which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> next, "newsmakers" with thenessman xavier becerra, hillary clinton's speech at planned parenthood, followed by bernie sanders remarks and washington, d.c. after that, donald trump speaks at the faith and freedom coalition conference. greta: this week, we want to welcome congressman xavier becerra, thank you for being here. we also have christina marcos with "the hill," and erika warner, reporter, and erika will kick us off. thank you for being with us. hillary clinton wrapped up with a big win in california these past days, but there are a lot

committed sanders supporters across the nation. what does hillary clinton need to do to get those people enthusiastic about their campaign? xavier: more of what she has been doing, reaching out, showing people how she will be the president that will bring real change, meaningful change, deep change, where no longer will we have to wait for a congress that is gridlocked and essentially asleep at the wheel, but we will actually improve options for the affordable care act, we will make sure that our foreign affairs are the things that we want to see our nation be involved in, not things that get us into battles. aswant to make sure that president she has the support of the american people to help with debt and decrease the burden on students that go to college. i think there are many things she will be able to do between now and november.

it is all about convincing the american people about there was someone who wants to build bridges and opportunities, not walls. christina: what do think is the possibility of elizabeth warren and having to them and not an american ticket? herbert to be brother serving another constituency? xavier: i think the secretary has a good number to choose from, including her vice president running mate. elizabeth warren and it would be a one-two punch, very effective one-two punch. my sense is that the secretary will have an opportunity to make a selection based on what she

thinks is best. i have total faith that she will look this over carefully and her decision will be like many of her decisions, a wonderful one for the american people. erika: do you want the job? xavier: there is a lot of talks that represent that could be in play and democrats have a chance to gain the majority. i have been working for quite some time at that. i would be fortunate if i could see democrats reclaim the majority of the house and if they reclaim the majority of the senate. working with the president clinton, i would be looking for it to working with her as a member of congress, hopefully in a leadership position, but let me tell you, it is an opportunity that we all of forward to having a good november. the most important thing for me is a good november. where i am, my thinking is i will hopefully be an effective member and house of

representatives and that is what i will work toward. greta: following up on leadership in the house -- the top three democratic leaders that have been in place for some time now, does that lead to you and others somewhere to rise with new blood at that top of the democratic ladder? xavier: there are many ways to yourself in congress. i have been strongly supportive democratic leaders, like nancy pelosi, she has been a phenomenal leader, certainly for democrats in the house. as long as she is interested in being a champion for working families, i think she will have strong support in the democratic caucus. my opportunities come from being in a position to help manufacture real opportunity for a lot of americans.

what the opposition that is, i cannot tell you right now, but come november, i hope there will be a space for someone like me. you mention in near-term term, the chair expires at the end of this congress. what could be next are you in a path for leadership as the top three members are not going anywhere? you are asking a guy who is the first in this family to go to college, probably never dreamed growing up that i could be a member of congress, let next presidenthe of united states get elected, so when someone say what is next, i am an optimist. i have an education that cannot be taken from me. i have a wonderful family that has been supported through the years. the sky is the limit and i want to make should that when the window opens, i can jump and i intend to do as much can to be a leader for the country wherever the opportunity presents itself.

i have an opportunity to do something there. when, how, we will see. erika: i wanted to ask about the senate race in california. we will have to democrats competing against each other, kamala harris and loretta sanchez, you have not endorsed. why would you have not endorsed a latina in the race? isn't there time for a latina leader in california with such a large percentage of hispanics in the population? xavier: it certainly is important to have someone like loretta sanchez, who is qualified and capable leader who happens to be latino. it could easily be stated -- said the same with harris as well. we are beginning to get these capable leaders who happen to be people of color and opportunity. i think it is going to be a

fantastic contest. we have a good choice to make between the two candidates. alec forward to that debate and campaign -- i look forward to that debate and campaign. i have not made any decisions as of yet to endorse, but i am thrilled that we have two capable leaders that are competing to be california's next senator. erika: what do you republicans in california are going to do? there is suggestion that it will get behind sanchez. what do you see on that? xavier: that will be interesting. that is the dilemma that they face quite honestly throughout the country. -- where of lincoln did they go on the senate race? i hope they make smart decisions. i hope they do not feel like they can sit this out. it is important to have all californians participate. whether you are a democrat, publican, independent, i think it is important for them to take a close look at candidates.

i hope people in california will look closely and feel comfortable making their election. christina: going back to when being memberelf as of the house rather in another coalition, will you put your name out there and project that democrats will win the house this year with trump essentially being a drag on the republicans? xavier: i am willing to put my name out there on a lot of different things. in terms of this election, i would say that i put my name out there and say that democrats will do very well in november because i believe americans will see that there is a real contrast between the party of trump in the particular clinton in creating jobs, increasing wages, give that her health care opportunities, fight for students who do not want to be burdened by debt, and in the end of the day, i feel comfortable saying that november is a good year for america and i believe and i believe

democrats will reflect better what america lives for and we will do well. i tell you today that that means the congress will flip and become democratically controlled. i hope so and i will work really hard for that, and we have phenomenal candidates that i can tell you right now, the supervisor in santa barbara county, just a go-getter to replace lois in congress and did way better than any expected. i believe he will be the next member of congress because he has worked so hard to read he happens to the democrat and a very talented guy. that is the quality of candidates democrats are putting forward. they give me hope that this is going to be a congress that wants to work with the president and not get in the way. should senator sanders be the vice president's pick? xavier: i think he has earned an opportunity to be considered, but that decision is totally,

totally to the person who worked very hard and earned a nomination, so secretary clinton has earned the right to make that selection. i have total faith that she is going to make a really good selection. i have confidence that her decision will be great for america and one of the most important ones that she will make will come early with her selection of the vice president. role: what should be the for senator sanders going forward in the party? -- big,big, inferential influential, active. inope he is as animated november as he has been throughout the primary process. , he haswoken many folks made young people believe, he has given democrats an opportunity to bring in to our .arty so many different faces i thank him for all he has done, say for all the

is done because he still has a lot to do. his voice will be important out there because he inspired people that began to distance themselves from the electoral process and our government needs to have people wanting [indiscernible] greta: think back to when this all started in the primary season. do you think you would have ever said that senator sanders has a big role to play in the democratic party? xavier: no, no. you know what? this is america. that is the beauty of america. who also would have said that the republican party would become the party of trump? you never know. have active participation, we could go in different directions. i think the two parties are going in different directions. the party of lincoln is becoming the party of trump. the party that fault with roosevelt, kennedy of opportunity now look at clinton

whatever capacity he wishes to have and she lets them have, we will continue to show people we are the party of opportunity. back to the house agenda, speaker ryan has been rolling out an agenda for the future. one of which this week was around poverty programs and instituting particular new work requirements for some of those programs. what we are thoughts on that, is there any value to that? it is hard for me to go beyond what speaker ryan said about donald trump. listen to him about what he says about poverty because he has endorsed donald trump. he has claimed donald trump has uttered racist comments about the constituency community in america that has worked very hard. the judge,his like

who donald trump has attacked in a racist fashion, i like the judge. i am the son of immigrants as well. of mexican heritage. i worked very hard. i would hate for someone to say that simply because i have mexican heritage that all of a sudden i cannot be a member of congress. when someone like this because the house of representatives, second in line to succeed should something happen to the president, that our candidate for the white house has uttered racist remarks and endorsing them for the white house, it is hard for me to believe that paul can believe that with donald trump as president, we will tackle poverty the right way. it was donald trump who said in 2007-2008 that he was looking forward to the wall street-driven economic crash that caused millions of americans to lose their homes. why was he looking forward to it?

because it would give him an opportunity to purchase these homes at cut rates and make a lot of money. you can talk to me all you want about policies, but if you are supporting the guy he wants to make money off of the desperation and the cult economic circumstance of millions of americans, it is hard for me to believe they will have a good anti-poverty stands. christina: speaker ryan announced that starting with the next appropriations bill, amendments will be limited and members of either party will not what they liker anymore, and democrats have said that is critical, but at the same time for republicans took over the house in 2011, democrats also planned down on appropriations bills, so is it fair for democrats to bring those charges against republicans now when they did the same thing? xavier: it goes back to what i

was saying about trying to believe what speaker ryan is saying about poverty when the guy he supports was happy to make money off of people in desperate economic straight. in this case, it was speaker ryan who said we would have [indiscernible] when it comes to moving the bill to the house of representatives and for the house to debate, and now he is saying, that is gone so he is blocking that open debate that he said would be the marquis of his speakership. am i surprised? are we surprised that things are being blocked in the house of representatives? this has been the biggest graveyard for good ideas that we have ever seen in this democracy, where time after time, whether it is job push, improvements to the affordable care act, the house of representatives, republicans, congress have locked that progress, so i'm not surprised that now they are trying to

block open debate on the house said, it is just not so much whether you have full of debates but it is getting things done. i think most of america would say, if you could get meaningful things done, they could accept that. the problem is, you are upset enough debates and not getting things done. it is the worst of all worlds. what is your production or what could happen later this year legislatively in the house? working republicans and democrats come together? xavier: [laughter] that is the answer. there are not that many opportunities, unfortunately. most of the president's are puzzles have been blocked. most of what we see being put forward in the house is not something that is really going to get the presidential signature in law, and we are

seeing more and more being done to the official challenges -- channels of the house of representatives for political -- are political campaigning that we are actual policymaking that helps people know that their wages will not go up or that their children can afford to go to college or that we will not get into a war that is unnecessary, so we are already hearing that republican leadership is telling us that we are going to skip out of town, out of washington mid july and .e out until september obviously, we cannot do much work if they are already going to miss the week of the fourth of july, and the only have a couple weeks left in june. in september, have to at least accomplish the job of getting the budgets done, which republicans have not been able to do happen to work that should be done by now. you can see how little time will be left to get meaningful work done. greta: does that mean congress

is heading toward another [indiscernible] xavier: that has been the mode of operation. youwait to see the clip, fall over, you panic and try to do something at the last moment so here we are. wait, wait, wait and then we start to panic and them before we rush out to finish campaigning, we try to get this done, probably patched together a temporary budget. greta: i should explain that a package of spending bills is altogether. xavier: yes. erika: one important bill that did pass this week was bipartisan majorities and it was the puerto rico rescue bill, attempting to help puerto rico get out of this massive debt. you voted against it. why? the work thatect was done on that bill. it was a bipartisan bill. actually, it was voted for and

against. quite honestly, it needed to see more work done like that. this is the difficulty for me. my state of california updo years back was in a very difficult economic situation with its budget. we had a budget deficit the size of most state's entire budget. their budget, not the deficit. we were going to have a difficult time. tell thent to people of my state that the way to fix our economic crisis is to slice the working wages of the byest income californians nearly half, when they had no role in this hedge fund driven debt crisis, what i want to see californians be told that the stall the would

restructuring that has to go on in california to get us out of this economic difficulty would be people from outside the state of california? i cannot accept that. at the end, as much work as an of that a lot of people put into this, i am not going to tell the american citizens in puerto rico that someone else will determine how they govern themselves and how they get themselves back into economic prosperity, nor am i going to tell, for sure i am not going to tell hard-working puerto rican to make a little more than the minimum wage that they will seek their wages slashed in half because that is one of the provisions that some members of congress think have to be included to get puerto rico out of the economic crisis. they did not cause this and i'm not about to tell american citizens in puerto rico or in my state of california that they have to see their wages sliced in half to fix a problem they did not cause. with respect to the housing crisis and the 2000 eight wall street-driven economic crisis that we face, a whole bunch of

americans lost their homes. they had little to do, if nothing to do, with the crisis and they paid the biggest price. how many wall street bankers went to jail? i think we are still trying to find out. erika: isn't that letting the perfect be the enemy of the good? xavier: no because no one will say that we were looking for perfection and knowing what to you that this bill was perfection. what we are looking for is something that works. cannot tell the american citizens in puerto rico that i think this works better than what with at least have excluded the slicing of the minimum wage for american citizens in puerto rico, and certainly a fair way of determining what the next .teps are if puerto rico will get itself out of the crisis, it will be puerto ricans who do it. it should be a solution that they come up with great i am

thatrned that this board will govern and determine all these things could essentially for all the people who had no role of connection to puerto rico, and i would not want up for californians. i would not other folks in other parts of the country to tell how california could get ourselves out of the mess we are in and i would not tell californians who are making minimum wage that they would have to cut their salaries in half so the problem could be solved because of what hedge fund managers and others did. greta: we had time for a couple more questions. christina: if hillary clinton were to win the presidency, what policy do you think she should push forward in her first 50 days? xavier: i believe you will almost immediately see her actions to get more americans a chance to get better jobs. she has talked about making

investments in some of the projects that we have not watched as congress support, fixing our roads and bridges, including our schools. the things that we know we have to do, but we have been putting aside and waiting for the day that the bridge collapses or the , so sheas a leaky roof is saying, we have got to do it. that's do it now. let's put americans to work. americans who may not be college graduates but they may get a decent wage working in construction, and it gives them a chance to buy that home or send their kids to college. i believe she is going to work as vigorously as she can to find a bipartisan solution to immigration. she has said that already that she would introduce a bill and work with congress. she knows what she is talking about there. i do believe that she would try to tackle this looming debt immediatelyt because it cannot wait.

my eldest daughter is about to start college in the fall. i am fortunate my wife and i both have professional degrees, but there are a bunch of families like my parents, a construction worker and clerical worker, they make tough decisions on it their child can go to college. issue not have to worry that debt will prevent the child from going to school. christina: you mentioned infrastructure, immigration, reform, which of those three do think she should prioritize? erika: and his immigration reform in the realm of possibility with republicans [indiscernible] xavier: i believe secretary clinton can walk through guns and do good policy at the same time. i do not believe she will say i can only work on making sure we are improving our roads and schools or we need to fix the broken immigration system and not worry about anything else. fortunately, she has multitasked really well.

where youave a system have a cabinet secretary and the congress, he should be able to handle quite a few balls in the air. i don't think she will wait to say, i can only do one at a time. we have to make sure that she has success, but i believe -- and she may have a different priority. i just told you three things that i know she has talked a lot about, that she is passionate about, that i believe are worthy of being tackled. difficult ason, as it has been, there are votes in the house and in the senate, -- itisan votes, democrats don't think there is any question. every democrat is ready to vote, but i know that our republican are ready to vote but it is that republican leadership has operated democrats and republicans -- has not permitted

democrats and republicans to vote or this. it is coming, and those who try to resist it, they are playing on a team that will lose. it is time, not just for security and our economy, it is time that we fix this broken immigration system. greta: congressman, we have to leave it there. thank you so much. we are back with that reporters eric of warner and christina. let's begin with what you heard play out during our interview when with xavier becerra it comes to strategy and how democrats are going to talk about this presidential election and policy up on capitol hill. erika: i think that mr. be cerra's answer about paul ryan's poverty agenda tells you everything you need to know. he pivoted to ryan's endorsement ra saidp and what becer

was given that endorsement and the fact that they're linking arms, he is not going to really listen to what paul ryan is proposing on poverty or any other topic. that is going to be the playbook from democrats for november. greta: christina, is that already happening on capitol hill? christina: it is, normally, that bill passes wide bipartisan majorities. party linest passed because there is a provision that would reverse the decision to stop using the word "illegal alien" in their subject setting and they argue that they are the ones who have been enabling [indiscernible] greta: talk a little bit about what you heard going forward for the democrats? and let come together

hillary clinton will do and how she will views congressmen like to hersman becerra advantage going forward as she matches against donald trump? erika: we know hillary clinton's own approval ratings are nothing to get very excited about. julie read them, they have trump. -- fortunately for them, they have trump. we will hear that time and again, going to what trump said wast the judge andbecerra cerra referenced his own mexican heritage and latinos will be 10% of the electorate, much higher in states like california, and that will really resonate with someone like becerra talking spanish on spanish talking networks and i have a feeling we may be hearing more about what trump has done

positive agenda for the rest of the election. greta: what do you hear from and they themselves have watched senator sanders evolved into this phenomenon on the presidential trail? christina: they are hoping they can lure him back to the full by saying, look, you can come back to the council. you have more influence ever done before. before, he was used on the left and now he'll be viewed among other senators commanding the millions of voters who are passionate about him during the still be, so they will watching what bernie sanders as much as closely than before. a remarkable been evolution as kristi noem was saying, senator sanders is someone who is not a member of the democratic party -- wasution as christina

saying. senator sanders is someone who was not a member of the democratic party, kind of a one-man band, not leading a major committee, not commanding a lot of major legislation. that could really change. he has the opportunity to potentially depending on on the health committee, education and pensions, in the next congress would be a great forum for a lot of his passions and he would take on a much larger role. greta: he met with senator reid cap on the capital. have you heard or are those negotiations to do in this presl election? certainly, and at this moment in time it is a two-way street as democrats try to ease dropping outrmally and endorsing hillary clinton, which he has not done, and not alienating