CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript

Interview

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REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA (R-California/House Oversight and Government Reform Committee): Good morning, Harry.

HARRY SMITH: Some of your supporters can't wait for you to get to work. Your detractors say this guy is a gadfly with subpoena powers. I'm going to go back to something you told Rush Limbaugh not so long ago that you thought President Obama is one of the most corrupt presidents in modern-- in modern history--

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA (overlapping): --but you know, I walked-- I walked--

HARRY SMITH: --a-- a statement that you walked back from.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: I walked back very quickly and said--

HARRY SMITH: Right.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: --it's about the money the administration has had in a loose fashion. It's more about Congress's mistake in funding.

HARRY SMITH: Okay because-- because my question was do you think the Obama administration is corrupt?

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Time and time again what we've seen with the Obama administration is they played fast and loose with the walking around money Congress gave them. When we saw the Joe Sestak situation, what we found was yes, that's wrong. Arlen Specter and others said it was illegal. We also found that the Bush administration admitted doing the same thing. This is what usually happens when our committee does its job is we find out that there's business as usual, whether it's in the White House or in the bureaucracy, that won't get changed unless we shed light on it and on a bipartisan basis hopefully and in the past it has been looked for those kinds of change. Ed Towns and I have done a lot of work toward that kind of change.

HARRY SMITH: Wednesday morning, you take over this job. You've had months to think about it. What is the absolute top priority? What's the number one thing on your list?

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: The number one thing for all of us as Republicans is jobs and the economy, but also the confidence in government. If we can, as Speaker-elect Boehner has done, said, look, we're lopping off five percent off of our budgets--

HARRY SMITH: Your own personal budgets?

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Our-- our own personal budget and my committee budget--

HARRY SMITH: Mm-Hm.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: --we can lop off five percent of government through simply saying find a way to live within that budget. We can save hundred and twenty-five billion in simply not giving out money to Medicare recipients that don't exist for procedures that didn't happen. These are real dollars. Ten percent of the deficit goes out in wasted money, money that doesn't get one percent healthcare in Medicare. We also have 1.75 estimated, 1.75 trillion dollars worth of excess regulation cost to our businesses. Imagine if we could take even a third or a half of that, a trillion dollars, off of the cost of doing business in America, how many jobs would come to America? My committee has to work on all those.

HARRY SMITH: Ah, you know, what's interesting what is real regulation for some would be excess regulation for others. And among the things that are being talked about is the Environmental Protection Agency and its powers. Cap and trade is dead as far as a legislative issue is concerned. Do you feel like the EPA has too much power and that it's wielding in it a way that ends up achieving the goals of cap and trade?

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Harry, government has to give predictability. It's why regulations have to flow from the intent of the legislation and it has to be done over time with public hearings, comments, and buy-in. One of our problems, President Obama recently said that he had learned that there's no such thing as shovel ready. Well, during the FDR administration when the WPA programs and other work programs went into place shovel ready meant you made a decision today and within a week or two you began working on a project. America has to get EPA, OSHA, Fish and Wildlife, all these agencies have to get to where you can decide to do something worthwhile, get through the process to make sure it's done right and do it in a short period of time, a year, not ten years.

HARRY SMITH: Hm. The mandate it seems to me of especially the new Republicans who've been sent-- sent to Congress is to shrink the deficit, shrink government, save money. With oversight, how much money do you think you can save tax payers, say over the next two years?

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: I'm looking at about two hundred billion. As the amount that we can either identify and eliminate the waste or at least begin the process and I'll give you one that's pretty easy. It's been in the papers. In the last days of last congress they funded five hundred million dollars for a rocket program at NASA that's already been shut down. That can't be too hard to undo. But five hundred million here, five hundred million there. That's a billion, a hundred and twenty-five billion in Medicare. Earl Devaney who's headed up the stimulus, he's the chairman over there, has done some innovative work to show us how we can find a lot of that fraud and shut it off. No, don't worry about going after somebody eighteen months later--

HARRY SMITH: Mm-Hm.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: --make sure the money doesn't go out. That's real savings.

HARRY SMITH: Yeah. It's interesting though because in the conversation that we had earlier with all-- with the other-- other members of Congress and soon to be member of congress, talking about cutting deficits and everything else, entitlements still sit out there and that really is the monkey on the American tax payers' back. And as Everett Dirksen said, "a mill-- billion there, billion there and after a while you're talking about real money." We're talking about trillions of dollars. Will this new Congress really be able to even address any of that?

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Well, you didn't see it here in the last panel. You didn't see the willingness to take the two big issues on. Anthony Weiner started saying that Republicans don't want to protect Social Security and Medicare. Look, when Medicare Part D was put into place, the first thing we did was means test it. We said look, we're going to do this prescription drug but only for those who can't afford to do it for themselves and if you can afford, we're going to phase out some of the benefits. That's not popular, it's not easy, but it's got to be on the table. Social Security, some people say, is an easy one to solve because it's money in, money out but the money doesn't balance. We've got to decide--

HARRY SMITH: Baby boomers start collecting on January 1st.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Right. And-- and look my wife is a baby boomer and she's now going to be collecting. And I'll be collecting at sixty-seven. I'm a couple of years younger. The fact though is that we have to figure out a way either to have more money in or less money out--very simple. Medicare though-- and we saw this with Obama's health care proposals and the ultimate bill that was passed. Medicare's more complicated. It's rising faster than inflation. There are no cost controls on it. We need to make those changes in addition to getting rid of hundred and twenty-five billion of fraud that goes out every year.

HARRY SMITH: Darrell Issa, thanks very much for being here this morning.

REPRESENTATIVE DARRELL ISSA: Thanks, Harry.

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