MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

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SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Good evening.

SCHULTZ: And I appreciate your due diligence on this issue. I know where you stand on it.

You know, it`s a winning issue for the Democrats. The public is with you on these issues. Are you confident the payroll tax holiday will be extended?

SCHUMER: I think it will be. I mean, look, we`re getting a lot of opposition from our Republican colleagues, but they`re in a box and they`re in a box for two reasons.

The first reason is that many of them have supported this very payroll tax cut in the past. In fact, when the president was putting together a jobs program, he tried to have a mixture of things that Democrats had
supported and Republicans had supported and this is one Republicans have supported and even recently people like Marco Rubio and Mike Simpson and you would maybe not believe this, but Newt Gingrich, have said nice things about the payroll tax cut.

The second is this: the Republicans have just spent three months both in the supercommittee and fighting our jobs bills on the floor saying you cannot raise taxes on incomes over $1 million. Well, they don`t want to
raise taxes on incomes over $1 million? The wealthiest 1 percent amongst us? And they want to raise taxes or are willing to raise taxes on the middle class, the average working family, the person in the suburbs making $100,000?

Gee whiz. That is such a loser politically that I believe that if we keep the heat on and keep focusing on this issue, which I`m trying to get us to do, they will fold.

SCHULTZ: Do you think the Democrats need to sharpen the messaging on these issues? I mean, I show these charts. The income inequality, it`s there. I go out on the road. I hear it all across this country. It would
seem to me that if you hammer that home, you`re going to win big-time in 2012.

Is this the issue the Democrats are going to jump on?

SCHUMER: Yes, I think it is. I mean, look, there`s a salient fact, the number one fact, and your charts showed it, is for the last decade, median income has declined. It`s the first -- it`s the first decade since
World War II where that has.

And the middle class people feel that the American Dream, which is very simple -- it says if you work hard, the odds are very high, you`ll do better ten years from now than you`re doing today and your kids will
certainly do better than you. The middle class for the first time, for the first time in American history, is wondering, is that dream still true?

SCHULTZ: Yes.

SCHUMER: And so, what they want, frankly, is they want help. They want -- yes, they are upset about government paralysis. But the Republican Party has it all wrong. It`s not that they think -- the Tea Party has itall wrong, too.

SCHULTZ: Senator --

SCHUMER: It`s not that they -- it`s not that they think government`s doing too much. Government`s doing too little to help them.

SCHULTZ: What are the Democrats prepared to give up to get this extension for unemployment benefits to Americans, to get this payroll holiday extension? What would the Democrats be willing to negotiate? I
mean, the Republicans obviously aren`t going to sit there and say, hey, OK, let`s extend this, and what do you say we throw out more unemployment benefits?

SCHUMER: The logical things to do, the Republicans and some Democrats frankly, say they don`t want to do these things unpaid for. Now, traditionally, when you`re trying to stimulate the economy, and we all know
it`s flat, you do it unpaid for. And even though we have a serious budget deficit that we have to deal with, you do that over a 10-year period but immediately you pump money into the economy to get it pumped up.

Now, they say you are to pay for it. All of a sudden, they`re saying it, although they never said it for the war in Afghanistan or Iraq or for the Bush tax cuts, or even for the Medicare prescription drug bill in the
last 10 years. But now, they`re saying, oh, you have to pay for it.

So, we`re willing to look at how they would pay for it.

SCHULTZ: Yes.

SCHUMER: And we`re open to that. We`re open to that.

But let me tell you this, Ed, this is a sharp-edged issue that shows basically fundamental hypocrisy and fundamental focus on the very people -- God bless them, I`m glad they made a lot of money, I`m not one of these people who goes out and excoriates the rich. I think it`s part of America.

But these are the people who have done the best.

SCHULTZ: No doubt. No doubt.

SCHUMER: And they`re focused on them and not on the middle class. They know it`s a loser.

SCHULTZ: I don`t know how we`re going -- I don`t know how we`re going to have an economic recovery if we don`t have a thriving middle class.

SCHUMER: You know, here`s the issue --

SCHULTZ: If we don`t have families with disposable income, I don`t know how it`s going to turn around.

SCHUMER: You`re so right. Ed, here`s how we do it. It`s not -- the image, the message carries itself. It`s pretty simple and pretty easy. You don`t need slogans or anything like that. They`ll help.

We just have to keep at it. It is very difficult in this new world we`re in with everything swirling about, and there`s so many different outlets. If we just do it once or just do it twice, the cognizanty (ph) will hear us but no one else. If you keep at it, it will work.

That`s why I`ll give you a very good number for Democrats in the House and Senate. In June, when cutting government was still ascending, they asked people the most important question you can ask as to whether we`ll keep the Senate in 2012, and that is, do you prefer generically a Republican or Democrat controlled Senate?

SCHULTZ: Yes.

SCHUMER: Forty-seven/forty-one Republican in June. By October 15th, when we started focusing on jobs, even though we didn`t pass -- we passed one or two of them, but we focused on it, it`s now 45 Democrat, 41 Republican. And that margin is going to grow greater for us if we focus on an issue like this.

SCHULTZ: I want to talk more about the payroll tax holiday. This is Senator Kyl. He says the payroll tax holiday is threatening Social Security. Take a listen.

SCHUMER: Yes, that`s --

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KYL: The problem here is that the payroll tax doesn`t go into general revenue. It supports Social Security. And you can`t keep extending the payroll tax holiday and have a secure Social Security.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHULTZ: Senator, your response to that.

SCHUMER: Well, first, you know, I like Senator Kyl as a person and we`ve worked together on some issues, but gee whiz, he has never been at the front of the line defending Social Security.

That`s a bogus argument. And here`s why: there`s a Social Security trust fund. It gets money that comes into it. It can come from the payroll tax, but here for every dollar we reduce the payroll tax, we put a
dollar in from the general fund.

SCHULTZ: Yes.

SCHUMER: In our case, we pay for that by increasing taxes on incomes over $1 million. But to the trust fund, itself, it doesn`t matter where the dollar comes from, as long as it gets the same amount of dollars. And the Social Security trust fund after the payroll tax cut passes will have the exact same amount in it as if it didn`t -- as then before.

SCHULTZ: Senator, good to have you with us tonight. Keep up the fight. Thanks so much.

SCHUMER: Ed, you, too. You framed it very well. In the first five minutes of the show. That was great.

SCHULTZ: I appreciate it, sir. Thank you so much.

SCHUMER: Thank you. Thanks. Bye-bye.

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