NBC "Meet The Press" - Transcript

Interview

Interviewer: David Gregory

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MR. GREGORY: We're back, joined now by Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.

Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): Good to be here.
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MR. GREGORY: So this White House is on the defensive about the economy and specifically about the stimulus plan. Over the course of the summer, Vice President Biden has been out talking about the projections then and now. They said with a stimulus plan they'd keep unemployment to 8 percent; that has not been the case. Here he was on this program back in June.

(Videotape, June 14, 2009)

MR. GREGORY: This package was sold on the premise that it would, in fact, keep unemployment at 8 percent. It's exceeded that...

VICE PRES. JOE BIDEN: No, no, no...

MR. GREGORY: ...with the recovery plan.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: ...no, no, no, no. It, it wasn't sold on that. It was sold on it would create or save...

MR. GREGORY: That's what the reports said, Mr. Vice President.

VICE PRES. BIDEN: No, it said it would--what would happen was it would save or create jobs. It's doing that. It is doing that. Everyone guessed wrong at the time the estimate was made about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Everybody guessed wrong. This is what he said back on July 5th to ABC: "The truth is, we--and everyone else--misread the economy." Did you?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, bottom line here is it was very hard to read the economy. I mean, you had a whole new world. We--I had never seen anything like this, experienced. I think none of had. Financial markets frozen. Just think, back in December and January, most people said there's a 25, 50 percent chance we're going to be in the Great Depression.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. SCHUMER: And the good thing that the president is doing is twofold. One, he has strong medicine against it. Second, he has a long-term time horizon. He's not going to be bounced around by what happens today on export numbers, which were good, or what happens on consumer confidence, which was bad. And they keep adjusting. And so I think that, yes, the economy is very, very important, probably number one to the American people, but the president has their confidence. He's doing a good job and it's going to work well.

MR. GREGORY: But I asked you if you misread this. You are the senator from New York.

SEN. SCHUMER: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: You have your finger on the pulse of the financial center of this country. This is a list of economists and others who said that unemployment would be worse than the administration anticipated. Do you agree that everyone got it wrong, or did the White House get it wrong?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, the bottom line is I think there were estimates all over the place, and everyone said it's very hard to chart this out because, again, we were, we were in uncharted waters. I think what...

MR. GREGORY: But there were certainly people who said unemployment would get worse, you need a much bigger stimulus; they have got the wrong medicine.

SEN. SCHUMER: Yes. And there were many, mostly--many on the Republican side and elsewhere who said we need a smaller stimulus and we don't need this kind of thing. The president--I mean, I remember Larry Summers and others saying we're trying to get the number right but erring on the side of having it a little higher, because the downside is significant here.

MR. GREGORY: So you'd put yourself in their lot, that you misread it as long--as well as they did?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, I, I wouldn't characterize them or me as misreading. You give the best estimates you can. I didn't make a projection as to what the number would be.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. SCHUMER: We knew it was bad, we knew it needed serious medicine. That's what we're doing.

MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about the stimulus in New York state. This is what the GAO reported, the Government Accounting Office, by the New York Post: "New York has spent only about 22 percent of the federal stimulus funds set aside for the state, and a [GAO] report revealed that most of the money is being used just to keep governments afloat, rather than to create jobs." This is apparently happening all over the country. Is that what the stimulus was designed to do, to plug holes in government finances at the state level?

SEN. SCHUMER: The stimulus, the stimulus was designed to do many things. At the, at the immediate, it had to get some money into the economy. If you remember then, and you can quote all those economists, the danger of going into what economists call a deflationary spiral--where prices go down, more jobs are lost, prices go down further--was the nightmare. Because once you get into a deflationary spiral, no economist--liberal, moderate, conservative--knows how to get out. You had to avoid that at all costs. Getting money quickly into the economy, which is what the government-type spending did, was the first phase.

Now we're in the second phase. Money's still continuing to go to the governments, but...

MR. GREGORY: But is it too slow? Look at the numbers out of New York.

SEN. SCHUMER: This is not a four-month plan, this is a two-year plan. When you have such an awful situation, the worst economy that we've had in December, the president hamstrung because the usual tools of getting us out of a recession were lowing interest rates but interest rates were already at 1 percent, you need a strong, long-term plan that has a number of phases. Now you're going to see the second part of the stimulus, which is the job creation part, really kick in. You're getting...

MR. GREGORY: So you're not disappointed at what's happening at the state level?

SEN. SCHUMER: I am not. I think that it's working. I'm beginning to see, in the last month, projects in upstate New York...

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. SCHUMER: ...New York City, the New York City suburbs begin to get going. I see the people working. A lot of construction going on that I didn't see three months ago. And that, that money is going to start coursing into the veins of the economy.

MR. GREGORY: More broadly, on the economy, back in April the president sounded fairly optimistic. This is what he said.

(Videotape, April 14, 2009)

PRES. OBAMA: There's no doubt that times are still tough. By no means are we out of the woods just yet. But from where we stand, for the very first time we're beginning to see glimmers of hope.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: So let's look at the numbers, first six months in office: unemployment is up 32 percent; job losses, 3.4 million; and the deficit is up 50 percent. Are those glimmers of hope?

SEN. SCHUMER: No, but there are glimmers of hope. That's the bad, that's the bad news, and there's lots of bad news. But let me just say, look at where we were January 20th, when the president got into office, and today. There are some good things. The financial system, hardly recovered, but it's not frozen. I no longer hear, day after day, reports from small businesses, middle-sized businesses, they can't get money anywhere and they're going under. That created a huge problem, created last fall and last summer, not dealt with.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. SCHUMER: That has ramifications on into this economy. Exports are up. Parts of manufacturing is up. Consumer spending, which was going down, is now flat. This is not--you know the good thing about Barack Obama, one of the many good things about our president? He has a long-term perspective and he has an internal gyroscope. He is not going to get jarred by one month's number or one month's polling data. He has his eye focused on the goal. The economy will be better, gradually but certainly, and he's going to get us there. And I think, by the way, I would say--maybe I'm misreading it, but I don't think so--the American people have confidence in the president getting out of this mess.

MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about health care, his signature achievement that he wants domestically. Will he get healthcare reform, a massive overhaul, by the August recess?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, we don't expect it to be signed into law by the August recess.

MR. GREGORY: Understood, but an actual...

SEN. SCHUMER: But we expect the House and Senate to have passed bills, yes.

MR. GREGORY: You think it's going to happen.

SEN. SCHUMER: I do.

MR. GREGORY: The big claim that he's making is that is deficit neutral, it's not going to add to the debt, a trillion-dollar program. The big question is, how is it going to be paid for?

SEN. SCHUMER: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: A couple of options out there, and one is to offset the, the price to $300 billion is that you tax some of the benefits. Could you support that?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, I think what we've learned over the last week, that on both sides of the aisle people do not want to tax the benefits, Democrats and Republicans. And given what the House has done, given that a majority of Democrats are against taxing benefits, no, I don't think that's going to happen.

MR. GREGORY: Do you think a tax surcharge, as House Democrats are going to propose, on the wealthiest Americans, is that the way to make up $550 billion worth of that cost?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, let me say a couple of things. First, the number one thing we have to do to pay for this trillion dollars it cut--is cut costs. And the president has wisely said the majority of this package, a significant majority, is going to be from cutting costs. The system is wasteful, duplicative, inefficient, number one. Number two, we will have to find revenues to pay for the rest. We--the beginning of this week everyone said--well, we saw , when you got a specific on the tax benefits, that people weren't going for it; Democrats and Republicans, key Republicans we're negotiating with told Chairman Baucus, forget it.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. SCHUMER: So now we're looking at other things. But here's the good news, David. Wednesday and Thursday the Finance Committee, which is in charge of raising the money, we met--Wednesday, Democrats; Thursday, Democrats and Republicans--and laid out many different options. There are a whole lot of options. We emerged from that meeting, I think, on both sides of the aisle feeling this is doable. I believe that Chairman Baucus' goal to have a plan that pays for it set by the end of this week will happen. Now, to get into the specifics, I know you asked me about a specific, obviously the surcharge has a benefit; it meets the president's goal of not taxing anybody below $250,000. But I think to negotiate in public when there are many different options is not going to be very helpful, so I'm not going to do that.

MR. GREGORY: A couple of quick points. Judge Sotomayor, will she be approved?

SEN. SCHUMER: I believe she'll be approved and I think there's a very good chance she's going to get as many or if not more votes than Judge Roberts got, which was 78. She has wowed people. People meet her and they are impressed, Democrats and Republicans, not just with her story, but she's smart but also practical. She's down to earth.

MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.

SEN. SCHUMER: And she makes a great impression. And the very impression she's made on 89 Senators she's going to make to millions of Americans as they watch the hearings. She is going to be approved by a large margin.

MR. GREGORY: You heard Senator McCain opposed to the idea of an investigation on alleged torture in the Bush administration. Where do you come down?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, I generally believe that--with the president--that, look--and John McCain--that looking forward, not back, is right. But when there are egregious violations, you can't just brush them under the rug. And so I think that the attorney general to look for some egregious violations, which is what he's doing now, is the right thing to do.

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MR. GREGORY: Is Sarah Palin the future of the Republican Party?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, I guess I shouldn't judge and let them fight among themselves.

MR. GREGORY: What do you think, though? Do you think she's qualified to be president?

SEN. SCHUMER: Well, you know, I, I, I think the American people saw her and they saw problems in terms of preparation and knowledge of things. But, you know, four years away is a long--three and a half years away is a long time away, so I'm not going to make a judgment.

MR. GREGORY: You're hedging your bets...

SEN. SCHUMER: You bet.

MR. GREGORY: ...but you're not holding out on the fact that you two are very closely aligned. And here it is, from Field & Stream last year...

SEN. SCHUMER: Oh, yes.

MR. GREGORY: ...the political odd couple. There they are, Senator Schumer and Governor Palin both heroes in Field & Stream. You cannot walk away from how closely tied you two are.

SEN. SCHUMER: God bless America.

MR. GREGORY: Senator Schumer, thank you very much.

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