MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD), DCCC CHAIRMAN: It"s good to be with you, Rachel.

MADDOW: I butted together there the segments from all of these different DCCC ads talking about Republicans as tax raisers. I got to say this strategy makes no sense to me.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Rachel, as you know we"re running ads all over the country. We"ve got more than 50 races where there are going to be different ads, and some are on Social Security and Medicare, some are on making sure that we call the Republicans out on their refusal to end tax breaks that support multinational corporations that ship our jobs overseas.

And some relate to this issue where Republicans have essentially said they want to reduce the taxes for the folks at the very top. In other words, they don"t want to have an income tax. Instead they want to raise the sales taxes on everybody else. So any time you go to the store and buy something, you"re going to have to pay a tax, and at the same time, they would reduce the tax rates for the folks at the very, very top--which is clearly unfair.

Now, you--I heard what you had to say in your lead-in here. I should say that both in 2006 and 2008, the election years where you said the Democrats win a lot of seats in those districts, that ad was used in a lot of those districts because it cut through some of the nonsense the Republicans were talking about where they said only Democrats were wanting to raise taxes.

And what this says, very clearly, is--no, Republicans want to raise taxes. It"s just they want to raise taxes in a way that hurts the middle class. This is the way to raise taxes that hurts people where they go and buy goods at the store, as opposed to the Democrats who said, you know, you should do it based on your income. If you"ve got a lot higher income, you should pay more.

So, that--and again, this was--this was the kind of ad that was played in those previous years as well.

MADDOW: And, you know, I can"t speak to whether or not this ends up working in individual districts. What seems strange to me from a national perspective is that there"s a lot of people in the Democratic Party right now focusing on messaging nationally, this idea that Republicans want to hold tax cuts for the middle class, 98 percent of the country, hostage, so that they can give extra tax cuts to rich people. That the idea that Republicans want to hold out $250,000 of income and above for additional tax cuts and nobody else gets tax relief otherwise. Sort of, Republicans looking out for the rich guys on these tax guys--on the tax issues.

This message bluntly, the way it comes across in the ads is--

Republicans want to raise the taxes. It seems like it"s just designed to obfuscate the differences between Republicans and Democrats rather than pushing a national message that might resonate coast to coast.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, Rachel, as you know, under the Obama administration, we"ve seen a series of tax cuts for middle class Americans. In other words, as part of the whole recovery bill, about one-third was tax relief for 95 percent of working Americans. We"ve also seen tax relief for small businesses.
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It is the Republicans, as you said, who are saying, you know, we"re only going to allow tax relief for 98 percent of the American people to go forward if you guys give a tax break to the folks at the very top, even though it blows the $700 billion hole in the deficit. And, by the way, the so-called "small businesses" that they say they"re going to be helping are the big Washington law firms, the KKRs of the world, big leveraged buyout firms. Those are the people the Republicans are trying to fool into believing they"re small businesses.

These other ads, again, that were played in the past show how disconnected some of these Republican candidates are when they say, "Let"s reduce taxes on the folks at the very top and we"re going to compensate for that by raising taxes on everything else you buy"--a national sales tax which we all know is a very regressive form of taxation.

So, in many of these races, it"s not clear where the other guy is on some of--on a particular issue, but we know where they stand on this one because they signed a particular pledge or form. And again, we"re now talking about a couple ads out of a whole universe of ads, many of which are on the Social Security issue, the Medicare issue, the question of making sure we don"t ship American jobs overseas, what we"ve done for veterans compared to some of the votes Republicans have taken that do not support our veterans in terms of health care.

So, you"ve got a whole menu of ads and I will say what people look at is each of these districts and what they think is most effective in a particular district.

MADDOW: I guess--I guess this is the not a national message strategy but district by district local messaging strategy at work for all of the confusion that it leads to.

VAN HOLLEN: Rachel, let me just say, look, the national--the national message has been pretty clear.

The national message is this: that Republicans want to take us back to a set of economic policies that benefited a small group of special interests at the expense of consumers and taxpayers and workers.

They want to take us back to the days before we passed Wall Street reform, when the folks on Wall Street called the shots and it was everybody else who paid for their mistakes.

They want to take us back to a time when they"re going to give tax breaks to those Washington lobbying firms and they want to keep in place these tax provisions, very perverse tax provisions, that reward multinational corporations for shipping American jobs overseas. In other words, they have put the profits of overseas corporations above the interests of American workers and consumers.

So, the overall framework has been: Republicans want to go back to an economic policy that for eight years favored very narrow special interests, whether they were health insurance companies, big oil companies, or Wall Street firms, at the expense of everybody else. And those are the kind of ads that you"re seeing played around the country.

This is just one example that you"ve picked out that deals with this fair tax idea, which is an example--is an example of Republicans saying, "Hey, let"s shift the tax burden to the middle class and give the folks at the very top a break."
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MADDOW: And honestly, the way it plays out on the ground is as an exception to the national message that you just laid out, but, you know, understanding that as the multiplicity of the ways that different Democrats can approach these issues is part of understanding what Democrats are doing this year. And thanks to you for helping us understand that, Congressman Van Hollen. Thank you.

VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you, Rachel. Thanks.

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