There is a lot to unpack, both in what's in the bill, but also in the process.

And I think that we're in the middle of the process still.

- Almost at the end.

- Almost at the end.

- I wanna get a little bit deeper into that 'cause I think that there's something here that tells us a little bit about where progressive politics are in this country right now.

And, as you pointed out, the Caucus has become more powerful.

It really has emerged as a force.

And a part of that though is also that you have new representatives who have come into the fold, who are very progressive, who really look to you as being a mentor in some ways, this is the squad, right.

And they voted "no" on this infrastructure bill.

So what does that mean to you?

How does it mean in the... How do you view it as... What does it say about the future of the progressive movement?

- You know, this had not been covered very much, so I'm glad we're talking about it.

I believe they all would have voted "yes," but at the very last minute the order of the bills was switched.

So at the very last minute, the deal we thought we were going to have is that we were going to vote on the rule to bring the Build Back Better Act first, and then vote on the infrastructure bill.

And there was a deal that we negotiated with the six people who didn't want to vote for Build Back Better.

That was a signed agreement that we would vote for Build Back Better a week later.

But the rule was the thing that brings it to the floor.

And it was sort of an important step, in the way it's a bit wonky, but it was important.

At the last minute that got changed and the infrastructure bill vote came first and the rule came second, and that's when we lost the six members.

And I think that I understand their concern.

They wanted to make sure that since we were going to delay the final vote on Build Back Better, that people were gonna vote for the rule.

If you don't vote for the rule, you can't bring the bill to the floor.

And so they were not happy that that got switched, and I think they wanted to make it clear that they were not happy.

Now I think in some ways they forced more Republicans to vote for the infrastructure bill.

I'm tired of Republicans who vote "no" and take the dough, then they go back and brag about how they're bringing investments in when they never voted for it.

So I was happy to get more Republicans on the record voting for the infrastructure bill.

But also I think we knew we were going to be able to deliver the votes, and I have a lot of respect for our members.

The agreement we had, I think, is that the order would be switched and then we would be able to get everyone.

I do wanna say, though, that there were probably 15 to 20 Progressive Caucus members, not just the squad, who did not originally want to vote for the infrastructure bill if we weren't gonna do Build Back Better, if we were gonna stop with infrastructure.

And I was able to get all of our other members to vote for the infrastructure bill in the negotiation.

So I don't think it says very much.

I mean, I think people wanna make something out of it, but there was actually some detail about process that went into that vote.

- So I'm kind of curious.

I'm not super familiar with exactly what your communication with your Senate colleagues is.

Going into this vote, what was the degree of kind of... We know that there was the promise sort of within the House, but then what were you told would happen in the Senate with the bill that you were passing?

And how confident were you that that bill was going to see passage in the Senate?

- Well, we were very confident, really based on the President's discussions with us and based on the conversations we had with Senator Schumer and with other senators in the Senate.

I think that just rewinding a bit, the senators only vote, the progressive senators only voted for the infrastructure bill, because they were told that Build Back Better would pass at the same time in the House, and that the two bills would be kept together.

And then that promise got broken by a small group of conservative Democrats in the House, nine people, not a big group, nine people.

And that's when the two bills started to get separated.

And so we were in conversation with our Senate colleagues all the time, and particularly with the progressive senators who were driving a lot of the original Build Back Better act.

So Senator Sanders, Warren, Markey, Merkley, and, of course, our own senators.

Patty Murray was very involved in the childcare provisions of Build Back Better in particular.

So I think there was a lot of communication all along.

- Yeah, I'm curious about the communication with the more moderate elements of the Senate Democrats, of course.

And in particular, I guess I bring that up because a couple of months is a political lifetime, and between when the House passed the initial infrastructure bill and now, inflation has become a major issue.

And I know that you feel confident that Build Back Better is gonna go through, but there is definitely...

I would say that it seems that it's on shakier ground than it was say a month and a half ago.

I wanted to talk about inflation, and we've seen a lot of federal spending in the last year and a half.

Do you feel that lawmakers have underestimated the impact that that amount of federal spending would have on inflation?

- No, I don't think that's the issue.

I think the issue is that we are emerging from multiple crises, and people are suffering.

I mean, there is a lot of pain out there.

People have not been able to go back to work.

They don't have childcare.

They're worried even if payments have been put on moratoriums.

They're worried about when that comes back.

Futures are uncertain.

In some cases, that's good.

People are reassessing what jobs they wanna go to, but there are a lot of people who are trying to decide what they want to do with their life and they don't have certainty to predict.

And particularly in this context, COVID.

COVID is a huge issue even though the President and Congress have done so much to get shots in arms, to get people vaccinated.

It's still a political issue!

It shouldn't be, but it is.

We still don't have enough people vaccinated in the United States.

We still don't have enough people vaccinated in the country.

And so all of that has led to different factors that lead to inflation, oil prices being a big one, cars being a big one, not being able to get the things we need.

There are a few big ticket items that make up that inflationary number.

And if you look at many of the other factors that go along with that, wages have also gone up.

So if you're working, not everybody is working, but if you're working, the impact of inflation is actually quite small.

If you're not working, it isn't.

Since the President put into place an action plan on gas prices and on supply chain.

Gasoline prices have gone down substantially just in the last couple of weeks.

That's not all reflected yet in the inflationary number.

But all of that said, Mark, if you're worried about costs, my constituents don't say to me, Congresswoman, I'm worried about inflation.

They say, "I can't pay my bills."

And so what happens when you can't pay your bills?

I have been on a very limited budget in my life, and I know that if a cost goes up here, so let's say gas goes up here, I got to bring something else down because I got a fixed amount of dollars.

If we pass Build Back Better, we will lower costs for families through childcare, pre-K, elder care, we will lower drug prices for families for working people across the country, and we will make sure that we're addressing the tax system where nobody under 400,000 is gonna pay more, but the people who are earning more and the bigger corporations, they are going to pay at least a little bit more of their fair share.

So that's the thing I think we are still focused on, to get out of this.

- So inflation, you're not adjusting your political calculus based on the numbers that have come out in the last few weeks.

It's still okay.

- Yeah.

But we are trying to do things to affect costs for families, including gas, including...

The big investment in the port is gonna help the supply chain.

And we're already seeing prices go down with gas prices.

We're not seeing some of the effects in the inflationary numbers.

And remember we have created, in the last 10 months under President Biden and in this Congress, we have created 6 million new jobs.

That's the largest number of jobs of any new President in the first 10 months.

And unemployment is down to 4.2%.

Why is that a big deal?

Because the CBO and economists predicted that we wouldn't get to that level until 2024.

So there's so much good news, but, of course, the 24/7 news cycle always focuses on the things that are still challenges, and we can't lie about those things.

We are still in a challenging moment and coming out of big crises.

- So other lawmakers feel differently about inflation than you do as far as how it affects the political calculus.

And like I said, I mean, I think the Build Back Better, Senator Manchin who is really kind of a linchpin here has sort of feels like he might be getting a little bit of cold feet.

And I know that you said that you are confident that the Senate is gonna deliver here.

If the Senate doesn't deliver, if Build Back Better does not become law, would you view it as the decision to separate the bills as being a miscalculation?

- I've never thought it was a good idea to separate the bills for exactly this reason.

I was not a fan of it.

I was public about that.

I was public to the White House about it.

I was private to the White House about it.

I was public to our leadership.

It's why we pushed early on to say let's pass both of them together if we're gonna separate them.

They have to be tied together.

And it's why we ran the strategy we did.

And let me tell you, we would not be where we are with Build Back Better, even this last phase, had we not done what we had done.

And so many people including non-progressives have come up to me to tell me that and to thank me for fighting for Build Back Better because it's 85% of the President's agenda.

If we really want to take on climate change, Build Back Better is the bill that is going to do that.

We are not going to be able to reach the goals that the President laid out at COP26 if we don't do Build Back Better.

We just aren't!

And we're not going to be able to reduce the pain and suffering for women who have been pushed out of the workforce in record numbers and who are the childcare, the predominant childcare givers, still in this country.

They're not going back to work 'cause they don't have childcare.

So I think it is really important to understand.

And we always talk about the infrastructure bill as the jobs bill, but Build Back Better creates double the number of jobs that the infrastructure bill does.

It just creates it in industries that are dominated by women, by people of color, by immigrants.

And so I think it is really important to think of Build Back Better as an investment in jobs, in lowering costs, and in making the tax system more fair.

- So let's talk about the electoral politics about this, because we do have a midterm election coming up next year, as you know.

(Pramila laughs) And so, I want to stay in the zone of if Build Back Better does not pass, I hope you don't mind.

But if it doesn't pass, have Democrats done enough to maintain the right to have the majorities in Washington, DC?

- We need to pass Build Back Better.

I just have to say that.

I just have to say it.

We have to pass Build Back Better.

But yes, we have done, I think, tremendous work, and I hope people talk about it and cover it, starting with the American Rescue Plan.

I mean, $1.9 trillion that saved people's lives.

Shots in arms, money in people's pockets.

We increased the amount of money cash that people have at home through Build Back Better.

We kept local and state governments going.

Millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars to small businesses across the country to keep them going.

We were able to cut child poverty in half with the child tax credit.

So I think we can't forget how much got done with the rescue plan.

Then let's look at infrastructure.

Even though President Trump talked about infrastructure over and over and over again.

He never got it done.

We have never had an investment of this size in the country's infrastructure.

And we got it done as Democrats with not a single American Rescue Plan, with not a single Republican vote, the infrastructure bill with very few Republican votes in the House, more in the Senate.

But this is, we have, as Democrats, moved the country forward, brought unemployment down, created jobs, brought the vaccination rate up.

And so I think we have plenty to run on, but I do think that Build Back Better is essential because it is the majority of the democratic agenda.

It's the agenda that President Biden rolled down to Capitol Hill from the White House this past April, or February I guess it was, to deliver the speech to Congress about the agenda.

And if we can't do that, then voters who delivered us the House, the Senate and the White House are going to be less excited about us, and these are gonna be tight margins.

So we are gonna get it done and we have to get it done.

- All right, so let's pause there.

I just want to send a message out to everybody viewing this at home that we are gonna be having a Q and A here in about 10 minutes.

So please get your questions in for representative Jayapal.

We're gonna move on to another topic here, and that is our democracy and election security.

So we've been seeing a lot of machinations at the local and state level from the GOP looking to change the way that our elections are run at that level, and have some impact on elections.

Democrats are putting their eggs into a legislative basket at the federal level of voting rights legislation.

So the House has passed two voting rights bills, and the Senate, in order to pass those bills, would need to, unless there's a serious change of heart on the part of some Republicans, would need to eliminate or find a way to carve out an exception with the filibuster.

So my question is one here about kind of the extent of your sort of sway, I guess.

Do you just have to sit and wait that out or are you actively working on trying to get that legislation passed?

And what does that look like, you going over to your Senate colleagues and having those conversations?

- We have been actively involved in trying to get the legislation passed, the Progressive Caucus and the Democratic Caucus as a whole has prioritized that legislation, and we passed it early in the session.

And then we've been working with our Senate colleagues to come up with what is the answer to getting a bill passed in the Senate.

We also ran a big campaign for months that we will start again around reforming the filibuster.

We did a lot of movement building and progressive education or education with progressive communities, but also with the general public about what is the filibuster and why is it a Jim Crow relic that needs to be eliminated or reformed?

And how is it being used essentially to give power to the tyranny of the minority?

And why is it that it's actually blocking bipartisanship?

Unlike what proponents of the filibuster say, which is it protects bipartisanship, it's actually the opposite.

If you can't get 10 Republican votes, you can't even bring a bill up for consideration, as you know, which means that you're never gonna get even four or five Republicans because they're not gonna vote for something that's not gonna pass.

That's clearly not gonna be brought up for consideration or not gonna pass.

So we are now working and have been working with our outside partners, with the White House, and with the Senate, to figure out what the compromise legislation is.

Joe Manchin actually put that compromise legislation together.

And the deal was he could try to find 10 Republicans with his legislation and see if he could find them.

And if he couldn't find them, then hopefully that would be sufficient to convince him, and there may be some others, he's the one that gets the attention, that it's time to reform the filibuster.

I think the most likely outcome, even though I believe it should be eliminated, is some sort of a carve out immediately for voting rights.

Not that dissimilar to what we did for the debt limit bill, frankly, where we said for this bill we're just gonna use 51 votes.

And I think that that is something that we just have to recognize how dire the situation is with voter suppression and how close we came on January 6th to losing our democracy and what this last several years has taught us.

- And I want to get to that in a minute.

I do though... You're a coalition builder.

I mean, the way that you approach your work, that is a big part of your theory of change.

And so I appreciate the overview of really all of the machinery that's going on, but on a personal level, do you and Joe Manchin talk to one another?

- We have spoken to each other, yes.

Started during Build Back Better and we do have a relationship.

- And what's that relationship like?

I mean, you are the most powerful progressive in DC, and I know you're humble about it.

And then Joe Manchin is really the major obstacle of progressive legislation.

What is that conversation like?

How do you approach it?

- Well, I always approach these things on a person-to-person level.

We're all human beings.

He was elected by his state to represent West Virginia.

I am not gonna judge whether he's doing that in a way that I think is appropriate.

I mean, just like I wouldn't want him to judge whether I'm representing my district in a way that's appropriate.

That said, I think it is frustrating that we have these things that are so crucial.

And the thing about voting rights in particular is that Joe Manchin really understands voting rights.

I mean, he was the Secretary of State in West Virginia, and I believe he wants to get these things done.

Many of the things that are in the bill, he's done in his own state on voting rights.

We have a different conversation when it comes to a $15 minimum wage or some other issues, but on voting rights he really gets the issue.

He's worked on it.

He supportive of it.

And it's this belief that somehow the filibuster is an institution that we need to protect in the Senate, that it provides gravitas to the Senate.

I think it just shows how broken the Senate is, over and over again.

And it is such a relic of Jim Crow.

It was used by Southern segregationist to stop any progress in civil rights.

And it's difficult that we see those two things differently because that, of course, affects this issue.

But, no, Joe Manchin is a very nice man.

We have very different views on a number of things, and we've talked about them and we've agreed to disagree.

Everything from abortion to a $15 minimum wage to the filibuster.

But we got to work together.

We got to find a way to get through because we need his vote.

- So your fellow representative, Cliburn, said this is going to happen, I think a couple of days ago.

Do you believe that voting rights is definitely going to happen?

- I believe that it has to happen because it's integral to our democracy, and I don't know what the consequences will be if it doesn't happen.

I want to be as certain as Jim Cliburn is because that's how strongly I believe it has to happen.

But I don't know.

We are in this awful situation where we have no margin in the Senate and we have the filibuster, and it is stopping all progress.

It really is the filibuster or voting rights, the filibuster or gun reform, the filibuster or abortion, the filibuster or the LGBT equality.

You just go down the list.

The filibuster is stopping progress on issues, immigration reform, on issues that the vast majority of Americans, Democrats, independents and Republicans, want to have happen.

And it is a big part of the reason why people lose faith in government.

Because who wants to understand some wonky procedure where you twist yourself into parliamentarian pretzels trying to get some unelected woman, bless her heart, she's doing her job, who's the parliamentarian to decide whether or not something can go into budget reconciliation because we have the filibuster.

It's an arcane process that before I came to Congress I did not know myself and I'm pretty politically educated.

But it's a reason why people say what's the point of voting when we can't deliver on these changes.

And I say to people, "Do not give up hope.

"Your vote is important.

Your voice is important.

"We have to change these things."

And it only happens through organizing and through movement pressure, and electing more people who believe in the same vision going forward.

- All right.

So we are out of time for my questions.

I really appreciate how open you've been with me and in answering them.

But now let's go to the people and see what our viewers have to ask.

So this is a good question.

I was actually...

I read a column from a Beltway columnist who was pointing to your work on this legislation and saying that it is a good argument that you should be the next speaker of the House.

So from Ralph we have, "Do you think about becoming speaker of the House "when Nancy Pelosi is done with her term?"

- Well, Ralph, if you read my book, you'll learn that one of the things about me is I'm very focused on the task at hand.

And I have been incredibly fortunate that opportunities arise, and I look at whether I feel like I can make a difference in that opportunity or not.

But at this moment, I am still very focused on making sure we deliver on Build Back Better, building the Progressive Caucus, and building the Democratic Caucus, frankly, to be as strong as it can be.

So when this leadership leaves, there will be a generational change and I do believe that's important for every institution.

And so let's see what happens then, but I'm really focused on making sure we get voting rights, Build Back Better, all the things we're talking about.

- That's what I was expecting you would say.

(Pramila laughs) So from Beryl, we have a good question back to infrastructure.

"What controls do you have in place "to ensure the funds are equitably distributed "to marginalized people for jobs, "consulting, management, and more, "and how will you monitor and evaluate those?"

- Beryl, what is one of the best questions really.

And it's the thing I'm really focused on, it's why I'm talking to Mitch Landrieu, why I've spoken to Buttigieg, why I'm talking to folks even still on the rescue plan, because Gene Sperling has been monitoring some of that.

We have learned that it's not enough just to do the legislation.

We then have to make sure the dollars get distributed in the ways that we want.

And we saw some problems with the American Rescue Plan.

The PPP not getting to small businesses that should have had it.

And so in the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better there is the Justice 40 initiative.

And we have gotten the President's public commitment and an all-of-government approach to making sure that 40% of all federal investments go to the communities that are most marginalized and need it the most.

Some of that is going to need to be monitored at the federal level.

And then to Beryl, I would also say some of it will need to be monitored at the local and state level because a lot of dollars flow through states and flow through localities.

So we- - Is the funding there for that at the federal level, or is that a cost of the state would have to take on?

- No, no, no!

The funding is there and it's both built into the legislation and the President has put people like Mitch in charge of like the infrastructure bill implementation.

And we're sitting down actually shortly to talk about how do make sure that some of the things we've fought so hard for are actually gonna get delivered in that way.

This is a big issue though.

I don't think that the federal government... Well, I don't think that all of our governments have been as focused on implementation as we have.

And I'll give you an example of something I'm proud of in our office and tout our constituent services at the same time.

When those survival checks went out, we got notified by a number of organizations serving folks who are experiencing homelessness that those people were not able to get the checks because for some reason the address was the shelter address and it was being flagged by treasury in sending out the checks by the IRS and sending out the checks.

And so the checks weren't getting delivered, and we had to work with treasury, with Gene Sperling and the administration, to make sure we could get those checks delivered, and there was a problem in the process part of it.

So we're fixing things as we find them because these are some of the biggest investments.

And so I would say to constituents let us know if you're not getting money that you were supposed to be getting.

We're still working on making sure everybody got their survival checks.

And that's just the situation that we have.

- Okay, from David, "What about the danger of Build Back Better "being gutted by the time it's passed by the Senate?"

It, of course, needs to come back to the House.

And what about removing Medicare expansion down to hearing aids only.

I know paid parental leave is something that is a question as well.

How do you judge it in the House as it comes out of the Senate?

Is there anything that's unacceptable?

- Well, the bottom line was what was committed to in the framework that the President laid out and that we endorsed.

And that is probably 90% of the bill.

But we did add in the House a few things that were not in the framework.

Paid leave is an example of that.

And frankly, we did that to try and push my friend, Senator Manchin, to understand that we need paid leave.

We're one of six countries in the world that doesn't provide paid leave.

So we put it in the House, even though it was scaled back, but we knew that there was a possibility that might be stripped out.

So there's a little bit of a difference between the things that were negotiated and the things that were added in the House.

Medicare expansion is one of the most popular pieces of this package.

In my view, it would be absolutely politically idiotic to take it out because it is so necessary for seniors to get dental vision and hearing.

And right now the bill does not have dental vision and hearing.

It has hearing aids, and we are hoping that we can add vision and dental.

Senator Sanders is working hard on that.

But that is a really important component for our seniors.

And so I know that that's under negotiation because, again, there's one senator who doesn't want that in, and this is the problem we have is that the Senate operates much more as individuals and not the way that I think we should operate.

We're all part of the democratic team, but that is the way we have it.

And so we just have to be real about what the constraints are on us.

- Okay, so this question from Louis is one that I actually had in my original script but had to move past, but what can be done to stop the...

This is Louis' question.

"What can be done to stop these horrible abortion laws "that are going on in states across the country?

"What happens if Roe is overturned?"

And I would just add to that, if Roe is overturned or even weakened by the Supreme Court, what is the proper legislative option there?

- Well, Louis, thanks for the question, and this is personal to me as well as political, because I am one of the one in four women in America who have had an abortion.

I've spoken about it publicly.

I've testified about it.

I've written about it.

And I am fortunate to live in a state where we have made abortion much more accessible and affordable than other states.

And so if the Supreme Court rolls back Roe or eliminates it completely, there's probably 20 states across the country that are going to immediately ban abortion.

And that means that people across this country are gonna have to try to cross state lines or do back alley abortions like pre-Roe, and, of course, it's gonna affect Brown, Black, Indigenous, poor women the most.

And so I think what we have done is we've passed a bill to codify Roe v. Wade.

Guess what's stopping us.

The filibuster!

So we are trying to figure out if there are enough Republican women senators who might wanna come along with trying to do something about this and codify it.

But at the same time, I do think we also have to look at the Supreme Court.

And if the Supreme Court rolls back or eliminates Roe, they are thumbing their nose at precedent, and that is dangerous for so many other issues across the country.

Workers' rights.

So many things that have been settled.

Civil rights, voting rights.

And it's everyone should be concerned about that.

So we have also endorsed a proposal for court expansion in the Progressive Caucus, because I think we have to recognize that this is not just a conservative court.

This is a radical court.

And to overturn precedent in the way that they're contemplating right now with Roe is stunning.

And it's going to mean that people are going to lose faith in the highest court of our land, and that is going to be incredibly damaging to our democracy.

So I hope the Supreme Court justices are understanding what the effect of overturning Roe v. Wade is and politicizing the justice system in the way that it has become.

- How have those conversations with the Republican women senators gone?

Are those active right now?

- I'm not having them directly, but I know some of my Senate colleagues are, so I can't speak to the nature of those.

But I do think that when Senator Collins confirmed Justice Kavanaugh and said she was confident that he was going to take precedent seriously.

And then you look at his comments during the Supreme Court deliberations that certainly did not seem to be the case.

And I think some of those senators need to be held accountable.

And ultimately, I think that whatever happens, we need to make sure that people are turning out.

And I believe that people will.

I believe people across this country, women and families across this country, are going to turn out in record numbers at the ballot box if the Supreme Court undermines this very basic, very personal, very crucial and constitutional right.

- So from Terry.

Terry asks, "You continue to emphasize "how close the margin is on votes in both chambers.

"As you said, Senate is 50-50 with the tie break "from the vice-President.

"The margin in the House is incredibly slim as well.

"In the election that we saw in Virginia, "and then also some city elections that showed "maybe a bit of a backlash against progressivism, "does pushing a progressive agenda "endanger the Democrats in 2022?"

- No, I don't think so at all.

We won the election in the last year two years ago, or a year ago, on a progressive agenda.

It was the President's agenda, but we won it on all of these issues that are incredibly popular.

And I think that we just have to recognize that people want us to deliver for them.

And we have with the American Rescue Plan, we have with the infrastructure bill, and we will with Build Back Better.

But also many other that the administration is doing through executive order that are helping people, bringing down costs for people, and putting working families and poor families first instead of the wealthiest.

And so I believe that elections are very local and they're very specific to a time and a place.

We had.., I don't agree that progressives lost in the last set of elections.

I think we lost some races.

We won a whole bunch of races.

We have progressive mayors that one in Boston, in Ohio and places across the country.

We have progressives who won right here Teresa Mosqueda won at the same time that Lorena Gonzalez lost.

And so I think that there are very specific issues.

Virginia is a case in point.

Terry McAuliffe did not lose the governor's race in Virginia because Congress didn't pass an infrastructure bill.

Every attack ad on Terry McAuliffe in the two weeks leading up to the election or the three weeks leading up to the election, it was not about Congress.

It wasn't about anything else.

It was about education and schools and an issue of politicizing, critical race theory, and turning that into a cudgel.

And I think that that is something Terry McAuliffe also could have run on the American Rescue Plan instead of saying what Congress hasn't done.

I think that there are lessons to be taken from every race, but it does tend to be a fairly localized situation.

And I think that the progressive agenda is President Biden's agenda.

It is the democratic agenda that won us the House, the Senate, and the White House.

So let's not forget that.

- So let's stay for a final question on elections, but really focusing in on the anniversary of the insurrection that's coming up.

So Laura asks, "What are the January 6th investigation's going to do "to change anything?"

So we certainly have seen investigations outside of the House.

We've seen charges brought against people who've participated.

We've seen civil suits filed.

Washington, DC, just filed a civil suit, I think yesterday.

But how are these things and the investigations going to prevent something like that from happening again?

I mean, this is necessary, but what are we doing to prevent?

- Well, it's really necessary.

A lot of the text messages that were just revealed from the information that was subpoenaed through the select committee, a lot of that information is also going to be used in court cases.

So there's a real thread through all of these ways that we're trying to find accountability.

But it has to start with truth, Mark.

And I think that is the thing.

I was trapped in the gallery, as you know.

And I think that is the thing that has been so hard.

If the response to January 6th, the worst assault on the United States capital, since the war of 1812, had been for Republicans and Democrats to come together and say this was outrageous, this can never happen again.

We have to get to the truth.

Here are the facts, We're gonna work on it together.

We're gonna put together a bipartisan commission.

That would have been one thing that would have really moved us forward.

Instead what happened is the majority of Republicans, including those Republicans who were sending texts on that day to Mark Meadows to say, "The President has to stop this.

"This has gone too far.

We need to stop this."

Those people are continuing to fuel the big lie.

I have colleagues who won't admit that Joe Biden is the legitimately elected President.

We have efforts run by Donald Trump, the party of the cult, the party of the big lie, that are still attempting to overturn election results in states from the last election.

So it is a really troubling thing, and it is why the select committee's investigation is so important because we're getting information about exactly what happened, who was involved.

And at the end of the day, we will hold those people accountable.

Some of it will be done through the courts.

Some of it will be done through the criminal courts.

And some of it will be done through Congress and changes that we may need to make in our legislation to ensure that we have accountability and that this never happens again.

- All right, so that brings us to the end of our conversation Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining me and all of our viewers today.

- Well, thank you so much to you and to Crosscut for having me.

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Thanks again, Congresswoman, and thanks, everybody.

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