FOX News Channel "On The Record" - Transcripts

Interview

GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, FOX NEWS HOST: Everyone, yes, everyone,agrees our national debt is absolutely exploding and it is a threat to our country. The president just confined a bipartisan debt commission to tackle the problem.

Right now two members of the debt commission, a Democrat and a Republican, go "On the Record." First Democratic Congressman Jan Schakowsky -- we asked the congresswoman, why do we need this commission? Why can't Congress solve of the problem itself?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY, D-ILL.: Our goal is by 2015 midterm we solve some of the deficit problems and then going forward long term we come up with suggestions on how we deal with the long term debt. So I think putting people together, Republicans and Democrats and people from the outside, business people, makes a lot of sense.

Short term, right now, I think it is senseless to talk about the deficit, because actually were we to reduce the deficit right now, and just about all economists agree, unemployment would go up.

And I think what we want to avoid is the kind of double dip recession that they had in the 30s when deficit hawks said stop the spending and it drove unemployment up again. And so we're talking about down the road. And it is good to step back, have people together nay room separate from the day-to-day of politics.

VAN SUSTEREN: I understand that everyone has good heart and mind on the commission and also people who sit here in the house and the Senate.

But as I look at this from the outside is it's the function of the members of Congress to work together. We have all these committees because we haven't been able to reconcile a budget or come to terms with our growing deficit that the president has issued an executive order and taken members of Congress and say you come here and get along and talk.

That's essentially what it is, because the commission is made up of senators and -- of people from the House and the Senate, and of course Erskine Bowles and former Senator Simpson.

SCHAKOWSKY: But we don't have a subcommittee or a committee that's dedicated just to looking at our long term, short term, midterm budget issues. So in a way this is like a committee the president has suggested.

And of course all of Congress will have to consider whatever we may come up with or not if we don't come up with anything. It is also to be adviser to the president as well. What are the suggestions that some of the best minds that we can pull together would have on this?

VAN SUSTEREN: You can do that without the commission. I understand it has gotten pretty ugly here on Capitol Hill the lines are divided. And it looks like this group can work together more effectively because of its creation.

And all those things could be done in a perfect world. Members of Congress could talk to the president, reconcile. We've got a whole structure in the government, and it seems to me that its inability to achieve many of the goals that we would like, as a result we have to create a commission.

SCHAKOWSKY: I actually think that this is going to be a useful exercise, even if we don't come to complete consensus, which is we are not going to come to a vote at the end if there aren't 14 out of 18 people who agree to a whole plan, then it won't be in the final report.

On the other hand, I think we can put ideas and perspectives on the table. For example, my view is that we aren't just actuaries or bean counters, but we have to be looking at what is the impact --

VAN SUSTEREN: Visionaries in some way, a vision of where we're going?

SCHAKOWSKY: But what are we visioning? Just cutting the deficit is just about numbers? Or first and foremost, what is the impact that our decisions would have on ordinary people? It is easy to talk about slashing Social Security or Medicare. The average older American makes $18,000 a year.

VAN SUSTEREN: But the Democratic Party doesn't even have a budget right now from which we can work in terms to figure out what we should slash or save or do anything. So all these economic discussions to me as an outsider seem disheartening.

SCHAKOWSKY: Actually we know quite a bit. We've taken a lot of decisive action passing the health care legislation means $1.2 trillion dollars in savings over the next 20 years. There's a lot of -- the Recovery Act, creating the jobs that the CBO says it has created. So we are taking action on budget issues.

But I think pulling people together to say, what about the long term? And what are the priorities? Where are we going to look? And putting revenue on the table, we're talking about taxes there, as well as spending on the table, I think is a useful thing for us to be doing.

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