Fox News "Studio B" - Transcript

Interview

MR. SMITH: Democrats in Congress pointing fingers today at House Republicans, accusing them of playing politics and delaying a deal on the financial bailout plan. We heard from a House Republican on the Banking Committee a short time ago. Now, for the other side, California Congressman Brad Sherman is with us now. He is as well a member of the House Financial Services Committee, and is joining from the Hill.

Sir, good to see you.

REP. SHERMAN: Good to see you. And I'm not blaming my Republican colleagues in Congress at all. I blame the president for trying to foist on the country a bill that basically comes down to this. He demands $700 billion in unmarked bills, and if you don't give that to him, Wall Street's going to shoot your 401(k).

I'm glad that we've slowed down a little bit but, frankly, we would've had a bill on the president's desk already if he had agreed to some reasonable controls on his own power and some reasonable limits on executive compensation for bailed out executives. He will not agree to either of those, he threatens a veto, and by threatening a veto, he's able to gum up the works.

MR. SMITH: Well, I think we all know that there are people on both sides of the aisle who wanted something different from what the president came to the table with, and that's maybe why we have more than one -- more than one branch of this government.

So with that said, where are we now and how confident are you that this will be done, and expeditiously?

REP. SHERMAN: Confident is not the -- the right word. I fear that we're going to pass a bad bill that's basically the -- the president's bill with some window dressing, and that we're going to pass it on Sunday because if they -- on Monday -- and thank God for Rosh Hashanah -- on Monday, we go home and we'll see our constituents. And so if they can't pass this on Sunday by threatening that the markets are going to collapse, then we'll go home, we'll talk to our constituents who will demand a completely different bill.

So they're playing the fear card. It's very hard to do that because, today, the market went up. Now, what happened 20 hours ago? The chances of the bill going through just the way the president wanted dropped from about 95 percent down to about 50 percent, and the markets went up. The markets don't necessarily need quick action on a bad bill, but there are folks who are very wealthy on Wall Street who want their $700 billion and don't want anybody to take it away from them.

MR. SMITH: Well, you sound like lots of folks on the other side of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats saying much the same along those lines. I hope you come up with a compromise and don't forget the little folks.

Congressman, good to see you.

REP. SHERMAN: You bet.

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