MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript: Debt Ceiling

Interview

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SCHULTZ: For more, let me bring in Congressman Chris Van Hollen of Maryland who is the Ranking Member on the House Budget Committee. Congressman, good to have you with us tonight. I appreciate your time.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, (D) MARYLAND: Good to be with you, Ed.

SCHULTZ: I think -- you bet. I think what most Americans want to know when we talk about the debt ceiling, when we talk about hostage taking is what`s going to be different this time around as opposed to what we saw back in December?

HOLLEN: Well, the question Ed is, we`re going to the new year has been whether the Republicans have learned any lessons from the very harmful and unnecessary government shutdown they engineered last October. Have they turned a new leaf? Oh, we`re not. And so far, they seem to be up to their same old games which is trying to hold the economy, trying to hold the Full Faith in 39 states hostage until they come up with whatever demand they want to come up with. As you indicated, the Speaker hasn`t figured out what it is. We need to be clear and the president has been clear, which is, you don`t get to negotiate over whether or not United States pays its
bills on time.

I also agree with you that rather than even talking about this thing that`s going to hurt the economy in terms of their strategy, we should be focused as a Congress on things to put more people back to work, whether it`s infrastructure investment, whether it`s raising the minimum wage, whether it`s extending the emergency unemployment compensation for 1.7 --

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

HOLLEN: -- million on Americans.

SCHULTZ: So Congressman, does this mean that there`s not going to be any negotiation whatsoever that there is going to be a line drawn on the sand, so to speak, and that the Democrats are going to hold their ground and that we`re just going to have to pay our bills and the Republicans are going to have to live with it? How are you going to get to that point?

HOLLEN: Well, the same way we did last October. Remember last October, the Republicans said that if you don`t repeal the Affordable Care Act, if you don`t make this major changes, then we`re going to keep the government shutdown forever. And the president and the Democrats in Congress said, you don`t get to do that. You don`t get to threaten to shutdown the country in order to extract your partisan demands. And in the end, the Republicans --

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

HOLLEN: -- had to give. They gave after doing great damage to the economy, and right now, if they keep up this uncertainty about whether or not, we`re going to pay our bills on time, they are also going to be doing damage to the country. And so, let`s hope they wake up in time. But you`ve got this tea party caucus that once again seems to be running the show over here.

SCHULTZ: OK. I want to play a sound bite from Minority Leader in the
Senate Mitch McConnell talking about the debt ceiling and your reaction to
this. Here it is.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R-KY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: Some of the most significant legislation passed in the last 50 years have been in conjunction with the debt ceiling, I think for the president to ask for a clean debt ceiling when we have a debt the size of our economy is irresponsible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: So what`s your reaction to that Congressman?

HOLLEN: Well, it`s kind of interesting because it was Mitch McConnell who proposed what we call the McConnell rule right now which is that the president can go ahead and do the right thing and make sure we pay our bills on time. And the Congress wants to vote to try and overturn the president and default, Congress can do that. That was the Mitch McConnell proposal. I know he doesn`t want to be associated with it anymore, but, in a moment of acting responsibly a couple of years ago, he is the one that put down on the table.

So, he knows better. We know that because he said it himself two years ago. This notion that you`re going to threaten the health of the American economy in order to try and extract partisan demands, to try and get the Tea Party agenda through is simply reckless. And the American people know it. And there are a lot of folks in the Republican Party that know it. They`d like to --

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

HOLLEN: -- avoid or repeat of what they did, some of them. But again, they just got this impulse to go forward and we`ll have to see how this resolves itself.

SCHULTZ: All right. What do you think of the $8.6 billion in cuts to food stamps in the farm bill? I mean, was that really necessary to pick on the most vulnerable Americans and the number of people that are going to be affected by this?

HOLLEN: Ed, I voted against the farm bill for a variety of reasons. One reason was it is shock full of huge taxpayer subsidies for some of the biggest agro businesses in the country.

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

HOLLEN: They cut money from what was called direct payments, but they recycled a lot of their savings back into this other programs that help agro businesses. You know, we hear our Republican colleagues talk about interference in the marketplace. The Ag bill is exhibit A of interference in the marketplace by way of providing this big subsidy.

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

HOLLEN: So, especially in that context -- in the context of a bill that provided this huge subsidies to continue the big agro businesses, I don`t see how you could justify the changes they made to the food nutrition programs. I think they did the best they could.

Remember, Republicans tried to cut $40 billion, so, they`re able to limit the damage. But, in the context of the bill that provide (ph) those big subsidies, I just don`t see how people would support that.

SCHULTZ: And that -- all of that is, in spite on what you`re saying, but at the end of the day, it comes down to this. We picked with the farm bill. We picked on the most vulnerable Americans and we won`t turn to the corporations. We won`t turn to the wealthy Americans and say, "Hey you got to do a little bit more." We`re asking people on food stamps to serve it up. And I think that that -- it`s immoral but --

HOLLEN: And Ed, to add insult to injury, we tried to offer the men in the House that says, "Let`s use the savings from the small cuts they did make to Ag subsidies. Let`s use those savings to help --

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

HOLLEN: -- 1.7 million Americans who are -- or lost their unemployment benefits.

The speaker didn`t even allow us the dignity of a vote. Didn`t allow those people the opportunity to vote.

SCHULTZ: No. That`s how they do it. Congressman Chris Van Hollen. I appreciate your time tonight on the Ed Show. Thanks so much.

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