MSNBC "Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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REP. JAN SCHAKOWSKY (D), ILLINOIS: Thank you so much, Rachel.

MADDOW: Is there a substantive difference between the different objections to this tax cut plan? People are talking about the excitement of these politics here, because maybe the left and the right can come together in their problems with this. Is there any substantive agreement here?

SCHAKOWSKY: Absolutely worlds apart. We are hearing from the Republicans that who they care about is a tiny sliver of Americans, the wealthiest Americans in our country who are already controlling most of the wealth in the country versus the middle-class and the poor.

But you know, there"s not really a contradiction when Jim DeMint talks about raising these concerns about deficits. Now that what they want to do is to jump in and say, aha! Now that we have increased the deficits, it"s time to cut the spending.

And you know what that means. That means cutting the programs, cutting the things that are actually going to help the middle-class. That"s their goal.

Raise the deficit so they can come back and cut spending that"s going to really help middle-class people.

MADDOW: The argument about the deficit though is--I think--I think you were right to say that, listen, this is--this is setting a trap to raise the deficit so that they can use that essentially as a bludgeon against things like Social Security and Medicare and things that they have always wanted to get rid of.

SCHAKOWSKY: Exactly.

MADDOW: But the arguments of the deficit, the thing that is most salient about them to me is that they are nonsense. This idea that if you cut taxes, that magically doesn"t increase the deficit, that revenue has nothing to do with whether or not we have a deficit, and that they refuse to consider the deficit impact of their own proposals.

Do you have hope that we will ever get past just the arithmetic nonsense of those arguments?

SCHAKOWSKY: Well, what--we don"t need to. What we need to do is
for the House Democrats to come up with a proposal that the Republicans are
going to be able to buy, because they have to, because the American people
are simply not going to tolerate the notion that we"re going to give away -

the estate tax. Think of this, if someone leaves an estate of $1 billion, under their proposal, they would gain $100 million over what the Democrats are proposing for the estate tax. Imagine Paris Hilton will be able to get an extra $100 million under their plan.

It"s obscene. It"s absolutely an offense to us and to most Americans. And that"s why I think that the right wing is making a big mistake. I think that there"s going to be buyer"s remorse, because I actually think the Tea Partiers out there, most of them, feel that that there is something fundamentally unfair that the rich, the Wall Street, that the banks and the bailouts, that they are getting away with something, and the middle-class people are left to worry about whether they"re going to keep their jobs or their homes.

And so, I think that they are making a big mistake by only focusing on the wealthiest Americans.

MADDOW: How much room is there for negotiation right now? I mean, could we see a final plan that has a different arrangement about estate taxes? That has, in which those tax cuts for the richest Americans are revisited? How much room is for movement is there right now?

SCHAKOWSKY: Actually the president, himself, said today, that the Democrats are going to come up with their own proposal, and the Democratic Caucus in the House is determined to continue to fight to make sure that we do middle-class tax cuts, that we do a payroll tax holiday, that we give unemployment benefits to the millions of Americans. Our plan affects hundreds of millions of people in the country; theirs just a few.

Now, how far are we going to get? It is unclear, but I think that we can get a better deal, and we are ready to offer our plan--yes, to compromise, because we know that by January 1st, we don"t want to see ordinary people"s taxes go up. But I think that we can, in fact, do better. Maybe it it"s going to be around the estate tax, which is just--it"s ridiculous, and most people see it that way.

MADDOW: Is the--is there real anger between House Democrats, particularly progressive Democrats, and the White House on this? The president has said that he thinks that some of the dissatisfaction with this plan is that people didn"t understand it, the White House clearly has been doing everything they can to try to explain and sell more about what"s in this plan that they think will appeal to a Democratic audience.

How would you describe the relationship right now between House Democrats and the White House? How strained is it? And where do you think it goes?

SCHAKOWSKY: Well, I think what we see in the leadership of our caucus and definitely in the rank-and-file is that we want to exert the prerogatives of the U.S. House of Representatives, that it"s not just a negotiation between the White House and the other parties, that we have a lot to say about it. We are still in control--I remind everybody--until the end of the year. We are in the majority. And we are determined to continue to negotiate. That we don"t think it is soup yet, and we are going to introduce our own bill--not necessarily go along with the Senate Democrats either.

MADDOW: Democratic Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, braving a very cold night to be with us tonight. Thank you very much, ma"am. We really appreciate your time.

SCHAKOWSKY: Thank you, Rachel.

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