CNBC Interview - Transcript
Interview
CNBC Interview - Transcript
CNBC INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR MARK WARNER (D-VA); AND SENATOR JOHN ENSIGN (R-NV)
SUBJECT: THE PRESIDENT'S FIRST 100 DAYS INTERVIEWERS: BILL GRIFFETH, SUE HERERA, MICHELLE CARUSO-CABRERA, DENNIS KNEALE, MARK HAINES
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MR. GRIFFETH: But we are pleased to welcome a couple of distinguished senators from both sides of the aisle to give us their take on those first 100 days and some of the issues thereof. We welcome Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, and Republican Senator John Ensign of Nevada is back with us as well.
Gentlemen, nice to see you. Thank you for your time.
SEN. WARNER: Thank you.
SEN. ENSIGN: Thank you.
MR. GRIFFETH: I appreciate it very much. Let me start if I can with some of the other news that has been going on on Capitol Hill during the last couple of days, Senator Specter switching his party allegiance to the Democrats officially at this point.
Senator Ensign, you have to acknowledge that that's a real blow to the GOP agenda at this point.
SEN. ENSIGN: No question about it. And, you know, this was, you know, a political decision on his part. He came to us in our lunch yesterday. He said he met with his pollster. His pollster said he could not win in a Republican primary, and that was the decision for his switch.
He was not upset with the Republican Party. He has a lot of friends in the Republican Party. He was treated well. Many of us supported him in his last election to get by a primary. But he said that his pollster said that he could not win, and so he was switching parties.
It does indicate, though, that the Democrats have a stronger hand. And if Al Franken is seated up in Minnesota, they'll have 60 votes, and they'll be --
MR. GRIFFETH: But by the --
SEN. ENSIGN: -- they'll be able to do pretty much whatever they want.
MR. GRIFFETH: Or will you, Senator Warner? I mean, by the same token, I mean, Senator Specter made it clear he will not always be that 60th vote on all Democratic issues in this. Are you confident that the supermajority that seems to be growing on paper here will be all that bulletproof?
SEN. WARNER: Listen, I'm a relatively new senator, but Senator Specter's reputation has always been as an independent voice. I think he's going to still be an indepedent voice. As one of the more moderate Democratic senators, I actually think another moderate voice in the Democratic caucus is a good thing.
I hope that the president, though, will continue and that we'll try to continue to find some bipartisan common cause. I think that's really important as we take on some of the big issues we're going to -- going to address.
MR. GRIFFETH: My tendency is to want to call you Governor Warner -- (laughter) -- so I guess --
MS. HERERA: Senator --
MS. CARUSO-CABRERA: Senator --
MS. HERERA: Go ahead.
MR. HAINES: When it comes to the financial issues, the bailout of Wall Street, how do you rate President Obama?
MR. GRIFFETH: Senator Ensign.
MR. HAINES: Senator Ensign.
SEN. ENSIGN: Well, you know, I think that the housing problem should've been addressed much earlier. That's why I offered an alternative to the stimulus bill. The housing problem -- everybody recognizes that that's what drug the economy down in the first place. That's why I thought we should've been laser-focused to fix that.
The president now is bringing forward a couple of proposals that are similar to what I had proposed. I wish we would've done it a couple of months ago.
MS. CARUSO-CABRERA: But putting that aside, when it comes to actually Wall Street -- and maybe you think he did them out of order -- but when it comes to what he's done with Wall Street, for Wall Street or against Wall Street -- however you want to put it -- what's your grade?
SEN. ENSIGN: I'm not real positive on it. And one of the reasons is because there may be some short-term benefits gained by government spending and government, you know, getting into some of these financial institutions. But what I'm much more concerned about is the long-term financial health of the United States and our economy.
And being able to handle the debt is going to be very, very difficult into the future. We cannot handle, you know, 4 (percent) or 5 percent as far as deficits to GDP. And throughout the president's budget, he's never under 4 percent; most of the time, it's over 5 percent. And the huge debt that we're putting onto our children's backs is really going to be unsustainable.
MR. KNEALE: Senator Warner, with the spectre of the Specter defection, is bipartisanship dead? Can you tell the Republicans to just, you know, go out to lunch; we don't even care about your input anymore?
SEN. WARNER: I hope not. I was a governor that had a 2-to-1 Republican legislature. We had to find common ground. I think we still need to.
But I would say let's go back to the question you asked Senator Ensign. You know, let's look at what President Obama inherited. This was the equivalent of the 100-year flood. We had to try things that, in normal circumstances, I don't think anybody would've willingly jumped into. But if you look at the three major actions that the administration has taken, we've got $2 trillion less of spending between -- of less consumer and business spending. So a stimulus had to be done. Was it perfect? No, but I think a step in the right direction.
You had to shore up the financial system. I spent 20 years around the financial markets. We were on the verge -- as you know and I think all of us would acknowledge -- of financial meltdown. Perfect solution with the TARP? No. But we had to act.
And then, third, I agree with Senator Ensign. We also have to take on the downturn and the crisis in the housing market, and we're laying out programs there. Now will all of these work. I think we won't fully know until mid-summer, but what President Obama has done is -- I think the way he's talked to the American people -- he said these things are going to be hard. He's encouraged the American people to kind of get behind him. They are overwhelmingly behind him in terms of right direction/wrong direction for the country. I think the jury is out on -- still -- on some of the program's effectiveness, but I sure as heck think the direction that we're is --
MS. CARUSO-CABRERA: All right. Senator Ensign?
SEN. WARNER: -- the right one.
SEN. ENSIGN: Let me just -- let me just say on that. You know, if you believe in stimulus and government spending for stimulus, you could acknowledge maybe that will help in the short-term. But the problem that I have is a lot of these programs are going to be permanent. And that's what's going to hurt the long-term financial health of the United States.
You know, the president, I actually give him high marks for turning the mood of the country around. His positive attitude, and I like that that he's actually -- because so much of our economy is psychological, that he actually is proving -- improving the psychological health of the economy. And that's a positive step.
But I once again get back to the long-term health of the country.
MS. HERERA: Mm hmm.
SEN. ENSIGN: If we would have taken the stimulus program, and say, "It's only going to be for this period of time, and then we're going to cut these programs off," I probably wouldn't have -- wouldn't have had nearly as big of a problem with the stimulus package.
MS. CARUSO-CABRERA: Senator --
(Cross talk.)
MR. KNEALE: Senator Ensign, could I just ask you about the role that Republicans play in that psychology?
(Pause interview.)
(Resume interview.)
MS. HERERA: You know, Senator Warner, I'd like to ask you -- Senator Ensign just touched on one of the issues that Wall Street is worried about. And that is some of these programs -- whether you're talking about TARP or other issues -- the government involvement in Wall Street and the private enterprise may be permanent. Are you concerned at all about the lack of an exit strategy with some of these programs and some of the government programs that are going on? And what's the remedy for that?
SEN. WARNER: Well, let's look at -- let me give you three suggestions. One, around the stimulus, 40 percent of the stimulus was actually tax cuts. And some of the initiatives that were passed only have got a two-year life. Now, we've got to have the discipline to stop after the economy recovers, but that ought to be put upon us and our responsibility in Congress.
In terms of the investments through TARP, you know, I think we're all concerned about that. I don't want the government taking over our financial institutions, but we had to go through some level of shoring up, and I think as soon as possible we ought to get those government dollars returned, and let the financial institutions, the healthy ones, move forward.
And finally, in terms of overall long-term spending, we do have to bring down these deficits. I for one believe we ought to go ahead and put together a bipartisan commission that could take on entitlement spending and come up with a set of proposals that we could vote up or down as a bloc because any proposal can be picked to death by the amendment process here in the Congress.
MS. CARUSO-CABRERA: Senator Ensign, we've got Bank of America's Ken Lewis in the hot seat today. What do you make of all these reports that maybe Bernanke and Paulson told him that he'd better do the deal with Merrill or else he was going to lose his job, or that he had to do it for the good of the country? How does that sit with you?
SEN. ENSIGN: Well, this is government getting involved in the private sector. And then political decisions, you know, are made, and people are forced to do things that they may not be -- may not want to do. And that is a big problem with government being involved in the private sector.
By the way, I want to show a little bipartisanship. What Senator Warner just mentioned as far as an entitlement commission is exactly the right thing to do. Members of Congress do not have the political courage to take on the entitlement programs. And we know that those are going to bring the country to a screeching halt because of the retiring of the baby boomers, and we need to get control of entitlement spending. And the only way to do that is to have an entitlement commission. That's something bipartisan we should do together.
MR. HAINES: Senator Ensign, I have a note here from the Republican Study Commission headed by Tom Price from Georgia who says that the 6 percent decline in GDP today shows that the stimulus plan for the Obama administration is a bust, nothing but a government spending spree. Is that your take on today's GDP number?
SEN. ENSIGN: No. I -- you know, I think it's too early to judge whether the stimulus package, you know, has been, you know, short- term. I think they're way too early into it. I have actually said that I think that the stimulus bill is going -- you're going to see some positive benefits from it. The problem that I had with it, as I mentioned before, is a lot of these programs -- and we've seen in Washington, D.C., when programs are put into place, they never go away. Ronald Reagan had a famous saying. The best way to eternal life is to become a federal program. (Laughter.) It's because we never end things up here.
MR. HAINES: All right.
MS. HERERA: On that note, we have to end this. Yes.
MR. GRIFFETH: But we must end this interview. Yes, unfortunately. Senator Warner, Senator Ensign, always good to see you. Thank you for joining us today very much.
SEN. ENSIGN: Thank you.
SEN. WARNER: Thank you.
MR. GRIFFETH: You bet.
END.
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