MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript
Interview
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MR. MATTHEWS: Let's listen to some of what Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said today on the Senate floor.
SEN. GRAHAM: (From videotape.) I feel shut out. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the problem, but I don't think so. I think people are figuring out pretty quickly this Congress, the old one and the new one, is making this up as we go. And we're running out of good will. We're running out of capital. And we don't need any more news conferences. What we need is getting more than 16 people in a room. We need to slow down, take a timeout and get it right.
MR. MATTHEWS: Senator Graham, can you give us a full-fledged critique now? You pointed you don't like this sort of king caucus or whatever you want to call it, these 12 or 14 members getting together in the middle somewhere. So you think this should have all gone through committee the regular way?
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, it went through committee in an hour and 40 minutes. I don't believe you should spend $880 billion with a committee markup that lasts an hour and 40 minutes and never have a hearing. I don't think you should take a vote in the House on something this important where you can't get one Republican vote and you lose 11 Democrats and the speaker says as her excuse, "We won. We write the bill."
I would like a different way of doing business. This is the old way of doing business, and the public sees through it. And I'm very disappointed. We can do better.
MR. MATTHEWS: If you had a chance to speak for the Republican Party, could you have compromised and developed a plan to stimulate the economy with President Obama?
SEN. GRAHAM: I think so. I think we can have tax cuts and we can have spending. I'm not going to get every Republican. I think you know me pretty well, Chris. There's a middle ground here. There are some Republicans who want to only cut taxes and spend no money. I'm not in that camp. There are some Democrats who want to spend more than $850 billion. I think there's a middle ground here.
But the process is broken here. This process is terrible. We're making a major decision. And once we spend this money and the public doesn't like what we're doing, how do we go back to them and get money for housing and banking, yet to be addressed? We've done very little, almost nothing in this bill, for the housing problems. And it doesn't create jobs the way it should. It spends a lot more money on things that are unrelated to creating a job. It's a mess and people are disappointed, and I think we're making a mistake. The new administration is making a mistake.
MR. MATTHEWS: Why do you think the Democrats were so deficient, as you see it, in not putting a housing piece in this, when everybody knows that this whole fiscal or financial crisis --
SEN. GRAHAM: Right.
MR. MATTHEWS: -- is a result of people buying houses they can't afford --
SEN. GRAHAM: I think --
MR. MATTHEWS: -- and not being able to pay the mortgage?
SEN. GRAHAM: When you see the way the bill was structured in the House, there's a lot of spending unrelated to creating a job. A lot of pet projects have gotten in this bill. Seventy-five billion goes to the states to be spent any way they would like. That doesn't create a job.
Why we don't take a timeout and try to get a housing piece in this bill, I'll never know, because if you don't address housing, you've just thrown good money after bad. And that's the point I'm trying to make. The stimulus package is just one leg of a three- legged stool, and we're blowing it. We're blowing it with the public.
MR. MATTHEWS: Well, it seems like there's three legs to the stool. There's tax cuts, both sides agree on.
SEN. GRAHAM: Right.
MR. MATTHEWS: There's something to do with real job construction --
SEN. GRAHAM: Absolutely.
MR. MATTHEWS: -- whether it's building bridges --
SEN. GRAHAM: Absolutely.
MR. MATTHEWS: -- real jobs with the smell of construction.
SEN. GRAHAM: Right, helping people.
MR. MATTHEWS: And then there's the housing piece. And then there's the housing piece.
SEN. GRAHAM: Well, there's the banking piece. Remember the TARP bill? We didn't buy one toxic asset. That was a bust. So we've got to now clean up the banking mess. That's the third part. But I believe in extending unemployment benefits in food stamps. I know people. I come from a state where the employment is nine and a half percent. We're losing a lot of jobs.
The president is rightfully concerned about urgency. But here's my message to the president. If we get this wrong, if we jam through an $850 (billion), $800 billion bill that doesn't stimulate the economy, we're going to lose the ability to go back to the public and do housing and banking because the public is bailout-weary.
MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think -- can you stay with us for a second, because you want to tell us whether you think it's a mistake, Senator Graham, if we have a vote tonight in the Senate. Is this pushing it too fast? We'll be right back with Senator Lindsey Graham. He's staying with us.
Up next, much more of this debate over the president's stimulus plan. Will President Obama get what he wants? Should he get it tonight? That's the issue. We'll be right back.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From videotape.) The American people have rendered their judgment, and now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.
(Announcements.)
MR. MATTHEWS: Welcome back to "Hardball." We're back with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.
Senator, thank you so much for watching --
SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you.
MR. MATTHEWS: -- I mean, for staying here. I'm sorry; you always watch.
SEN. GRAHAM: (Laughs.)
MR. MATTHEWS: Here is -- I hope.
SEN. GRAHAM: I do.
MR. MATTHEWS: Here's the president of the United States taking a shot at your party's record. I want you to respond to what the president said.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: (From videotape.) So let me be clear. Those ideas have been tested and they have failed. They've taken us from surpluses to an annual deficit of over a trillion dollars, and they've brought our economy to a halt. And that's precisely what the election we just had was all about. The American people have rendered their judgment, and now is the time to move forward, not back. Now is the time for action.
MR. MATTHEWS: Senator Graham?
SEN. GRAHAM: Oh, let me be clear. I'm not talking about a bill with just tax cuts. I'm talking about meeting with the president in the middle, where we spend money to jump-start the economy, that we help people who have lost their jobs, that we have tax cuts that make sense to create jobs, that we sit down as Republicans and Democrats and create jobs. I'm not talking about an ideological "Have it my way or no way."
I'm not going to be intimidated by the president. I think what I am suggesting is that we work smart and we work together. We're about to spend a trillion dollars, sometime tonight, maybe, and we've been on the bill for four days in the Senate. It's been the -- if this is change that we can believe in, count me out. This is the worst of politics, not the best of politics.
MR. MATTHEWS: There's a move afoot sometime in the next hour or so to have an amendment on the floor sponsored by, I think, some Republicans --
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah.
MR. MATTHEWS: -- among them Susan Collins, of about a $100 billion cut from this package.
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah. Right.
MR. MATTHEWS: Would that make it acceptable, or is that still not the way you want it done?
SEN. GRAHAM: Just slow down and see what you just said. There's an amendment coming, maybe in an hour, to cut $100 billion that I haven't seen, and we would have final passage a few hours thereafter. Does that make sense? The public wants us to be smart and work well together. There are people meeting in the Capitol today trying to fix this bill because the public hates it so much. I don't think it's smart to have final passage tonight. I don't think it's smart just to have one amendment from five people.
I think it would be smart to get a bunch of people in the room and try to figure out some middle ground. And if I'm unreasonable, it will show. I don't think I'm being unreasonable, Chris. I've been in this business quite a while. I've been on your show a lot. I've taken political heat from my party. I'm willing to meet in the middle. We need a stimulus package. We need more than tax cuts. But this process is broken. The substance of the bill will not pass public scrutiny. And I am disappointed.
MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, thank you very much for coming back. It's great of you to stick around for that second segment --
SEN. GRAHAM: Yeah, I've got to be on more. (Laughs.)
MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. Well, you're welcome back, sir.
SEN. GRAHAM: Thanks.
MR. MATTHEWS: Senator Lindsey Graham.
SEN. GRAHAM: Thank you.
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