CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript

Interview

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REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN (D-South Carolina/Majority Whip): How do you do?

BOB SCHIEFFER: --Nancy Pelosi announced that she would ask House Democrats to re-elect her as their leader, you announced you wanted to run for the number two leadership post. Now that's currently held by Steny Hoyer. And, he, from all indications is going to seek that post too.
So we're going to have a contested election here for House leadership in a caucus of House Democrats. It's already-- I've got to say, kind of at-- at the worst in-- in disarray. At best I suppose you could say in a holding pattern. Were you happy that Nancy Pelosi decided to-- that she wants to stay on as leader of the Democrats in the House?

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: Well, Bob, thank you so much for having me first of all. But let me say this. I think you laid it out not exactly right. I am currently the Democratic Whip.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: And what I announced was I was going to be running for that position again.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Mm-Hm.

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: And, fortunately, between the-- when you are in the minority, the top two positions are-- are leader and the whip. And we will see how that works out. I am perfectly satisfied with Nancy Pelosi's leadership. And I don't have any problems with that. But I'm also satisfied with the record that I've laid out as whip. I think that every measurement that is used to determine success in this position, I've not only exceeded it, I've doubled it in-- in many areas. And so, as I talk to the members of our caucus, they are very satisfied with the way that I have been conducting myself as whip. When I talk to those people, our constituents out there, they say to me that I was a very effective spokesperson for our party and for the policies we laid out. And I want to continue in that position. We'll get all this worked out in the coming days. And I suspect that it will be resolved in such a way that our caucus will be very satisfied--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Well, you will--

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: --with the leadership team, going forward.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you will be running against Steny Hoyer, who currently is the number two person in the leadership. And then, let me just ask you this, Mister-- Mister Clyburn. I have had a number of House Democrats who are not all that happy that Nancy Pelosi is going to stay on, because they say she is sort of the face of-- of-- of the defeat that she was seen as all of the things that some people think are wrong with the Democratic Party--too liberal, too big government and so on and so on. And-- and what they say is that if you are elected to the number two post, it will make House leadership look even more liberal than it was. And that will make it more difficult for you to do business with the Republicans. What-- what's your response
to that?

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: Well, I have two responses to that. First of all, I'm not in that number that's been expressed. And I've read some of those things. But secondly, I would say to this, I would ask anybody to look at my record of eighteen years, look at my record here in South Carolina and tell me why you classify me as being liberal or conservative. I've heard
myself classified in many, many different ways but I-- I suspect that people are not looking at their record, looking at the service, looking at what I did out on the campaign trail. The fact of the matter is I campaigned at the request of more Blue Dogs in their districts than I did in what we would call progressive districts. So everybody tells me it's very hard to pinpoint exactly
where I am on the political spectrum. And-- and I think that people are doing that by making some assumptions because of the way that I look.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me-- let me-- let's talk a little bit about the Republicans. Maybe you'll be--it will be easier for you to talk about that. You heard what some of these Republicans were saying last week and what some of them were saying on the talk shows this morning, talking about this health care reform. They're talking about trying to starve it by controlling the power of
the purse. Talking about doing things like trying to cut off funds to the internal revenue service so they can't enforce some of the provisions of the new health care reform. How as Democrats do you intend to deal with that?

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: Well, I think that those people who are saying those things are really flying in the face of history. As I study history, though I was around at the time, a little bit too young to really experience, a lot of members lost their seats because of Social Security. A lot of members lost their seats, the Democrats lost its place in the South because of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And I remember, a senior citizen, Strom Thurmond that you talked about earlier. I remember Strom Thurmond going back to Washington after 1968 saying we are going to repeal the Voting Rights Act. Well, the fact of the matter is what we did with health care is to make that a fundamental right of every citizen. And I would like to see which one of those Republicans would propose that we take away a-- a-- a person's-- family's right to have their child born with diabetes come off their insurance policies. Tell a woman with a breast cancer, or man with prostate cancer that we're going to allow the insurance companies to drop you after you paid your premiums on time for thirty years and now that you got sick, what you've
been guarding against that we're going to allow them to drop you. I don't think they're going to be able to do that. They had some good campaign rhetoric out here. But the fact of the matter is this health care plan, when people know what it is as opposed to what Republicans say that it is
we didn't have enough money to defend the plan on television. They had a whole lot of money to misrepresent what the plan really is.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You heard-- you heard Senator McConnell. He said Democrats keep talking about it was a miscommunication. They didn't sell. They weren't good salesman. He said it wasn't a repudiation of the sales presentation. It was a repudiation of policies. Do you think--well, how do you come down on that?

REPRESENTATIVE JAMES CLYBURN: Well, I think that what we did, we lost, seeing this basic on that issue. Because what we did in this plan was to really expand, extend the life of Medicare by squeezing out of it all of the fraud that was taking place in Medicare. We read the headlines every day about how much fraud is taking place in Medicare. So you took that money out of it. You extended the life of Medicare. It got rip-- represented to the-- to seniors that we were cutting Medicare. We were not cutting their services. We were cutting in those areas where there was so much fraud in existence. And so, that's why I say that when you get into what we really did and the American people understand what we really did, I think this health care plan is going be with-- with us for a long, long time. And it's something we'll build upon.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Congressman, I'm very sorry we're out of time. Thank you so much and good luck down the road. Back with some final thoughts in just a second.

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