MSNBC "Morning Joe" - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "MORNING JOE" INTERVIEW WITH REP. STENY HOYER (D-MD), HOUSE MAJORITY LEADER INTERVIEWERS: JOE SCARBOROUGH, MIKA BRZEZINSKI, CHRIS MATTHEWS, PAT BUCHANAN

Copyright ©2009 by Federal News Service, Inc., Ste. 500, 1000 Vermont Ave, Washington, DC 20005 USA. Federal News Service is a private firm not affiliated with the federal government. No portion of this transcript may be copied, sold or retransmitted without the written authority of Federal News Service, Inc. Copyright is not claimed as to any part of the original work prepared by a United States government officer or employee as a part of that person's official duties. For information on subscribing to the FNS Internet Service at www.fednews.com, please email Carina Nyberg at cnyberg@fednews.com or call 1-202-216-2706.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: And let's bring in right now a good friend of mine, Democratic House Majority Leader Congressman Steny Hoyer.

Steny, it was great to see you the other night.

REP. HOYER: Good morning, Joe.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: You seem to be doing very well, there.

Let me bring you in on a conversation we were all having. Everybody is very frustrated right now, whether they're Republicans or Democrats, that we seem to be bailing out bad actors.

Can you tell us, tell Americans, tell -- you're a very moderate, middle-of-the-road, bipartisan guy. Can you explain to Americans when this is going to end, when we're going to finally tell banks and Wall Street you're on your own; we've given you your last bailout?

REP. HOYER: Well, Joe, I think the president was pretty clear in his speech Tuesday night that we're not going to tolerate giving money to people who waste it, and we're not going to tolerate giving money to people that use it on themselves.

The taxpayers have been very generous and focused on trying to stabilize the economy, which meant helping our financial institutions. However, clearly, what we wanted to have happen has not happened, and that is that lending started, people got money they needed to keep their small business in place, to invest in starting up businesses and to make sure that they could purchase their inventory, and that people can get credit card debt.

So clearly we have not seen what we wanted to see. The president made it very clear that we're not going to pursue that policy and, hopefully, Secretary Geithner and the Congress are going to make sure that responsibility is attendant to getting assistance.

We know that we need to stabilize the financial markets. We acted in a bipartisan way to do that. Very frankly, I think most of think the first tranche of the TARP was not spent the way we thought it was and didn't have the effect that we wanted to have.

Hopefully, the second tranche will.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: We agree with that.

REP. HOYER: You bet.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Hey, Steny, let's talk about AIG. The Washington Post business section's top story's about how this company, which made investments, gave insurance when it shouldn't have, they've been bailed out to the tune of $150 billion.

They lost $60 billion in the fourth quarter.

REP. HOYER: Yeah.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: That report's coming out.

Do -- does Congress, does the president, do we bail AIG out, give them even more money, or do we just say at some point, you're on your own?

REP. HOYER: Well, certainly -- first of all, Joe, I -- my understanding is it wasn't so much the insurance business that got them in trouble, which was a regulated business.

It was the unregulated business that they got into and expanded on that came up very, very short in their expectations and put them deeply in debt, and required us to intervene or that company was going to go down.

That company, of course, had tentacles everywhere, not only in this country, but throughout the world. And obviously, the previous administration, the Bush administration, Secretary Paulson, felt it had to be stabilized. We did that.

Now the issue is we certainly don't want to throw good money after bad. And we're going to have to make a determination of whether or not any amount of money is going to stabilize that company or, as your conversations earlier said, look, we're going to have to take the medicine here.

Now, when we did that with Lehman Brothers, there are an awful lot of people who believe that that had a further deteriorating effect on the economy.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Yeah, a really, really negative effect.

Hey, see, we've got Chris Matthews here who wants to ask you a question.

Chris?

REP. HOYER: Hey, Chris.

MR. MATTHEWS: Congressman, let me ask you about traffic management, which is your expertise in Capitol Hill as the majority leader.

REP. HOYER: (Laughs.)

MR. MATTHEWS: No, really. You know more than anybody else what could get done this year and what probably can't get done. And I'm a big believer, as you are, I believe, in the fact that you act when you have power to do so.

REP. HOYER: You bet.

MR. MATTHEWS: And we've seen, from the Johnson administration and even the Reagan administration, if you want to get something done, you'd better move fast.

Can this new president, with all his ability, can he push a program like we saw the other night, can he get health care this year? Can he get energy and something on education, as well as beginning this recovery?

REP. HOYER: Chris, I think the answer to that question is yes, and I think he believes, the president believes, you need to seize this opportunity where America knows we have great challenges, that we need to suck it up and move on and solve our problems.

Clearly, health care is a major one, both in terms of cost to the American consumer, to average American families, and to government; that we've got to get a handle on health care costs and make it affordable and accessible to our people.

Secondly, he made it very clear in his speech that energy independence and addressing the environmental problem caused by the use of fossil fuels has to be addressed, and has to be addressed this year. So I think those two items, in particular, are priority items.

I had a meeting with Henry Waxman and a number of members yesterday. We met with the president down at the White House yesterday. Both of those items are priority items that we want to move this year.

And in terms of --

MR. BUCHANAN: Congressman Hoyer?

REP. HOYER: Yeah.

MR. BUCHANAN: Hi, Steny, how are you?

REP. HOYER: Hey, Pat, how are you?

MR. BUCHANAN: Doing fine. Doing fine, Steny. (Word inaudible) -- an old Suitland boy. (Laughs.) Suitland High School.

REP. HOYER: They told me you were on the set. (Cross talk.) Pat, they told me you were on the set. They gave me a heads-up. I said I needed my helmet on.

(Laughter, cross talk.)

MR. BUCHANAN: Steny, let me ask you, the president's going to propose that for top wage-earners they can only deduct basically 80 percent of their charitable contributions.

Now, Maria Bartiromo says -- just said here on our set, it's going to be devastating to the charitable community, the giving community, because people are going to stop giving.

Can you get that through Congress, to reduce the deductibility of charitable contributions?

REP. HOYER: Well, that proposal has not been made. Obviously, you're right, that's going to be controversial, and obviously, charitable institutions will be of great concern.

Clearly, one of the greatest concerns will be very, very large income donors who make very substantial contributions to very worthwhile enterprises. So, Pat, it'll be controversial.

But the bottom line is this president has said we need to get back to fiscal responsibility and we need to pay our bills. And we're going to have to figure out how we construct a tax system that is, A, much simpler, much fairer.

I think most of us like the '86 scheme which reduced preference items but brought rates down, so people weren't making decisions on tax consequences, but on business consequences. And frankly, I'd like to see us get back to that.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Yeah. Hey, Steny, we've got to go, but I --

REP. HOYER: Okay.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: I had a question from Twitter, here. Somebody e-mailed me in and said, I see the House $410 billion spending bill has 9,000 earmarks. It's totally insane. What's wrong with these people?

Are there really 9,000 earmarks in that bill?

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Tell me that's not true.

REP. HOYER: No, I think that's two and a half times what there is. About 4,000 earmarks for all the members and for 435 districts around the country. You know --

MS. BRZEZINSKI: That's kind of a lot, isn't it?

REP. HOYER: It is a lot, but it's been very substantially reduced, cut in half over the last two years.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: All right. Very good, Steny.

REP. HOYER: Good to see you.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Hey, you know, isn't it great -- following a Republican Party that for eight years porked it up? It's easy to draw a good contrast.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Everything is relative. Yeah.

MR. SCARBOROUGH: Well, we're in the process of getting back to a place where we were some years ago before the Republicans, as you say, quadrupled the number of earmarks.

MS. BRZEZINSKI: Okay, that doesn't make it okay, but --

MR. SCARBOROUGH: (Inaudible.) All right. Thank you so much, Steny. Good to see you.

REP. HOYER: Making progress. (Laughter.)

END.

Source