MSNBC "Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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MADDOW: Joining us now is Congressman Chris Van Hollen from the great state of Maryland. He is the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Mr. Van Hollen, thank you very much for joining us tonight.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D), MARYLAND: Good to be with you, Rachel.

MADDOW: Do Republicans in the House want to avoid a government shutdown, do you think? Do you think they are negotiating in good faith here?

VAN HOLLEN: I think John Boehner would like to get a deal, but he is not driving the train. As you said, he"s not really the new face of the Republican Party. The new face of the Republican Party are the Tea Party wing in Congress. They are uncompromising.

And the independent vote that you just talked about wants people who are going to be willing to come together for the good of the government.

So, when John Boehner is now at the White House negotiating, he"s really not empowered by his caucus to reach any deal. And that means he"s very likely going through the motions until he has to come back and check with the guys who are running the show. And that"s what we have happening.

MADDOW: Well, if the speaker can"t really negotiate on behalf of his caucus, if he as you say is not empowered to do that, who should Democrats be talking to?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, when it comes to the Republicans and in the Congress, that is--that"s the situation. We"ve got to be talking to the country, and pointing out how extreme the Republicans have become in the House.

And, you know, you talked about 1995 and made a very important point about how Newt Gingrich and the Republicans went after Medicare. Well, this time around, they are going to be going after Medicare on steroids. I mean, they are talking about ending the Medicare guarantee.

What we"re seeing right now is just the preview of what we"re going to see on the main event that"s coming with the 2012 budget. That"s going to be the big showdown. And the Tea Party driving the train is going to demand a very radical agenda. It"s really a beefed up agenda of the Republican Party from the past. But they"re going to be calling for even bigger tax cuts, for millionaires, continued tax breaks for the special interest and oil companies.

And what are they going to do? They"re going to end the Medicare guarantee for seniors, force them out of the Medicare system, into the private insurance market, and force those seniors to eat the costs of rising health care.

So, I think as we go on, that Tea Party element is going to become the face of the Republican Party. And, you know, come next election, the voters will have to decide whether they made a mistake or not.

MADDOW: In terms of this current standoff, though, do I understand correctly that the best-case scenario at this point in terms of avoiding a shutdown would still put us right back here roughly this time next week?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, that"s right. Because, right now--well, what the Republicans proposed in the House today was, of course, to try and once again use the shutdown as a vehicle to impose their social agenda and very cynically decided to use our troops as a hook to try and pass that social agenda, including the abortion issue, including the Planned Parenthood issue. Really, a sickening display on the one hand trying to say, you"ve got to support this to vote for the troops, and at the same time, putting on the social agenda, which just demonstrated once again that the main goal they"ve got is not to reduce the deficit, but use this as a vehicle to impose their social agenda on the country.

MADDOW: What you"re talking about, though, in terms of the social agenda being looped into the shutdown issue, the bigger and perhaps even more radical fight coming over the full year budget--there remains the issue of Democratic strategy. On the Republican side, their base will reward them for taking the most extreme possible position and for being as intransigent as possible in defense of that. Their base will reward them for a government shutdown.

Now, independents may not like it and Democrats certainly may not like it. But when those are the incentives on the other side, how do you plan to beat them?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, I mean, you put your finger on the problem with respect to the government shutdown. I mean, that"s why we"ve not been able to resolve this today, even though the president actually put on the table a level of cuts that was larger than Speaker Boehner had asked for to begin with. Speaker Boehner asked for $32 billion more than we had already done. President Obama said, OK, let"s do $33 billion. And, all of a sudden, Speaker Boehner found his caucus wasn"t behind him. So, this is exactly the problem.

But I think in the process, what the American people are seeing is a Republican Party in the House that is out of control in the sense that they want to go after Medicare. This is round two, Medicare for seniors.

They want a block grant Medicaid, which means seniors in nursing homes, seniors in assisted living facilities, poor kids, disabled people--they"re going to have a lot of their support cut off in the states, and all for what? All to give a bigger tax break to the folks on top by taking the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent--that $100,000 for millionaires. And they"re going to shift a lot of that cost onto middle income Americans.

So, we"re just beginning to get a taste in this first round of what we"re going to see when we get to the main event. I mean, if we can get an extension to the end of September, the end of the fiscal year, we"re going to have a hell of a fight when it comes to the next fiscal year, because all of these other issues are on the table.

And, again, Medicare is going to be their number one goal in terms of terminating the guarantee and turning it into a voucher program. And that"s just the tip of the iceberg of the agenda that we"re going to be seeing. So, this has been bad. But I think, unfortunately, things are going to become even worse.

MADDOW: Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, putting a dark cloud--an even darker cloud inside an already dark cloud that has a very, very, very invisible silver lining at this point.

Thanks for joining us tonight, and good luck.

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