MSNBC "Interview With Senator Charles Grassley" - Transcript

Interview

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MS. MITCHELL: Republican Senator Charles Grassy -- Grassley of Iowa serves on the Senate Finance, Budget and Judiciary Committees among others.

Forgive me for botching up your name, Senator. I know you well. But let me ask you first of all about health care, which is what you and Max Baucus for the Democrats have been doing, and then we'll get to all the other things on the agenda.

What do you hope to accomplish kicking off this round of health care hearings and constituents hearings today given how hard it has been for Democrats and Republicans for a generation to come together on health care?

SEN. GRASSLEY: Well, yes, it's very serious, but the good thing is at this time, unlike lessons unlearned in '93, the president is letting this develop within the Congress of the United States. And of course you know the close working relationship that Senator Baucus and I have on about 90 percent of the issues we deal with.

I think as long as Senator Max Baucus wants it to be bipartisan, we will be able to get a bipartisan one. The only thing that's going to interfere with that would be if Pelosi and Reid would step in and do an unreconcilation. And what we hope to accomplish is get costs down and cover the 47 million people that don't have health insurance.

MS. MITCHELL: We had Rahm Emanuel, the White House Chief of Staff, yesterday on ABC with George Stephonopoulos. This is what he had to say.

RAHM EMANUEL: We've enhanced America's image abroad. These were tools used by terrorists, propaganda tools to recruit new terrorists. And the fact is having changed America's image does have an impact on our security and safety and makes us stronger. One of the reasons the president was willing to let this information out was already the information was out. So if they're saying that you basically have exposed something, it's been written. Go get the New York Review of Books. It's there.

MS. MITCHELL: That's Rahm Emanuel, of course, on ABC yesterday talking about what they have accomplished and what the memo releases mean in terms of the intelligence community. Let me ask you about that as well. You're on the Judiciary Committee. Do you think it was appropriate for them to release these memos?

SEN. GRASSLEY: Well, a very short answer to your question on this or almost any other thing, you never tell your enemy what you know or what you're going to do. And this is an example. Regardless of the fact that there may have been hints about this in various news publications, it's official now that this is what the United States does or doesn't do. And it gives our enemies a chance to be appropriately informed and appropriately prepared for being prisoners of the United States. And so we're telling the world what we do, and so any information you hope to get from prisoners you aren't going to get. And --

MS. MITCHELL: But Senator Grassley --

SEN. GRASSLEY: Go ahead.

MS. MITCHELL: -- let me just point out that the International red -- Committee on the Red Cross had already investigated. The New York Review of Books had published the investigation. The ACLU went to court. The information was public basically. It had been in various newspapers, various books that -- we've seen Ron Suskind's book over the course of the past couple of years.

We perhaps did not know how many times Khalid Skeikh Mohammed and Abu Zabaydah were waterboarded. But we knew that they had been. This had been acknowledged by the U.S. So isn't it better for the United States and for the people who feel -- to know what the rules of the road are --

SEN. GRASSLEY: I --

MS. MITCHELL: -- rather than not know?

SEN. GRASSLEY: I think that you have to get back to something very basic. Whatever you're planning to do on national defense and how you gather intelligence, you don't tell your enemies, even if there's reason for them to suspicion (sic) what we're doing, what is accomplished if the information's already out there except giving it official officiality? And that's a step that the federal government or any government would not take to help its enemy.

MS. MITCHELL: Now, I wanted to get back to the budget issues because you are known as a deficit hawk, Senator Grassley. And here you have the president right now at the cabinet meeting suggesting -- not suggesting, ordering his team to come up with $100 million. Is that a good step, or is $100 million a drop in the bucket? And do you think even they can accomplish that $100 million? We've seen --

SEN. GRASSLEY: Yeah.

MS. MITCHELL: -- efforts at cutting waste before go by the wayside.

SEN. GRASSLEY: I think you can cut $100 million pretty easily. But that is a drop in the bucket. What they're up against is a public relations effort on their part to overcome what everybody knows. This budget taxes too much, spends too much and borrows too much. And they're tripling the national debt as a result of doing it.

They bragged legitimately about inheriting a one and two-tenths trillion dollar debt from the previous administration, but within three months they have doubled that annual deficit already. So we're on a road to inflationary disaster if the Fed and the government doesn't cut back on the amount of money they're putting in circulation.

MS. MITCHELL: Okay, and just a quick prediction from you. Will you and Senator Baucus be able to pull off health care this year?

SEN. GRASSLEY: The answer is yes. And he and I know that if we don't do it this year, it won't be done for four years because next year's an election year, and then the third year, you get into a presidential re-election. And I just think it's got to be done this year. We're committed to doing it.

MS. MITCHELL: Senator Grassley, thank you very much for joining us today.

SEN. GRASSLEY: Thank you.

MS. MITCHELL: And we appreciate all of that.

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