MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

MSNBC "HARDBALL WITH CHRIS MATTHEWS" INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR ARLEN SPECTER (R-PA); SENATOR SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME)

INTERVIEWER: CHRIS MATTHEWS

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MR. MATTHEWS: Let's go to Susan Collins. Senator Specter is there. I'm going to ask you both. You met today, apparently. What are your conditions for the final package? You first, Senator Specter. What conditions have you set in your own mind for what you'll accept in the conference report on the economic recovery package?

SEN. SPECTER: The Republican moderates worked it out at $780 billion. That represented a $110 billion cut. And that's the arrangement, and that's the arrangement I expect to have followed.

MR. MATTHEWS: Susan Collins, Senator, do you expect the House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, to go along with the Senate version you agreed to?

SEN. COLLINS: Well, I'm certain that they'll want some changes, but I think it's important to realize that it's not just the three Republican moderates who felt that the bill passed by the House was too big. It was a large group of centrists. Fourteen Democrats as well had problems with the amount of spending and worked very closely with us to bring that spending level down.

MR. MATTHEWS: What did you both think, Senator Specter first, about the president's commitment last night to try to put more education money in the final package than was in the Senate version today?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, I think we have already struck the bargain; that is, as far as I'm concerned. Look, Chris, this is a very tough matter, and we swallowed a big bitter pill. And we did this only because the economy is in such perilous shape, and the current recession may go into a full-scale depression like 1929. And when we worked this through, we went as far as we could, and we structured it very, very carefully. And there are a lot of people who are objecting to it.

Fortunately the Chamber of Commerce, a very strong Republican/conservative organization, agrees that this is necessary because of the perilous economic situation, because it does a lot to rebuild America, and because a substantial part of it involves tax cuts. But if somebody wants to restructure the arrangement, they may end up with no arrangement at all.

MR. MATTHEWS: Wow. Well, let me ask you, Senator Collins, about the call by education groups for more education spending than the Senate version allowed for, more for school construction. Do you think there's no give there from your point of view on that?

SEN. COLLINS: Chris, first of all, there is -- there are billions of dollars in additional education spending in this bill, $13.9 billion for Pell grants, $13 billion for special education, $10 billion for Title I, plus there's a fund that governors can tap into which is $39 billion that can be used for education. So there is a vast sum of new funding for education programs in this bill. It's not that education has been slighted by any means. It's literally tens of billions of dollars in new funding flowing to education.

SEN. SPECTER: Chris, may I give you a simple illustration? The Head Start from the House had $2 billion, and we put up $1 billion. So people come and say, "Well, you cut it a billion dollars." Well, we didn't. If we hadn't struck the bargain we did, Head Start would have gotten zero. So we added a billion dollars to it. And we went a long way in coming to a $780 billion figure with tax cuts and spending, and that's where we expect it to stay.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, let's go back two weeks, Senators, if we can, to the halcyon days or the very optimistic days of the inaugural period. There was talk then of possibly an 80-vote Senate majority for the stimulus package. What happened to that? How did that come apart, Senator Specter?

SEN. SPECTER: Well, there are many people who want to assert a party line. Not one Republican in the House of Representatives supported the bill. On the Senate side, there is pretty much the same attitude. Look here, we didn't follow the charm and charisma of President Obama. We did this because the economy needs it and because America needs it.

But there are a lot of people who want to assert a very rigid political philosophy. And I think will we cross the line because of the need to put party second. John Kennedy put it best of all when he said years ago, "Sometimes party asks too much." There's no Republican or Democratic way to solve this problem, but there's an American way. And we did the best we could, and we're going to stick with it.

SEN. COLLINS: I think --

MR. MATTHEWS: Senator Collins, does the speaker of the House know who she's dealing with? Does she know you senators, you three Republicans especially, are going to be as tough on this as you are?

SEN. COLLINS: I hope --

MR. MATTHEWS: Does she know what she has to deal with here, not just Steny Hoyer and the education lobby, but deal with you folks?

SEN. COLLINS: I certainly hope that the House will see our efforts as constructive. As Senator Specter mentioned, without our efforts, there would be no bill. The bill would be caught up in a filibuster.

You asked what happened. One of the things that happened is this bill became a Christmas tree upon which members hung their pet programs. They put on spending that had nothing to do with creating jobs, turning our economy around or providing relief to the American taxpayers. And we worked very hard to come up with a bill that was more targeted, more effective, as well as bipartisan.

So I understand the friction that always exists between the House and the Senate. That's nothing new. But I would hope that our colleagues on the Democratic side of the aisle in the House would talk to some of the centrist Democrats in the Senate who believe exactly as we do and who have joined with us in crafting this compromise that has allowed the stimulus bill to move forward.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, here's the president today. I want you both, Senators, to respond. Here's President Obama down in Fort Myers, Florida today. I'd like you to respond to what he said.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From videotape.) We've had a good debate. That's part of what democracy is all about. But the time for talk is over. Folks here in Fort Myers and across America, they need help. They need action, and they need it now. Americans I've met understand that even with this plan, our economy will likely be measured in years. For our TV audience, somebody said (I had eight ?), which we're not clear about yet.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me ask you -- I'm not sure that's something to respond to. Let me ask you, Senator Specter, about the Republican Party you and I grew up with. It used to be very strong in the Northeast. Every northeastern state had at least one Republican moderate senator. Now you're almost the last of Mohicans, you and Senator Snowe and Senator Collins. Has the party got to change?

SEN. SPECTER: I believe that there has to be more accommodation to different points of view and not to assert a philosophy which says we're not going to yield even in the face of enormous problems. Our Republican colleagues in the Senate say that, well, a better deal could have been structured. But we urge them to come in as part of the negotiating process.

I wasn't looking for a role as a negotiator. Senator Collins and I did it only because quite a number of other Republican senators moved away. So I think there has to be more focus on the underlying problems and a willingness to solve them in a way which requires an accommodation. Everybody can't get everything they want.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well said. Thank you very much, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Senator Susan Collins of Maine.

END.

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