MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

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We start with Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from the great state of New York. Senator Schumer, thanks for being here. What`s the exit strategy? How might this flap over the payroll tax end? House blinks,
Senate blinks, or does it expire?

SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER (D), NEW YORK: Well, I don`t think it`ll expire. I think that, basically, there is so much pressure on Speaker Boehner -- he`s basically standing alone -- that the House is going to have to do what the American people want and what many of us have been asking, which is very simply to pass the two-month extension, then we`ll negotiate for the rest of the year.

Speaker Boehner had a very bad day. It started out with the "Wall Street Journal" editorial, which you mentioned. In the course of the day, Senator McCain tweeted the "Wall Street Journal" editorial to thousands of Republicans and said he agreed with it. Later in the day, both Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove, two leading Republican strategists, said that Boehner ought to just go along here.

So he`s sort of out on a limb. And I think he knows the right thing to do, but he`s got a caucus that contains 80 to 100 very, very hard-right people, and he`s been following them through the course of the year, they haven`t been following him.

But at the end of the day, I don`t think he`ll have much choice. And my guess would be that within the next few days, a number of the mainstream Republicans in the House will go to Speaker Boehner and say, You cannot persist in this, and he`ll be forced to pass the bipartisan bill that was passed by Senator Reid and Senator McConnell 89 to 10 in the Senate that extends the payroll tax, unemployment insurance and the so-called "doc fix" for two months

SMERCONISH: I know that earlier today, Senator, you said, Look, if it`s a one-year deal that you want, we`ll be the first ones to get back on the plane. Did you realistically mean that the Senate could reconvene and something could get done before?

SCHUMER: Well, what I said was this. It`s very hard to believe that these folks are for a one-year deal if they won`t ratify a two-month deal. These are the very same people who were against any deal at all a week-and-a-half ago. In fact, all eight of the people who Speaker Boehner appointed to be his so-called negotiators were against any payroll tax extension for the middle class two weeks ago.

So what we said is, ratify the two-month deal first and then the Senate leadership -- I`m amongst them -- will get on a plane and negotiate a -- an extension for the year. But we`re not going to fall for this idea
that is endemic in Washington. When you want to kill something and you don`t want your fingerprints on it, you say, Send it to a committee.

Speaker Boehner has time and time again moved the goal posts back. He said, Get rid of the millionaires` tax, and maybe he would pass it. He didn`t. He said, Lower the percentage from 3.1 to 2 and maybe it would pass. And then he clearly wanted the oil pipeline in there. We swallowed hard, put it in, and he still couldn`t deliver that.

So you can`t negotiate -- negotiating with Speaker Boehner is like nailing Jell-o to the wall. We need him to pass this two-month deal, and that`ll give us some degree of assurance that either he or his -- both he
and his caucus are really for giving the middle class a tax cut.

SMERCONISH: Senator...

SCHUMER: We think, secretly, they`re not.

SMERCONISH: A critic might say that the Senate should not have adjourned with this matter still open. As a matter of fact, Newt Gingrich, among others, is one who said that he thought that it was against the best
interests of both the House and Senate for the Senate to have left -- I think he said something along the lines, of abdicating its responsibility.

SCHUMER: Well, that`s -- you know, the Senate has met its responsibility. What more could we do? To pass a bill 89 to 10, a bill that Speaker Boehner said was a good bill after it passed and to send it over to the House -- I think you`ve got to look at who`s abdicating their responsibility.

When Speaker Boehner refused to put the Senate bill on the floor -- the day it passed, he said he would put it on the floor. He now refuses to put it on the floor because he knows it has the votes to pass. That`s
where the abdication of responsibility is, and I don`t think it`s even a close question.

SMERCONISH: Here`s the comment to which I referred. It`s Newt Gingrich blasting you and your fellow Senate colleagues for playing games. Let`s watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NEWT GINGRICH (R-GA), FMR. HOUSE SPEAKER, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: So I think this is an example of why people are sick of Washington and sick of politics. You know, they can`t -- they can`t figure out how to pass a one-year extension, so the Senate leaves town? I mean, it is -- it is an absurd dereliction of duty. And it`s game-playing. Obama is so inept as a president and the Congress is so dysfunctional as an institution that we are lurching from failure to failure to failure in a way that I think the American people find very, very disheartening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SMERCONISH: I think you`ve already responded. You obviously don`t think that the Senate abdicated its responsibility...

SCHUMER: No.

SMERCONISH: ... by going home for the year.

SCHUMER: Who`s passed a bill that will extend the middle class tax cut? The Senate. The House has not.

SMERCONISH: Right, but respectively, if the thing`s not resolved, then perhaps the Senate should have stayed in business for the year until there was resolution.

SCHUMER: Well, hey, Michael, look at what happened. We started out with 3.1 percent for employers and employees. We then got rid of the employer part. We then further negotiated and moved it down to 2. We
tried to do a one-year deal, but they put in things that they knew were killers that Democrats would never go for.

So Speaker McConnell -- sorry, Leader McConnell and Leader Reid came together on a plan that would extend the payroll tax cut. It didn`t squeak by, it passed 89-10. It`s a bipartisan bill. It has the support of Newt Gingrich and many, many others. Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney have all said we should pass a payroll tax cut. And it had -- and today "The Wall Street Journal," Karl Rove and eight -- by now, eight Republican senators have said, Pass it.

I mean, it`s absolutely turning truth on its head to say, as Newt Gingrich did, that the Senate is abdicating its responsibility when Speaker Boehner won`t even put that bill on the floor of the House for a vote.

SMERCONISH: Senator Schumer, thank you for being on HARDBALL. We appreciate it.

SCHUMER: Thank you. Nice to talk to you, Michael.

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