MSNBC "Morning Joe" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "MORNING JOE" INTERVIEW WITH REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC)
SUBJECT: ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE AND GOV. SANFORD'S REFUSAL OF FUNDS FOR SOUTH CAROLINA INTERVIEWERS: JOE SCARBOROUGH, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, JOHN HEILEMANN (NEW YORK MAGAZINE)

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MR. SCARBOROUGH: Let's go right now to our good friend, Democratic House Majority Whip, representative from South Carolina, Congressman Jim Clyburn.

Congressman Clyburn, you know, your good friend Mark Sanford's talking about not taking the money. You said that's easy for him, since he lives on a plantation. (Laughter.)

Do you think he's going to take -- and by the way, the definition of a plantation these days, if you name your farm, that's a plantation. (Laughter.)

So do you think that it's a mistake for Governor Sanford to pass up the money?

REP. CLYBURN: Absolutely, Joe. Thank you so much for having me. It's good to see you again.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Great seeing you.

REP. CLYBURN: Look, we have 12 counties in this state (sic). Twelve. We don't have but 46 counties. That means that more than 25 percent of our counties, for the last 30 years have been chronically unemployed, chronically sick, without infrastructure, 20 percent or more of its people living beneath the poverty level.

This program is an opportunity for Governor Sanford to target those communities and, in fact, we've got in the law that at least 10 percent of the money must be spent with those communities.

He has not done anything for those counties since he's been in office. We still have schools that are dilapidated. You recall that the president talked at his press conference the other night about J.V. Martin School that he attended -- or at least visited -- during the campaign, and why this is necessary for us to do something about these schools.

This is an opportunity for Governor Sanford to do some things here in South Carolina that he has not had the resources to do up until this point.

I've got to believe that he's willing to help these students, he's willing to help these communities. Why won't he?

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And you know a lot of us believed back in the 1990s that we needed to pass welfare reform. It passed, and many believe that this stimulus bill, well, revives the welfare state. Is that true?

REP. CLYBURN: Absolutely not. This is a stimulus, much -- you talked this morning a whole lot about 1933, things that this country did after the collapse of 1929. Now, I just want to be sure that as we do this that we don't leave communities out like we did back in 1933.

Whatever you may say about the New Deal, it did not do for all communities what it could have done, because we were operating at that time under some laws that said certain things we did not do for certain people. I just want to make sure that that doesn't happen in this instance.

And that's why working with the Ways and Means Committee and others we were able to come up with some formula -- formulae -- that we got out of these empowerment zones, enterprise communities, to see where to target this money where the most need exists. And that's all we're trying to do here.

And I believe it is a thing that most governors are pleased to do. That is why the governor of California --

MS. BRZEZINSKI: (Inaudible.)

REP. CLYBURN: Yes, sir?

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Congressman, it's Mika Brzezinski in New York.

REP. CLYBURN: Yes, Mika?

MS. BRZEZINSKI: And I'm just wondering, in response to all the friction we're seeing over the benefits, potential benefits of this plan, is everything in this stimulus package absolutely necessary towards stimulating our economy?

REP. CLYBURN: No, not everything is absolutely necessary to stimulate the economy, but some of the things in here, about 25 percent, I would say, are things that you need to have in place to sustain the stimuli once they take place.

If you have an upsurge and you put people on jobs, what happens later on, 18 months down the road? You don't want them to fall off of a cliff. And so what you want to do is stimulate the economy, then have certain things in here that will help sustain that growth in order to build a bridge into the future when other things would take hold.

So to think that 100 percent of this is stimuli, that's absolutely not true. We never intended for it to be. That's why -- only 75 percent spend out in the first 18 months.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: All right. John Heilemann has a question for you, Congressman.

John?

MR. HEILEMANN: Congressman --

REP. CLYBURN: Yes, John?

MR. HEILEMANN: We read in The New York Times this morning that President Obama was thinking about convening a White House task force on Social Security, that he got some pushback from the House Democratic leadership and has now tabled that idea for the moment.

Can you talk about that and whether your colleagues in the leadership think that Social Security is an important issue for the president to get to or whether it should be put on the back burner?

REP. CLYBURN: Social Security is very, very important. But the thing is, what we've got to do now is get people back to work.

And if we can get people back to work, we can get our housing mortgages stabilized, we can get Wall Street back to functioning, and then we can start looking at people's retirement.

We don't -- no need to be concentrating on people's retirement when we've got their children and grandchildren without jobs, without education. And that's why I think that we want to focus on this first, and that can come later.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: All right. Hey, thank you so much for being with us, Congressman Clyburn. Great to see you again.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Thank you, Congressman.

REP. CLYBURN: Thank you all so much for having me.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: See you tomorrow night at the speech.

REP. CLYBURN: Look forward to it. It's always good to see you, Joe.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: All right. Pretend you know me, Jim, when I go up and try to shake your hand, all right? Will you do that for me? (Laughter.)

REP. CLYBURN: I'll never do that to you, man. You're my main man. (Laughter.)

MR. SCARBOROUGH: All right. Tell Maxine I'm going to embarrass her by hugging her on the floor. Going to cost her some votes in Los Angeles --

REP. CLYBURN: (Laughs.) Please, don't do that. Don't do that to her.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: It always panics her when I do.

Thanks so much, Jim.

REP. CLYBURN: Thank you so much. Thank you, Mika. Good to see you.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Thank you.

END.

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