MSNBC Scarborough Country - Transcript

MSNBC  

SHOW: SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY 22:00

HEADLINE: SCARBOROUGH COUNTRY For August 18, 2003

BYLINE: Joe Scarborough

GUESTS: John Corvino; Lenny Goldberg; Tom McClintock; Wesley Clark

HIGHLIGHT:
Is Arnold Schwarzenegger really the GOP's best candidate in California? A controversial new class at the University of Michigan is called "How to be Gay." Will former Supreme NATO Commander Wesley Clark run against President Bush in 2004?

BODY:
JOE SCARBOROUGH, HOST: And with me now, a Republican state senator and candidate for governor, Tom McClintock, and Lenny Goldberg with the California Tax Association.

Gentlemen, welcome to the show.

I want to begin with you, Tom.

Obviously, listen, I'm not supporting your campaign. I'm not supporting anybody's campaign. But how does Arnold Schwarzenegger think he's going to get elected governor by hiding and not telling people where he stands on important issues?

TOM MCCLINTOCK ®, CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Well, I think the public are going to insist on it, Joe.

I know there's a tendency in the national media to focus on the—how do I say it politely? -- the eccentric nature of the candidate pool. But what's really going on here in California is a very serious discussion over the future of our state. When we've lost nearly one-third of the million jobs over the last 2 ½ years, we have the first domestic out-migration of Californians in the history of this state, it's fight or flight time. A lot of people are fleeing.

Those who are staying realize that this is about their family's future and that the state's worth fighting for.

SCARBOROUGH: Well, Senator, and you can't fight for something if you don't know what your general-to-be believes in.

Now, according to "The Wall Street Journal," Warren Buffett, the billionaire financier adviser to Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign for California governor, strongly suggested in an interview that the state's property taxes need to be higher.

Tom McClintock, although Schwarzenegger says he supports caps on property taxes, what's your reaction to his main adviser saying Californians need to pay higher property taxes?

MCCLINTOCK: Shock. And I am very concerned about the team that Schwarzenegger has surrounded himself with. It's not just Warren Buffett pining for the days before Proposition 13 stopped this spiraling property tax assessments that were literally forcing people to lose their homes.

But he's also got the team around him that, in 1991, imposed the biggest tax increase by any state in American history here in California. It was a tax increase that broke the back of the economy, turned a recession into a near depression. And with respect to the property taxes, bear in mind, California already bears one of the heaviest tax burdens in the country. We are spending a larger portion of people's earnings than at any time in our history and delivering less.

Now, the property taxes might not be a big deal for someone earning as much as Warren Buffett or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but for a retired couple on a fixed income, that's literally the difference between keeping or losing their home.

SCARBOROUGH: Let me bring Lenny in here.

And, Lenny, I want to play you something that fiscal conservative Bill Simon is running. And it's a radio ad. And it's talking about Arnold's tax proposals.

Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP, AD)

BILL SIMON ®, CALIFORNIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: Gray Davis tripled our car taxes. And now Arnold Schwarzenegger's team wants to triple our property taxes, which just goes to show you, don't send a liberal to do a tax fighter's job.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SCARBOROUGH: Lenny, California's economy is in shambles. Its budget is in shambles. But do you really think voters will support Schwarzenegger if they believe his camp is sending the message out that Gray Davis isn't taxing Californians enough?

LENNY GOLDBERG, CALIFORNIA TAX REFORM ASSOCIATION: Well, I don't think that's the message.

Gray Davis had proposed taxes. The vast majority of voters in California understand that, to deal with our budget crisis, you need a combination of taxes and cuts. So, if Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to tell the truth to the California voters, he's going to say, we're going to have to do this with a combination of taxes and cuts. And that's what the California voters have said in poll after poll.

Now, with regard to the Prop 13 issue, it's really the big hole in the state's taxes

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: Lenny, hold on.

GOLDBERG: Sure.

SCARBOROUGH: If you can, explain that to people that don't live in California what you mean by Prop 13.

GOLDBERG: OK.

Prop 13 was—and Tom McClintock mentioned this—the revolutionary property tax cut that cut taxes, cut property taxes, made it really difficult to raise taxes in the future, in 1978. And Ronald Reagan, when he became president, said, this is a tax revolt that's sweeping the nation and they did a lot of tax cuts in his first year in office.

SCARBOROUGH: Right.

GOLDBERG: So that's Prop 13. And it's kind of an icon of California politics now. Everybody says it's the third rail, don't touch California—don't touch Prop 13. So when Warren Buffett says something about that, obviously, it generates a lot of reaction.

Now, really, where the huge hole in Prop 13 is on the commercial property side. Homeowners—and we have an explosive housing market. It's still going up, although, for sure, it's got to level off, given the economic situation. But it keeps going up in California. And homeowners want some kind of protection. A lot of other states provide a lot of protection as well.

But no other state other than California has a system that, for commercial property, allows Disneyland to have a lot of its property assessed at 1975 values, has huge office buildings that are assessed at 2 cents a square foot on their land, when others are assessed at

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: I understand that, Lenny. I'm sorry. We're going to have to wrap it up. But just very briefly

(CROSSTALK)

GOLDBERG: Well, that's where the big hole is.

SCARBOROUGH: Do you think Californians, though, are going to support higher property taxes, yes or no?

GOLDBERG: Well, yes on the commercial side, no on the housing side. They will never support residential property taxes. But there's so many loopholes in commercial business properties that we have got to change that. And we will change that.

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH: That's a good yes.

Senator, do you think that Californians are going to support higher taxes from their next governor?

MCCLINTOCK: Absolutely not.

As I said, this state is already spending a larger portion of people's earnings than any time in its history. And yet, despite record levels of expenditures, we have highway congestion in every major city, unprecedented in our history. We're rated among the lowest in educational quality anywhere in the country. We pay the highest electricity prices in the continental United States.

This is not the fault of the taxpayers for not paying enough taxes. This is the fault of years of waste and mismanagement in Sacramento.

SCARBOROUGH: All right. Thank you so much, Senator. Thank you, Lenny. We appreciate you being on our show.