MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

JAN SCHAKOWSKY (D), ILLINOIS: Thanks, Ed.

SCHULTZ: Glad you got re-elected.

SCHAKOWSKY: Thank you.

SCHULTZ: You are a fighter for lefties in this country and you speak truth. Is this all a get back in the--because of the work that Henry Waxman did during the Bush years when we had no-bid contracts and issues with Halliburton and all kinds of Intel issues. I mean, you know, what we went through in the Bush years, this a get back?

SCHAKOWSKY: Well, actually, Henry Waxman in the whole two year that he chaired that same committee only had something like 206 oversight hearings. Darrell Issa is talking not just about 280 hearings, seven subcommittees, a hearing a week, he says one or two. That could be 560 hearings in 40 weeks. The man is on a--you know, he is on a hunt right now, really a witch hunt, I think. And, you know, every time he makes these accusations, somebody has to come along, put their hand over his mouth and he has to walk it back. He called Barack Obama one of the most corrupt presidents ever. That the perspective that he is coming from. Of course, now he is trying to walk it back.

But instead of looking at, for example, there is a lot of things he could investigate, why the insurance companies are continuing to raise their rates. I would be for that. But no, I think it is going to be more like Dan Burton. I was on that committee when Dan Burton chaired it and he had over 1,000 hearings looking into every tiny little aspect of the Clinton administration. And I fear that we are going to have the same kind of witch hunt occupying all of the time and just a bunch of nonsense, frankly.

SCHULTZ: Well, he is talking about the stimulus package. Governors are involved in dishing out the money for the stimulus package.

SCHAKOWSKY: That is right.

SCHULTZ: And I hope he goes that far on republican governors as they sat on a lot of these dollars in their state budgets and didn"t disburse the money out to get these projects going. So, I"m going to follow this investigation that Mr. Issa is doing.

SCHAKOWSKY: I"m looking forward to that, too, because, you know, a number of those governors who said , oh, I"m against the stimulus, don"t give me any money and then, of course they took the money and went to all the ribbon cuttings of the projects that actually created jobs. Let him look at it but what a waste of time, there really are things that need to be looked at in government, you know, the Defense Department has a number of project, et cetera, that may be not worth spending and we could make some legitimate cuts there, he wants to reduce the size of government. Even the secretary of defense agrees with that. He could help us with that. But no.

SCHULTZ: All of this, congresswoman, is based on a hunch. This is all based on they want to just go in and see if they find anything. There really hasn"t been any overt laws broken or anything that"s been politically or publicly out there?

SCHAKOWSKY: No, no. Ed, this is not about a hunch, this is about a strategy. Mitch McConnell said it very clearly. He said that our job now for the next two years is to defeat Barack Obama.

SCHULTZ: And hopefully that would take us down the road of impeachment.

SCHAKOWSKY: Exactly.

SCHULTZ: I mean, Darrell, you know, he"s saying that"s really not what he"s looking for, the hell it is. And also he"s arrogance. He says in the Politico article, as Clint Eastwood says, a man needs to know his limitations. What is this, a dirty Harry movie? We"re going to nickname him dirty Darrell now doing all these investigations, for what, wasting taxpayer dollars?

SCHAKOWSKY: Yes.

SCHULTZ: And if they find nothing who pays the price, President Obama either way, because there"s going to be the talking point out there, the speculation that he ran a crooked administration.

SCHAKOWSKY: You know, that is the plan, but I really have a feeling that there is going to be buyer"s remorse sooner rather than later. Darrell Issa is one of the most partisan members of the Congress. He has overstepped so many times, as I said. There"s somebody in the wings always having to put their hand over his mouth and then, he has to go walk it back. I don"t think that this strategy is going to work. I really don"t.

SCHULTZ: Congresswoman, great to have you with us.

SCHAKOWSKY: Thank you, Ed.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source