MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript
Interview
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MADDOW: That`s New York Democratic Senator Charles Schumer, who is here tonight to talk with us.
But that litany of people you just saw is not just Democrats. This is not a Democratic versus Republican fight. The outrage here is bipartisan and born of shock, which you can hear in the tone from those speakers. Because the relief bill for hurricane Sandy is not something anybody was expecting to have a huge ideological or partisan fight over. This is not something that Republicans have taken a stand against. This was a long-awaited fight.
In fact, John Boehner had told the congressional delegations and the governors of the states affected by hurricane Sandy that this would get done. The Senate passed it last week. Everybody expected it was going to get done because he said it was going to get done. And then he just walked away without explanation, without warning, and without anybody having any idea what he was thinking. Chaos.
Joining us now is Charles Schumer. He is the senior senator from New York. He is a Democrat. He is a member of the Finance Committee.
Senator Schumer, thank you for being here.
SCHUMER: Good evening.
MADDOW: The Senate obviously passed the bill for Sandy relief. It was a surprise when the house did not. We`re now hearing that the House will get it to later on this month. Is that -- is that good enough?
SCHUMER: Well, we`ll see. If we get the $60 billion by the end of January, it will certainly be relief that people need. But, remember, every week you wait is a problem.
I was with homeowners in Long Beach. They have huge amounts of damage in their home. And they can`t get a contractor to sign a contract or a bank to give them a construction loan until they know that there is money there from the federal government to back up those types of activities.
So it should have been done yesterday. There now is a path to getting the money. But what happened last night on the floor of the House, as you point out, is disgraceful. This is the first time in a 100-year tradition -- America has always had the wisdom when disaster strikes, no locality, even a large one like New York, can deal with it on its own.
And so, we all unite together as Americans, not Democrats, Republicans, Northerners, Westerners, Southerners Easterners, but Americans, and say we`re going to help this beleaguered area out. For the first time that didn`t happen last night.
MADDOW: The Congress -- the 112th Congress ends tomorrow at noon. The new one will be sworn in at 1:00. What John Boehner is proposing the House do after what happened last night is it will take place in the next Congress.
Does that mean that the Senate has to start over, pass this whole thing that they passed again?
SCHUMER: Well, in the Senate, we did it the way it`s usually done. We did have a bipartisan majority. We allowed amendments. Tom Coburn had nine or seven amendments to cut this or cut that. Most were defeated.
But we will have to start over. I don`t think we`ll have to start with the whole process, because of the way we handled it in the Senate, I think we`ll be able to handle it rather quickly. It`s the House you got to be more worried about.
MADDOW: Why do you think this happened? I mean, it is one -- I`ve tried to make the distinction there between this being a fight over the policy. Certainly, there will be some concerns about various aspects of this. But this wasn`t a policy fight. This was just an unexpected abandonment of something they said they would do.
Do you understand why it happened?
SCHUMER: Well, there are two reasons why it happened probably. The first is that -- and this explains a lot of the other failures of this Congress that you mention, failure to pass a farm bill, there is a new group here in the House. There are maybe 50 to 75 House hard-right Republicans who really don`t believe government should be involved in things that have traditionally been involved in. They`re way out of the mainstream.
Now, there have always been people over to the extremes in the House and the Senate. This is the first time the speaker has just totally kowtowed to them. They dictate the policy.
When people want to know why we are stuck on issue after issue, it`s a twofold reason. Not only are these 50 to 70 people there, but they have a veto power over what Speaker Boehner and the House Republicans do. You cannot govern like that.
And the only good thing that could come out of this Sandy debacle is maybe some of them will see it, because on the issue of disaster aid, we`ve not even -- we`ve never even come close to having this kind of confrontation.
MADDOW: You obviously are not who the Republicans are turning to for advice on internal Republican politics, and neither am I. Do you think it would be better for the country if there were a different speaker of the House? With the Republicans still in control, if they needed to pick a different member of their caucus to be speaker, would the country be better off?
SCHUMER: Well, you know, you`d have to find out who that is. There are some who would be better in that place and some who would be worse. But the one thing they would be that they can`t do no matter who is speaker is just let this hard right group of people dictate.
And we`ve been waiting for mainstream Republicans to rise up and say, no, because it`s bad not only for the country most importantly, but for their party. And they`re going to be -- as long as they let this group govern, they`re going to be a minority party. They`ll be a minority party, and they`ll be more and more of a minority party. Sooner or later that will wake them up.
But the hard right, with its money machine and with the way they control the messaging and even their wing of the media, has such a grip on this party that I`m afraid it`s going to take a while before the Republicans themselves come to their senses. I don`t think it`s the person who is there. Boehner by all reports is more moderate than just about anyone else in that leadership, more moderate than Cantor, more moderate than McCarthy, more moderate than Paul Ryan.
But any one of them right now is sort of almost a slave to this group of hard right people. And when you talk to those -- that group, not only are they totally out of the mainstream, they don`t listen. They think they have the fountain of all wisdom that compromise is a dirty word. That`s what we`re seeing with the debt ceiling, and, you know, this will be a big test.
Will they -- if President Obama follows through on what he says he`s going to do, and I believe he will and I think we should, too, we`re not going to negotiate on debt ceiling. You guys, if you want to come in the room and say we`ll only raise the debt court of appealing if you cut this, this and this, we should say, leave the room. If you want to let the debt ceiling lapse, that`s on your back.
I don`t believe the Republican Party would, even though these 50 or 75 would. But if we don`t negotiate with them and isolate them, then -- then we can achieve something. And force in a certain sense the more mainstream Republicans not to go along.
MADDOW: Well, seeing that coalition vote would eventually you had on the fiscal cliff side in the House with essentially all of the Democrats and some Republicans --
SCHUMER: Exactly.
MADDOW: -- who could bring themselves to do it, that may be the future.
SCHUMER: That`s the only way to govern. And that`s what will get us out of this mess on Sandy. But it also is the path with the rest.
And the nation has to be aware. The reason we have gridlock is not oh, on the other hand, the other hand, the Democrats, the Republicans. There are very liberal Democrats, but they don`t hold things up unless they get their way because they realize they`re not a majority of the Senate or the House. These hard right Republicans do, but only with the cooperation of Speaker Boehner. And that`s why he has been a failure.
MADDOW: And that`s why that vote tomorrow is way more exciting than you think it would be by the numbers.
Senator Schumer, thank you for coming in tonight.
SCHUMER: Good to see you, Rachel. Thanks.
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