MSNBC "Morning Joe" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "Morning Joe" - Transcript

MSNBC "MORNING JOE" INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME) SENATOR BEN NELSON (D-NE)

SUBJECT: ECONOMIC STIMULUS BILL INTERVIEWERS: JOE SCARBOROUGH, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, PAT BUCHANAN, MIKE BARNICLE

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MR. SCARBOROUGH: Hey, with us now we've got Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins and Democratic Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson, who are part of the small bipartisan group that came up with compromises in the stimulus package.

Thank you all so much for being with us.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And let's start with you, Senator Collins.

You are lonely up in New England, as one of the two Republicans that still represent New England in Washington, D.C. Why did you feel it was important to get involved and participate in this stimulus package?

SEN. COLLINS: This is the most important issue facing our country. We truly have an economic crisis, and I believe we have an obligation to work with President Obama to try to put together a package that will help create jobs and put our economy back on track.

I was very concerned that the bill that was coming before us was bloated. It had unnecessary and wasteful spending that didn't meet the tests of a stimulus bill.

So Senator Nelson and I led a group to try to carve out some of that wasteful spending and instead focus the bill on expenditures and tax relief that we believe will make a difference.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Senator Nelson, Paul Krugman wrote this morning in The New York Times about the destructive center.

And he asked, what do you call someone who eliminates hundreds of thousands of American jobs, deprives millions of adequate health care and nutrition, undermines schools, but offers $15,000 bonuses to affluent people who flip their houses? A proud centrist -- blaming you for all the ills of America, everything but locusts descending from the heaven and devouring inhabitants of Washington.

Respond to Mr. Krugman.

SEN. BEN NELSON: Well, there's almost $200 billion going out to the states, increasing the funding to special education in the schools. There's money going to the governors for a variety of different things, including infrastructure.

I suppose if you're going to be criticized for not doing enough, then you can ignore those who say you're doing too much. I mean, this is what -- you're going to get it from both ends.

There are those who don't think it's the right thing and those people who think it's the right thing, but not enough.

So what we've tried to do is strike a balance. At the end of the day, we've -- in effect, we've cut -- we've trimmed the fat. We've fried the bacon and we milked those sacred cows -- those programs that a lot of our colleagues have been in favor of -- and I might support, too, if they weren't part of a stimulus package, because they don't provide robust job creation and protection.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Pat Buchanan.

MR. BUCHANAN: Senator Collins, you may be the indispensable 60th vote here that gets this package through the United States Senate, and then it goes to conference.

If Ms. Pelosi, the speaker of the House, pulls the bill back in the direction that she had sent it to the Senate -- in other words, moves more in terms of the spending side and gets rid of the taxes -- are you prepared to vote against the bill that comes back on the floor, if it doesn't meet the demands you put upon Senator Reid?

SEN. COLLINS: Yes, I am. I have made it very clear that if the bill comes back with a lot of the unnecessary expenditures crammed back in it, with deep cuts in the tax relief provided to the American people, that the Democrats will lose my vote. I've made that clear to the president and to his chief of staff as well.

We have put together a carefully balanced package. It isn't perfect; it isn't my first choice or Ben's first choice, but it is far better than the bill that the House sent over.

And if that balance is upset in conference, I will vote no.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Mike Barnicle.

MR. BARNICLE: Senator Nelson and Senator Collins both, I get the sense, as the criticism of the House version of the bill intensifies and the criticism of what is going on in the Senate intensifies that there's a certain element of classism or elitism taking place in the criticism.

Thus, if you were hired under this new bill, the new expenditures, as a teacher's aide in a special ed class, some people would think that that's not a really good job. But do you, both of you, get the sense that when you go to Weston, Nebraska or Lewiston, Maine that the politics of this don't come down necessarily to Republican versus Democrat, but come down to the employed versus the unemployed?

SEN. BEN NELSON: Absolutely. Any way you look at it, when you're losing your job or you're worried you're going to lose your job, you're going to be more focused on what we're doing here.

I talked to someone at the Omaha airport yesterday, and that person has a job, probably doesn't have anybody in his family who's lost their job, isn't worried about losing his job, and he has a different view of it.

I also talked to people who are very concerned or who've had family members lose their jobs. They're very supportive of doing something.

I don't think we have a choice as to whether we do something; we do have choices about what we do.

It's fairly cavalier to sit around and say it's better to do nothing, or this is going to put us in debt. If this works -- and we hope that it will and we're expecting that we'll get response from it -- then I think it'll do the right thing for America.

The problem is we don't know how deep this recession is going to go, and we're struggling to try to find ways to help people.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: All right. We're struggling. Senators Ben Nelson and Susan Collins, thank you very much for joining us this morning.

SEN. COLLINS: Thank you.

SEN. BEN NELSON: Thank you.

END.

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