LAURENCE O'DONNELL: Joining me now, New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Senator Menendez, let's go back to basics here. We're getting a feeling already for some leaks about what's coming out of the Senate Finance Committee. And consistent with all the other committees, what seems to be coming out of the Senate Finance Committee is not universal coverage.

What happened to universal coverage? Each one of these bills out of the committees does no better than get to 95 percent coverage some years down the road, leaving tens of millions of people without health insurance.

SEN. ROBERT MENENDEZ (D), NEW JERSEY: Well, our goal is universal coverage. However, you have to pay for that as well. And part of the challenge is finding the pay-fors for trying to assure all of that. But clearly, we're going to be at a point at the end of the road.

You know, everybody is looking at these individual bills and making their judgments on it. What we need is the final product that we're going to be offering, and at that final product I hope we'll get further beyond that 95 percent.

O'DONNELL: You're in the Finance Committee. You have jurisdiction over taxation. Is there any chance that the three new top tax brackets that the House Ways and Means Committee passed could possibly pass the Finance Committee?

MENENDEZ: Well, I think certainly not if we want to see the bipartisan effort that is under way. After that, if that falls apart by September 15th, then it is possible that some of those might be considered. But I honestly believe we're trying to keep this within the context of health reform overall, and that's why we're looking at, how do we bring to the table the revenue stream that comes within both the contributions by different sectors of the health care system, as well as how do we keep any other revenue raisers within that context as well?

O'DONNELL: So, when you go up to New Jersey for the recess during August, and you're on the Jersey shore, and people are asking you-they're worried about those three top tax brackets which, by the way, would hit New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, California, states like that much harder than the states of the senators who are, for example, represented in that six-senator meetings that are going on right now. Are you going to basically tell them, look, forget about that part of the bill, these are the things to concentrate on, these are the things that I think we are likely to pass?

MENENDEZ: Well, what I'm going to tell them is that, first of all, we don't have a final bill. And all of the speculation is exactly that, speculation.

We're going to have to look, at how do we ensure affordability? I just came from a Finance Committee of Democrats and affordability is a big issue.

We have to make sure that anything that we do at the end of the day is affordable to middle class working families. We have to make sure that we stop the growth in the cost of insurance for everybody who has it. And at the same time, we have to find a way to cover the maximum amount of people who have no health insurance today. That's our ultimate goals.

Now, there's a difference between, as I always say, the destination, the end point, and the journey. The journey has a lot of twists and turns. It isn't always pretty. But time and time again, Democrats find a way, whether it's on a stimulus package, equal pay for equal work, children's health care, and a whole host of other things, to do it the right way.

O'DONNELL: Senator Menendez, before you go, I can't let you leave without asking you what it felt like to vote for and witness the confirmation of the first Hispanic justice on the United States Supreme Court? And then, secondly, how you think the politics for this play out for Republicans in the next election, the way they lined up against her in such big numbers?

MENENDEZ: Well, look, for me, it was a personal privilege. Sonia Sotomayor and I were born in the same year, we grew up on different sides of the Hudson River, her in a public housing project, I in a tenement. If you told me then that I would be one of 100 United States senators voting on the confirmation of her for a Supreme Court justice, we probably would have told you neither one of those things were likely. But it's the promise of America fulfilled and it's a promise we fight every day to keep a reality for future generations of Americans.

As to my Republican colleagues, you know, it's hard to tell the Hispanic community that when you have a woman who was Phi Beta Kappa at Princeton, on the "Yale Law Review," became a tough prosecutor in New York City, went on to get appointed by a Republican president to the district court-of the federal district court, and then by a Democratic president, passed by Congresses, both Democrats and Republicans at the time, and you have a great history of precedent, commitment to precedent, the Constitution and the rule of law, and you still say to a Latina like that, I can't vote for you, it sends a message to the community that, no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we work, no matter how many barriers we break in pursuit of excellence, that somehow you still find us lacking.

I think that's a problem for Republicans.

O'DONNELL: Senator, I'm glad you were lucky enough to be there today to cast that vote. Thanks for joining us today, Senator Menendez. All the best.

MENENDEZ: Thank you.