MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

MSNBC Hardball with Chris Matthews - Transcript

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Is the Dubai ports surrender enough to satisfy Democrats? Senator Chuck Schumer of New York was one of the earliest opponents of the Dubai ports deal, and just yesterday, he surprised Republicans by introducing a measure that would ban the Dubai takeover.

Senator Schumer, welcome. What's wrong with this deal, if anything, to sell off Dubai Ports World, to sell off the American terminal operations?

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Well, the devil is in the details, Chris. If it's a true sell-off, a spinoff, where the United Arab Emirates, who owns Dubai Ports World, will have no control, no say, no stock, no ability to make money, that's fine.

On the other hand, if they have any tentacles in the deal, it's not fine at all. And we're not trying to be difficult here. What we're trying to do is make sure that security is number one.

MATTHEWS: Is it the word transfer that concerns you, transfer to an American entity?

SCHUMER: Yes.

MATTHEWS: Instead of sell?

SCHUMER: Well, two things concern me. First, the wording there, which is reminiscent of their previous offers, which were not very good at all. You need a wall that's thick as could be, that nothing in the United Emirates could penetrate in terms of influencing the American operation. Their previous proposals where they also talked about one kind of thing or another, didn't have that.

And second, the other problem is, of course, that, you know, there were the votes in the House and the Senate to kill the deal outright, so it has to be something very close to that in order to meet the desires of the House, the Senate, and the American people.

MATTHEWS: Who do you think you're dealing with here? Are you dealing with John Warner, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee? Are you dealing with the Dubai company, or the government of the United Arab Emirates? Who is on the other side of it table?

SCHUMER: Yes, well, I am not dealing with the Dubai port company or the United Arab Emirates. I don't think that's appropriate. I've been dealing with Senator Warner and Senator Frist, but the real issue here is America's interest.

Dubai Ports World can do whatever it wants with taking over the British P&O Company and whatever else they do around the world, but we have say over what happens in American ports, so we're going to say what should exist in American ports and they can do whatever they want in the rest of the world.

MATTHEWS: There was a lot of saber rattling from the other side yesterday about consequences, retaliation. Do you see that on the horizon?

SCHUMER: No.

MATTHEWS: After this deal—if it goes through that they have to sell off their American port controls and your side wins this argument, do you think they might try to hit us some other way?

SCHUMER: No, I think that they understand. I mean, the real thing that kept everybody scratching their heads is why it took the Senate much longer than the House to realize that the gig was up, and most of all, no one can understand why the president is sticking by this deal, either substantively or politically.

If it's just the idea, well, never to say those magic four words that are very good for politicians but they don't like to say them—I made a mistake—that's not good enough, and that's what it seems to be.

MATTHEWS: If it does go down, if this deal is broken, basically, that Dubai ports has to sell off its American operations, is that better than having a veto and then a veto override for the country?

SCHUMER: Look, I want to settle this problem as quickly as possible and as you know, until we were getting nowhere in the Senate, we made this as bipartisan as possible. Our original bill proposal, the letter we sent to both Senators Frist and Reid were five Democrats and five Republicans, so I'm not really looking for political advantage here.

It's very simply -- 9/11 occurred in my city, I lost people who I knew dearly and well and, you know, my job as senator is to make sure that we put security first. The CFIUS committee never puts security first. They were sort of set up as a cover to allow economic deals to go forward and say they're OK in terms of security, but that was pre-9/11.

And for the president not to step in and just undo this deal on his own left us no choice but to do it here. The quickest, best way to get that undone is the one we'll take, not the one that's the longest or not the one that's politically most advantageous.

MATTHEWS: If Dubai Ports ends up giving up its control, selling off its influence in the United States completely and you're satisfied with that, on this particular question that's been the issue here, are you going to push ahead with legislation to codify this responsibility that we not have any government—foreign government controlling something as vital as the ports?

SCHUMER: Yes, well, I think that's an issue that is very important and has to be studied and is there a different between a foreign government and foreign companies that own it? Are there gradations?

Right now, about 90 percent of our terminals are owned by foreign companies. Most of that happened of before 9/11. Do we have to revisit it? We have different rules for airports. Should the same rules apply to the ports?

The one good thing that will come out of this sorry mess, Chris, is that port security, something I've been talking about since November of 2001, is now going to get attention, and make no mistake about it, it's not just the foreign companies. The American government itself doesn't do enough to make our ports secure.

MATTHEWS: How were you informed, by the way, just so we end this conversation with some clarity here? How were you, the Democratic senator from New York, with all the influence you've had on this issue, how were you personally informed by anybody that the Dubai Ports World may be willing to sell off its operation?

SCHUMER: John Warner actually, when I spoke—I was speaking on the floor of the Senate. He came over to me and said you might want to yield to me. I have some information. I did. John Warner is always a gracious, courteous and fine senator. Yielded to him.

He announced it, sent me the one paragraph piece of paper that is issued by Dubai Ports World, but clearly—and so I said on the floor which I have feel, well, this has potential, this has promise, but the devil is if the details. We still await the details.

MATTHEWS: Is this going to set a precedent for Congressional roles in deciding these national security questions with the president?

SCHUMER: Well, you know, truly, it's the executive branch that should have first call on security. And that's been the story in lots of different areas. They've claimed it, but when they're totally not paying attention to security, when they don't even try for a 45-day review when there are so many questions raised, obviously, it's the Congress's job to step in.

That's part of our oversight function, that's how the founding fathers set up the country. So do I think the Congress is going to become preeminent in security? No, it can't be. That should be the executive branch, but are we going to be—even this Republican Congress, more careful now and more vigilant? I think so and I hope so.

MATTHEWS: Are you on the road to being satisfied that we are doing enough to protect our ports? You're in New York. New York is the first American port, the big one. Are you satisfied that we have safe ports, even with this deal broken?

SCHUMER: No, even if this deal is broken, we have a long way to go. Let me give you one example. For four years I've been trying to get enough money in the budget to put nuclear detection devices on every crane that loads or unloads a container. The technology is there. If anything nuclear were in the container, it would go beep, beep, beep, beep. It costs about a billion dollars to do.

Two years ago, in a compromise, the Republican-controlled House and Senate put in $50 million. They never say no, but they slow walk the process so that we're wide open in ports.

And we're going to keep pushing on all of these port security amendments and I think we'll have more success now that Dubai Ports World has shined the spotlight on how poor our port security is.

MATTHEWS: Well, it certainly has, Senator, and one of the numbers that keeps popping out is that we only check five to six percent of the cargo.

SCHUMER: Exactly.

MATTHEWS: Will that number go up?

SCHUMER: It should, and there's only one reason we don't: money.

And the administration never wants to allocate enough money for homeland security.

It's sort of a dichotomy. It's sort of ironic. They'll put all the money we need to fight the war on terror overseas in Iraq, and as you know, I've been sympathetic to that, but when it comes to homeland security, they don't put anything close to the money that we need. Any good basketball coach knows you need a good offense and you need a good defense. We have very little in the way of defense.

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much...

SCHUMER: Take care, Chris.

MATTHEWS... Senator Chuck Schumer, the senior senator from New York who's been leading this fight.

Up next, what does the Dubai ports surrender—it's a surrender now - mean for the relationship between President Bush and his Republican critics up on Capitol Hill? This is HARDBALL only on MSNBC.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11762258/