MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript
Interview
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MATTHEWS: Let"s go back now to Illinois Democrat--well, he"s the Illinois Democrat, the senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
MATTHEWS: He is in Philadelphia tonight, campaigning for Joe Sestak.
By the way, we will be there tomorrow night, Senator, at Temple University in North Philadelphia with the candidate Joe Sestak.
Your sense of this--and Sestak is moving in the polls back there--is he the kind of guy--I think Giannoulias is another guy here--who is going to buck the trend?
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: I can tell you, I"m glad that you are in sweet home Chicago, Chris Matthews. And I wish I could be there.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
DURBIN: But I"m glad to be in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection, as Mayor Nutter says.
But I will tell you what I"m seeing here on the ground, I see in every state I visit. We have got the ground game. Our people understand that Chuck Todd"s statistics have to be translated into votes at home. And, as I go into the headquarters, Joe Sestak has 26 headquarters across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
I went in today at 11:00. They are on the phones. They are working them hard. Nobody"s taking anything for granted. The energy factor, the enthusiasm factor is moving them toward our side.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about this fight out here between Giannoulias and Kirk. They are fighting about their war records.
I didn"t get into it, because all they did last night was fight about it. Kirk seems to be a little confusing about how he presents his battle in the war. He says, well, at least I fought.
Is the issue whether you fought or whether you get the facts straight?
DURBIN: No, I think--let"s say this. If you look at Mark Kirk"s service to this country, it is something to be admired and respected. And I do.
I just don"t understand why he wanted to go a step further and add things to his military record that didn"t exist, to suggest that he had a background as a teacher, when, in fact, he had a very limited background as a person working in a day care center and working in a prep school in England.
I mean, these sorts of things are embellishing a record. They go beyond the simple question of whether he served in the military. Of course he did. It is a more important question about whether or not he is going to be straight with the people in his answers.
MATTHEWS: Well, let me get to two issues I care about. One is this foreign money thing and the whole question of corporate power.
If you ask any corporate person who is working for a big corporation, where a lot of the jobs are, they make their money today, they keep their Dow averages up by cost-cutting, by firing people, by limiting the number of American workers they hire.
If that"s going to be the strategy of American business, if that"s going to be their business model, screwing workers out of jobs, what are the Democrats going to do about it?
DURBIN: I can tell you it"s a fundamental difference between Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk.
Alexi Giannoulias and I and the president believe we should close the tax loopholes that reward and make it easier for American companies to ship jobs overseas, period. Mark Kirk says, no, keep the loopholes in place. That"s a dramatic difference.
If we are going to have good-paying jobs right here at home, let"s reward those companies that pay a living wage, good benefits and retirement, so American workers can live the American dream. That"s how you build this economy.
MATTHEWS: Well, let"s talk about building.
It seems to me right now the consumption level in this country is down, the business investment is down. We need some other form of demand. And I say this almost every night. And other people on this network do, too. What happened to America"s tendency over the years, up until now, to build stuff, like building Chicago out of nothing, building New York out of nothing, building the intercontinental railroad--
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MATTHEWS: -- building the Golden Gate Bridge, building everything?
Now we see China with 300-mile-an-hour railroads. We see the French with them for 20 years now. They have got the Chunnel that goes through the English Channel. We don"t build anymore. Nobody is making steel. Nobody is building railroads. Nobody is doing anything in heavy industry.
Young African-Americans grow up in all-white neighborhood with no jobs. What are we going to do about it?
DURBIN: We can doing something about it. And the president started us down that road.
Take a look at the state of Illinois, high-speed rail coming to our state, creating thousands of jobs, clean-coal technology grants coming into our state, the largest clean coal technology grant in our history to build a pipeline to reduce pollution, $250 million to bring high-speed Internet across the state of Illinois.
President Obama knows this is the way to build America. And he couldn"t get a Republican, including Congressman Mark Kirk, to even stand behind him and cast a vote to move us forward with good-paying American jobs.
I couldn"t agree with you more, Chris. Let"s build the infrastructure for the 21st century, so that we can make America number one again.
MATTHEWS: Well, I don"t mind the virtual world, but I like the real world, too, and I would like to get faster or rapid interstate or interconnectedness and all that. I would like to see trains going by again.
Anyway, thank you, Dick Durbin of Illinois.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
DURBIN: Thanks, Chris.
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