The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 11 episode of 
Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch this interview here. 

Perry Bacon: Let me start by asking your reaction just generally to Charlie Kirk’s shooting death yesterday. 

Representative Jamie Raskin: Well, it’s a nightmare. Political violence is absolutely inexcusable and unjustifiable. And we denounce it and it’s dangerous. And now’s the time. We’ve got to return to the principles of nonviolence. That’s the point of a social contract is that we agree to have political discussion and disagreement nonviolently. We don’t kill our fellow citizens. My heart goes out to Charlie Kirk’s family and we continue to do whatever we can to re-emphasize the central importance of nonviolence in all of our political engagements. And we hope that every political leader and every office holder will do that. 

Bacon: OK, let me move to what we were planning to talk about today, which is this government funding debate with the government funding expiring September 30. A lot of talk about Democrats should have some conditions be for further votes, particularly in the Senate where some Democratic votes will probably be needed. What is your view on that? Are there some conditions that should be attached to Democratic votes? And if so, you have any? Is that healthcare? What is that for you? 

Raskin: Well, first of all, we don’t even know whether we’re going to support it or not support it. And remember, Republicans control the House. They control the Senate. They control the White House. And effectively, they control the Supreme Court. So if they want to pass a budget, they can pass a budget without us. Now if they can’t do it on their own, and we know that they would prefer to do it on their own—but if they can’t do it on their own, then they come to us and then we engage in the old-fashioned art of legislative compromise. 

We are going to defend the health care of the people. We are going to demand that 17 million people who are about to be thrown off of Medicaid get health care coverage. We are going to demand that Social Security be protected. We’re going to demand that all of the laws be enforced. That’s to start off with. We would like to make that deal with them and we should be able to make that deal. That’s precisely the deal we made. But there’s an additional problem now, which is they have shown a willingness to engage in a bipartisan budget compromise then come back later and use their paper-thin majorities in the House and the Senate in control of the White House to rescind, that is to revoke, the budget items they don’t like. In other words, the ones that we negotiate for, that we demand, that are our part of the compromise—they’re willing to unilaterally revoke later. Well, we’re not suckers. We’re not going to do that. And so we want ironclad language in there that they will not go back on the budget agreement and use one party control to rescind the things that we’ve negotiated for. 

Bacon: So I heard three things there. I heard health care which means Obamacare, subsidies particularly. Is that what you’re saying are just generally health care?

Raskin: Across the board. Every part of the health care of the people, we are fighting to guarantee. That’s an absolute minimum for us. 

Bacon: Well, I guess some talk about rolling back the Medicaid cuts within the........

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