MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript

MR. MATTHEWS: We begin with tonight's stimulus vote and two members of the U.S. House from California; first, Republican Darrell Issa.

Congressman, you put out a very tough piece here. You say this thing won't work. Are you saying that a year from now or a year and a half from now, the economy is not going to be better off because you're right and Obama's wrong? Is that what you're saying?

REP. ISSA: No, actually, what I'm saying is a little bit like George Washington, who died when people bled him. You know, if he had lived, they would have said that bleeding him is the reason that George Washington lived.

The fact is, there's nothing -- very little in this bill that's a stimulus. There's $137 billion for 32 new federal programs. There's redistribution of wealth to people who ultimately spend all they receive as it is. And most importantly, what I think your listeners should understand is a lot of these programs are simply pent-up programs like IDEA that help, to be honest, children with disabilities. But there's no new money, because when these dollars arrive, the states simply will reduce what they spend, which means no net new money. You can't call it stimulus if it's not going to be net new money.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, what about all the big shovel jobs, all the bridge-building, highway money, all the tax cuts? What about that?

REP. ISSA: Well, first of all, the $5 billion for the Corps of Engineers per year, the roughly 12 percent of this bill that does any shovel-ready programs, I commend the vast majority of them. It'll take us a while to look through and see where the waste, fraud and abuse is, but a lot of these are good ideas. And beginning to rebuild our infrastructure in this country is a good idea, even if it isn't in a stimulus package. But that's about where this ends.

When you talk about tax cuts, remember that one of the biggest chunks of these tax cuts are, in fact, rebate money to people that will take them down to net no money, not even into their retirement; nothing wrong with that, but all it really is is about as silly as the $600 checks that we sent out in the previous Congress that ultimately people did exactly the same thing. They either put it in the bank account or they spent it, but it didn't change their behavior or their confidence.

MR. MATTHEWS: Are you agreeing with Rush Limbaugh's argument or is he agreeing with you that the whole strategy here of Obama is to basically get poor people out of paying any taxes whatsoever, income taxes, or even payroll taxes, because they get a big credit against their payroll taxes so that they'll vote Democrat the rest of their lives? Is that what you're saying here?

REP. ISSA: Well, I don't want to make this partisan, and I didn't hear those comments from Rush Limbaugh. What I do believe is that when we look at what is a stimulus factor, the president has said that it's all about public confidence. Very little in this bill really is going to turn into public confidence, including, quite frankly, those rebates in the tax program.

If we had investment tax credits the way we did in the '80s, where you could track the credit against new investment, then, in fact, people could have confidence that those new machines will be bought; the hybrid production lines that GM, Ford and Chrysler might need would have buyers.

Right now there's no investment money here. There's nothing that's going to cause somebody in Canada to move their factory to the United States or to hire new people. That's what's missing from the stimulus package.

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think we need a return to the economic policies of the last eight years? Do you think we'd be better off with Bush economics right now?

REP. ISSA: Not at all.

MR. MATTHEWS: Should we have more Bush -- no? Should we have more of what you guys were giving us for the last eight years? Should we have more of that? Is that better for the economy, what you guys have been doing? I'm serious.

REP. ISSA: No, and I appreciate it, Chris. My voters have made it very clear that they do not want Democrat lite. What they really want is a return to Republican values. That was pretty much missing on the economic side of the last eight years. It has to come back.

The truth is that the misconduct, if you will, of overspending during the Bush years does not justify further overspending during the Obama years. President Obama talks like a conservative. We as Republicans have an opportunity to work with him so that we both act like conservatives. Regardless of which party is in power, we cannot continue borrowing money as though that adds any ability for Americans to get loans on their homes. Remember that what we borrow --

MR. MATTHEWS: Why should the public listening right now -- I'm just asking a tough question, because you know the answer -- trust you guys after eight years to do what you didn't do? And you're saying the next eight years you're going to be different. "Don't judge us by what we've done the last eight years."

There's an old political expression in New York -- before somebody tells you what they're going to do, first ask them what they've done. And what you've done for eight years is bring us to economic catastrophe. And now you're saying, "Trust us to try some other way, but don't trust the new guys."

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, first of all, if the new guys do what they say that they were going to do and they had transparency, if there wasn't so much earmark and pork in this bill, we wouldn't be saying there was, because, quite frankly, we did learn from our mistake.

Just like somebody you put in prison for committing a crime, Republicans were voted out for not acting like Republicans. And I think we've owned up to it. And for the most part, we've said, "Look, we were wrong. We were wrong to go along with the last president on spending bills, one after another. We ran up the cost of government over and above the war on terror, and we shouldn't have." But that doesn't change the fact that today we are talking about the new administration and the new Democrat Congress that is making our spending look like peanuts.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, what in the bill do you like? You said you like the Army Corps of Engineers' shovel-ready projects. That's about $5 billion.

Is there anything else in there you would vote for if it was by itself?

REP. ISSA: Look, I would vote for not just a two-year but a long-term goal to put hundreds of billions of dollars into highway construction and infrastructure rebuilding, and I would do as much of it as I could in the first two years at a time when prices are cheap and workers are laid off. And I think the public would be confident that if we said we're going to rebuild America and we couldn't do it all in two years, they would be fine to take longer.

Beyond that, I think that we should have the kind of targeted investment that forces people sitting on the sidelines with their own money to make the right decision, which is investing in those areas that we're willing to share that cost. That's where targeted investment tax credits make sense, something that's not in this bill.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, let me ask you to tell me what's wrong with this thinking. Classic Keynesian Democratic economics is this: If consumption goes down because people aren't buying anything, they're scared. And if business stops investing, that goes down. Then government has to pick up the slack and start spending money or else give big tax cuts to people so they'll spend money.

Isn't that the idea behind this stimulus package, government spending to offset the lack of spending by the consumer and the investor?

REP. ISSA: Well, if it was, then more of this spending would actually occur in the first two years. You know, some of this spending won't even actually be spent until President Obama's second term. But I think the problem with this analysis is we're not spending money that we're willing to tax the American people for; we're simply spending borrowed money. And that is drying up the long- term ability to get the kind of capital formation in this country we need.

So I don't disagree with money spent during a recession on things which we then can cut back on. If you build new roads or fix roads today, you can coast again at some time in the future if you need to. But if you simply say we're going to add more money to what we give the states for special ed and other programs, nothing wrong with that except it's not something you're going to be able to cut back, and it's certainly not something that has net new spending.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah, I get the feeling the government's going to print money and not allow this crowding out you're worried about. I think they're going to monetize this debt. Aren't they?

REP. ISSA: If they --

MR. MATTHEWS: Aren't they really going to create more money to pay for these projects, the government?

REP. ISSA: Chris, I was in the Army in the late '70s and went into business in 1980, and you remember those times. The fact is that if they do that, we'll have runaway inflation. The dollar will fall precipitously against other currencies, and public confidence around the world will leave us.

So, yes, we could do that. That's always the final outcome. But it didn't work for the Germans after two world wars. It won't work for us. Monetizing our debt simply puts us in a runaway inflation that could take us decades to recover from.

MR. MATTHEWS: We're in the right area here, Congressman, because neither one of us know, but I'm suspicious that maybe that's what we're going to do -- inflate the economy, get home values going up again. Home values go up; that means banks are willing to lend money for people buying homes. People buy homes; they make more money. Maybe the country wants a little inflation right now. We'll see. It's hard to have a little of it, I know.

REP. ISSA: It's very hard.

MR. MATTHEWS: A little's okay, but sometimes a little is necessary, because we have a deflationary situation right now.

Anyway, thank you very much, Congressman Darrell Issa of California.

REP. ISSA: Thank you, Chris.

Source