Exploring America’s capitalism ‘problem’ with Rep. Katie Porter

you deserve that paycheck? And I did that with a pharmacutical ceo, and you know what the answer was, The other guys get paid a lot too. That is not, in a capitalist economy, a justification for a particular age. So we just have to be very very comfortable diving into these conversations. You have to be. In our country, capitalism and democracy are hand and glove, and a lot of what's broken about our democracy is because things are broken in our capitalist system. Today we're gonna talk about

capitalism and Congress. You know, capitalism has become completely warped in this country. The concentration of super wealth over the last twenty years is extraordinary, and we have seen big money influence bad policy. In the last four years, it has been absolutely out of control. But we'd be lying if we said all of that started four years ago, or eight years ago or ten years ago. We've seen big money influenced bad policy year after year, and it's

only getting worse. This is one of the reasons so many people across the country say they don't trust their lawmakers. I'm Stephanie Rule, MSNBC anchor, NBC News Senior correspondent, and this is Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Think and I Heart Radio. But there is a member of Congress who I've gotten to know the last few years, who is determined to bring us back to the kind of capitalism or possibly bring us there for the first time

where every American can succeed. We're working mothers can actually afford to go to work, where people from the poorest neighborhoods can go to better schools and potentially get really good jobs. Where we're in a situation where businesses can thrive but not control our government. That congress person is Katie Porter of Orange County, California. I'm so honored that she's here with me today. Congresswoman, I want to start

with how are you. This has been an extraordinary a few weeks and before you being a member of Congress, you're a mom. What have the last few weeks been? Like, Yeah, it's hard to believe it's it's been a week. It's just been one week. Um, I was thinking about that, you know that from when this happened, and you know, at the at the end of the day, we were part of a workplace shooting. That's really what this was. This was a violent a talk. During that time, I

was holed up in my office. UM. I was there with Alexandrio Kazio Cortez, and we barricaded the doors, we turned the lights off. We had basically no information and we're in a dark, cold room together for six hours. And I think, you know a couple of things that will really stay with me is I texted my middle son because he's twelve and he was home, so I knew he would be seeing stuff because he's always glued to YouTube. I texted Paul and I said, Paul, you

know it's Mom. I'm okay, I'm I'm hiding. You know, everything's locked. And he said, okay, Mom, because I'm really worried. And I said, well, you know here I took a picture of myself just to selfie and said, you know here I am cm okay And he said, okay, good. And I just hope you have enough diet Dr Pepper to get you through this? Did you? I did? But it's just the sweet moment of under a can't understanding,

like what his mom needs when she's stressed. Um. And then the other thing that will really stay with me is you know when when Alexandria Casio Cortes was in the hallway and she was looking for a place to go to be safe, right as we evacuated the Cannon building, and she she asked if she could come in her office and shelter and I said, of course, um, and you know, we came in and she just had a

very harrowing experience and she was a little rattled. And we locked the doors and locked the inner doors and we were sitting there and I said, is there anything I can get you? You know, water, Um, I have left over holiday chocolates that someone gave me. And she looked kind of whistfully at my shoes and I was wearing antique sweats there might go to work shoes, and she said, I just wish i'd warn flats so I

would be better able to run away. And that really hit me, like, this is what it's coming down to, Like you dressing for work in a way that you could run if someone is shooting at you. And so we went and found her a pair of sneakers, um that belonged to my staffer, and she put those on, and she said, I feel so much better now because I could run. Maybe I'm naive and romantic, but given the horrific events that took place in the Capitol last week, do you think that kind of trauma in some way

could bring Congress together to work together? I thought about this a lot. What does it mean that we went through that together? Um? I do want to observe one thing that was that was pretty obvious right there in

the moment. It has become obvious since then. Is people experienced that day very differently depending on if you were a man or you were a woman, you had been trained, you're a veteran of combat or not, you were a person of color or a white person, And so you know, the reality is that the two parties are pretty different in that regard. I think that you know a lot of white men didn't feel the same level of personalized threat and fear from that attack as you know, women

or women of color, progressive women, whatever it is. And so you know we have the same experience. Um, that doesn't mean we had all the same takeaways from it. Did any of what happened that day make you think? Why am I doing this for a living? Yes, it's a huge honor to be elected a member of Congress. But you're an extraordinary woman. You're a law professor, you're a mom, and you just went through a workplace shooting.

And now you've got members of Congress with you who are queue and on sympathizers who refused to certify a free and fair election. Is any part of you saying why do I do this for a living? I think what I feel is really profound disappointment. I think this is the most disheartened I've been. You know, And I ran for Congress, and I ran this district that, like everybody was like, you can't win there. There hasn't been a Democrat there since the nineteen forties, and and I

just was like, I'm gonna make it happen. I'll just try harder, and I'll make it happen. And even when I was serving and we were dealing with a Senate that was just broken and a president who was leading this country if we even use the word lead in a really wrong direction, I kept kind of believing that I could do it, that I could make it better. And they think this is the first time in the four years, the two years that I was a candidate, the first two years of my service, where I've I've

really just felt heartbroken. Another member called me this morning to check in, and I said, well, I do okay once I get out of bed I just don't want to get out of bed um right now. But of course I have to, and I have to vote, and I have to vote to impeach this president. The work doesn't stop. If this were any other kind of workplace shooting, it's hard to imagine that an hour or two after it, the boss would ask you to go back into the workplace.

And yet that's what we did. We returned to that building to take those votes at midnight, in the wee hours of the morning. How hard has this been this year been for you. You're a single parent and you've got kids doing remote learning, and you're going back and forth to Washington. Yeah, I mean today is a really really special day. This is the first day since mid March when the school's closed that I have all three

children in school at the same time. And I got out this morning, I was like, oh my god, where is somebody? Because there's always somebody who's not in school, So that has been hard. But look, I am so fortunate I have in an excellent school system that has had the resources to do things like hand out pron books. No, I mean in a neighborhood that's safe, when my kids can go outside, um and there's a park and they

can go play. This is so hard for so many people and so many kids, and disproportionately on those who are an overcrowded houses, on strange school systems, parents who cannot help their kids. And I just have the tiniest taste of that, and I think about what it must be like for parents for whom English is not a dominant language, to try to help their kids with all

of the whole work, all of the subjects. One of the big mistakes of this pandemic was back in March and April, we should have been focusing immediately on how we were going to safely open schools and putting as many resources as we needed into providing them with ppe with extra classroom space. You know, even now teachers and vaccinations, e. They're supposed to go to a Walgreens, take the mobile vaccine vehicle, pull up to school and start giving teacher shots.

Let's go, Well, let's talk about what's most important to you and what you want to get done in this job, because in the last week we have seen all sorts of corporations pulled for the time being their donations, whether it's too strictly Republicans who didn't certify the election, or to both parties. But as any of this making you think, because I promise it's making me think, why the hell do corporations why are they giving so much money? And

way the system just seems so warped. Yeah. No, Look, corporate paths shouldn't exist, and they say that for a number of reasons. You know, you don't have an ardent capitalist. And I've heard all the arguments about how you shareholder primacy. It's all corporations exist for the purpose of raising money and making money for their shareholders. Now, I don't believe that is the correct definition of a corporation. I reject

that idea. But even if you buy into this rather extreme idea that the only purpose, the only metric that corporations should have is doesn't benefit shareholders, tell me how shareholders benefit from giving money to elected officials who are trying to overthrow our government, which would be the demise of the very economy that allows these companies to make money. Here's the stone cold fact. Corporations don't make donations in

January or February of March of the off year. They make donations when it's closer to election time, so they're pausing giving them We're never going to do in the first place. So I am completely unimpressed by these kinds of shallow gestures. What I would like to see as corporations make very clear that they will not support people who spread disinformation, who urged the overturning of this election. Um, and I would just like to see corporations say, you

know what, We're not gonna last through a path. We're gonna take that money, give it to our employees in the form of fire wages, our employees, whatever their political views might be, to participate in our democracy. We'll be back after the break then what's a big focus for you? So here you are Democrats have full control of the federal government. What is your focus? What do you want to get done? Because I know how much you care about getting corruption and green out of the system, how

can you actually take it on. So one of the answers here is obviously past HR one. Um. This was the House bill that we introduced and passed the House last time. UM. That both addresses corruption. Um. It's the most sweeping anti corruption built since Watergate. Would also strengthen voting rights, um, you know, and it would help get a dark money out of politics. Really important that we passed that again in the House because I now believe we have the votes in the Senate to actually see

it become law. You know. The other thing I really focused on right now is, of course, our academy. I'm interested in thinking about what really is happening to families right now and how these numbers translate on the ground. And one of the things that we are seeing that

is just a huge, huge consequence of COVID. It's not just job loss, but job loss that is concentrated on brown and black women in particular, And you know that is a really really potentially enduring consequence of this, and so it's really important that we think about what's this mean for our economy, for the global competitiveness of our economy. That women are stepping out of the workforce, are being forced out of the workforce because they can't afford or

find childcare, because they're not safe in their workplace. Mackenzie the consulting company, right, this is about a feminist you know, leading institution said that did a study recently and found that one in four women are contemplating leaving the workforce. So we need to get a handle on this. And it means understanding the phenomenon. Is it really about um the wages and the wage gap? People are needing to pull one parent home, and they're pulling the lower earning person,

and this is just reinforcing the gender pick up. I don't know, but I intend to find out. And one of the things I am really excited about with the Biden administration is the way that they're conceiving of and talking about child care as infrastructure. It's just really really important that we start thinking about it that way, that we start understanding it that way, and we start making investments not just in help care centers and the people

who do this work. Do you think we've made a mistake Year after year we're patting ourselves on the back when we start to address maternity leave, paternity leave, but that's twelve weeks. We're responsible for our children for eighteen years, and forget wages while kids are doing remote learning. It's for so many of us impossible to just leave our kids to do it on their own. So there's a lot of parents, specifically moms who because of COVID just have to go home. Look, I mean I think that

things like paper and to leave. Really, I mean pat ourselves on the back for getting their thirty forty fifty years later than a lot of other countries. We need to think about how to become global leaders in developing and retaining a top quality workforce. And you are not going to have a top quality workforce when you exclude women.

You're just not. And there's a lot of research in virtually every industry, corporations that have women on their boards of directors take a less risk and then this is my favorite fact, make more money. So just overall, we see that in the medicine, women physicians communicate with their patients differently, they're better listeners that were likely to pick up on certain kinds of diagnoses. I think women legislators

are are different and how we do our job. So we just stopped talking about this as just a women's issue, although the disproportionate harmies on women, and instead say, if we want to have a strong, stable capitalist economy, we have to make sure that women and men have equal opportunity, equal pay, equal support in the workforce. I do want to ask you about the Cares Act and now the next stimulus spill. It's not like we haven't spent any money.

We've spent trillions of dollars. Yet the one thing we keep hearing from government is we need more. Is it that we need more or do we need to do a little bit of a better job looking at all the money we've spent. There is an oversight committee that I haven't actually heard from them. There is a committee

dedicated to oversight of the CARES funding. But there was a structural problem right from the start, which is the the chairperson of that committee, without which they can't hire staff and they can't really be effective, was to be a person agreed upon by Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi. In other words, the chair was supposed to be like a unicorn, and we're are we gonna find this person. So the reality is that committee has not been as effective as it should be because there was a structural

problem in the creation of it. But I also think that we need to take a hard look. And I've

been pushing on this for a long time. You and I have a lot of conversations about this, But the Paycheck Protection Program I think was not optimally designed or administered from the get go, and there were whole range of problems, from allowing Congress members to get p p P loans to the fact that there is a more effective way to keep people employed, which is an approach that European countries used that we call paycheck recovery or

paycheck guarantee, which simply provides money to businesses to help them make payroll. That money would pass directly through the payroll system into people's pockets. The Paycheck Protection Program was much too attenuated, and it was too slow to roll out, and I think it should have been ombious to everybody that that the Small Business Administration was not going to be ready to administer this that it was gonna be

a ramp up period. So I do think that we have a duty to ask what happened to every dollar? Was it spent effectively? Didn't really help um? And if not, to rethink these programs, then talk to us about this. I'm gonna call it third lane that you're in, right there's a lot of traditional Democrats, there's very progressive Democrats. Within progressive Democrats, there's the squad anti big business. As

you said earlier, you're a very proud capitalist. Can you talk about that and your sort of ideology Because the average person on the street, and if you watched Fox News, they would tell you, oh, you know, younger lawmakers like you, you're part of this socialist movement. You're not, but you're not feeling good about the capitalist society we're in right now?

So can you help us understand? Yeah, a lot of this is really understanding what is the capitalist economy that people who are nineteen twenty nine, thirty nine, even me, I just turned forty seven. What's the coupitalist economy that we have seen in this country? What if we lived through We've lived through a lock of enforcement of antitrust laws, unprecedented consolidation of market power, more and more barriers and hardships on small businesses being able to compete, regulation of

investor protection laws, the removal of consumer protection laws. People my age do not have the trust in banks or businesses that people a generation or two before us did, and there's no reason for that because those industries have abused the very capitalist economy, the workers, the consumers that have allowed them to profit. Younger people are skeptical about capitalism for good reason, because our capitalist system isn't producing opportunity,

it's producing inequality. Our capitalist system isn't producing price competition, it's producing monopoly power. So we have to be straight about what's broken and that it can be fixed. There are tools that we have to fix it, and that we're going to fight to use those tools, and we are not going to blink in the face of corporate power to do it. And I think that is a way to acknowledge the skepticism, the heartache, the suffering of a lot of people in today's capitalist economy without losing

what a different generation. You know, my grandparents generation saw, which was unbelievable economic growth and opportunity. If I say this to my grandparents and the last were just guide for COVID. But I used to say this to my grandparents all the time. I didn't get what you got. So my grandparents went to college. They worked in the summer and earned enough to pay their tuition. That's not possible now, and it should be. And if it were, that would be an economy that was really developing the

potential of every worker. That would be a capitalist economy that's really investing in more marketplaces. From what I've learned about you over the last few years, everything you are most interested in is about putting people first. Given the amount of money and lobby influence in politics, how can you actually make those changes? We've all seen you ask the most extraordinary questions to these business guys in these hearings.

We watched them squirm, but then they walk out, get on their corporate plane and go home to their big, fat, cushy life. Does change actually occur? And I love when they come to testify before Well, here's where I think the change comes. When I had this back and forth with the president of JP Morgan Chase Jamie Diamond, he's a very bright man and he's a good business leader

in many many ways. When I had the back and forth with him about whether his lower wage employees could make ends meet, and I definitely started to him how hard it would be, if not impossible, for them. Did he did? He in the moment, didnt crock and promised that he would race wages? He did not. Well, I hope the next time they go to make a decision about whether to give their employees a wage or not, I'm on their mind. Unless we actually change the rules.

Do you think businesses are going to operate in a different way, Because at the end of the day, the way it is currently structured, right, CEOs need to perform for their shareholders. The way they're compensated is tied to this value of the stock of their company. They're not

currently incentivized to put their employees first. And even if they say all the right things, and even after that exchange, if Jamie and Diamond thinks a little harder, the next time he makes a big decision at the end of the day, is he really going to change his behavior

unless regulation forces him to do so. Watch Much more importantly than my interaction with him was the fact that millions and millions of Americans said that's me, this woman understands what it's like to work all day and come home and not be able to pay the bills. They felt heard and seen and recognized by their government, and as a result of that, they got just a little bit more engaged. It's not my exchange with the CEL

that matters. It's whether my exchange with the CEO gives people confidence in government and believe that we can make this change, because corporations are full time engaged in telling people that nothing can change. If you could wave of magic wand and change one thing, one policy, without having to go through all the rigamarole, what would you do that you think could really start to change the way

we operate? Change the system I would reach. I would change the campaign finance system straight up, no corporate paths, no high dollar contributions. Um. You know, I think that is the really the most important thing, because I think it will change how people in my jobs spend their time. Um. I think the fact that you have to raise so much money means that you know who mostly runs for

Congress and wins is wealthy people. And so I mean consider that until this Congress, I was the only single mother of young children in the Congress, and people kept saying, well, you know your situation, it's so unique, and I would think, no, it's unique in Congress, it's not unique in the world, right, And there are lots and lots, millions and millions of single parents, So so don't act like my concern about not having a work calendar for the next day is unusual.

There are tons of workers at retail jobs who don't know what their schedule is gonna be tomorrow and therefore can obtain childcare. So real change is gonna come from us as elected officials explaining to the American people what's at stake and how they can get involved. That's how we're going to change the system. It isn't about me. It's about everybody that I can talk to or listen to or connect with and engage. That's where the change is gonna come from. Then I have to ask you

before go. People can tune the news out, they can take a day off, they can unplug. You are more motivated and more energized than ever. How is that? I think this is something that we mean we have in common. Um you know on your Twitter handle. I think we're both named maybe like a bad Asses of of Instone magazine, and you said something like, I never thought I'd naked past smart ass. That was definitely my childhood experience. Like she's kind of a smart ass. She has a comeback

for everything. She talks too much in class. I don't want to give up. I don't think we can give up when things get hard. We have to think of what we do about it. And it doesn't mean we don't pause and take care of ourselves and acknowledge how hardness is. But you know, I've sort of I meant one of these kids from childhood were the very best way to guarantee that I would do something is tell me that I can. This week, I'm actually taping from my hotel room in Washington, d C. Where I'm reporting

on the inauguration of President elect Joe Biden. This was obviously not the first time I interviewed congress and reporter, but it was the first time I did it for over an hour. Like Katie, I'm very interested in change, what motivates people to change, what constitutes change, and what

blocks it from actually occurring. So what does change need to look like in order to create a fair and competitive economy that really serves all the American people, to every child in this country can dream big and pursue those dreams. I'm Stephanie Rule and you're listening to Modern Rules, a podcast from NBC Thinks, MSNBC and I Heart Radio. This podcast is hosted by me Stephanie Rule. Mike Beett and Katrina Norvell are executive producers. Meredith Bennett Smith is

Senior editor for NBC Think and our editorial lead. The podcast is engineered and edited by Josh Fisher. Additional production support provided by Charles Herman, Rachel Rosenbaum, and Lauren Wynn, and special thanks to Katherine Kim are Global head of Digital News right here at NBC News and MSNBC. For more thought provoking analysis, visit NBC news dot com slash thing