CNN "State of the Union with Candy Crowley" - Transcript
Interview
CROWLEY: Joining me now is the majority leader in the House of Representatives, Democratic Congressman Steny Hoyer of my home state of Maryland.
Thank you for joining us.
HOYER: Good to be with you, Candy.
CROWLEY: Well, we, sort of, laid out that this is a pretty tough year for Democrats. Can you give me some sense -- we know you had a meeting with the president. We've heard some of your colleagues speak out loud about the tensions that exist. It just seems to me a high anxiety time for Democrats.
HOYER: Well, I think it's a high anxiety time for the country, and certainly for Democrats, and by the way, for Republicans as well.
Americans are very concerned about the status of their economy, about the unemployment that exists. They were angry in '06, angry in '08 and they changed leaderships. They're angry in '10.
What we're going to focus on is not returning to the failed Bush policies that brought us to this point, but focus on the efforts that we have made which are making progress. We haven't succeeded yet, but we are making substantial progress. The economy is growing. We are creating jobs. And very frankly, we think that, when Americans assess, do we want to go back; do we want to, in fact, repeal the successes we've had and repeat the mistakes that we've made that got us to this point, I think they're going to say, no, they don't want to go back to the Bush policies?
CROWLEY: I mean, I know -- I realize that the Democrats have to go out, and that's what you've got to sell here, because you cannot sell a 9.5 percent unemployment rate. You cannot sell mortgage foreclosures at record levels. So you've got to say look, it's better than it might have been under these guys, and do you really want to go back? But...
HOYER: Candy, as importantly, though, you've got to say, and we need to make sure that it gets better, so that not only have we made progress but we need to do more to make sure that we bring that unemployment number down, that we grow the economy, that Americans can find jobs.
CROWLEY: Let me -- I want to show you something -- show our viewers something. It's an economic poll, actually, that CBS News did in early July.
And the question was, "How have Barack Obama's economic programs affected you personally?" Thirteen percent said, "They helped me personally." Twenty-three 23 percent said "Hurt." Sixty-three percent said "No effect."
So the entire 18 months, the past 18 months of stimulus plans, jobs plans, any number of things, and the vast majority of Americans say it either hurt them or had absolutely no affect. Why is that? HOYER: Well, for 63 percent of Americans who don't -- haven't lost their job -- and more than that, obviously, 90 percent -- but the fact of the matter is they have not seen a big change.
Interesting enough...
CROWLEY: And they -- but they've seen you spend the $1 trillion to try to fix it.
HOYER: Well, actually, we -- obviously, we had to invest to try to grow the economy, which every economist -- Mark Zandi, adviser to John McCain said, look -- and others, including Marty Feldstein, who was with the Reagan administration, said, if you don't replace the withdrawn consumer spending, we may well go into a depression, not a recession, and have unemployment exceeding what Ronald Reagan's was, in the 10.2 percent, 10.3 percent range.
Obviously, we had to, in the short term, invest to get the economy moving. In the long term, we obviously have to look at the debt. Americans are concerned about both growing the economy and making sure the debt does not put our country at risk.
CROWLEY: And one of the things that the president has asked you to do more recently has been the $50 billion job program, if you will. But you're having a little trouble with that. And isn't there -- you have said, look, we're just, like, we're in a spending fatigue at this point. It is very -- even though there are well-known economists saying you've got to spend more money because we're not out of it, Congress isn't in a mood to do that, are they?
HOYER: Congress is very concerned. Democrats are very concerned about the deficit. And that's why, frankly, we've taken some very substantial steps to overcome the deep deficits given to us by the Bush administration.
We've adopted pay-go, which simply says, look, we're going to pay for what we buy. Secondly, we -- the president -- when the Republicans in the Congress wouldn't support a deficit reduction commission that they originally proposed, and they didn't support, the president appointed one himself.
Mr. Bowles was mentioned previously by Mitch McConnell, and Senator Simpson are working together to try to, in the long term, bring this deficit down.
Thirdly, the president submitted a budget which freezes spending at last year's level.
HOYER: We've gone $7 billion better than that in the budget enforcement resolution we've adopted.
CROWLEY: Long story short, though, that $50 billion to keep teacher jobs, firefighters and the like -- that's not going to happen?
HOYER: We have passed, as you know, Candy, a jobs bill, a supplemental bill -- we've sent it to the Senate -- which would put $10 billion into making sure that we don't lose an overwhelming number of teachers, explode class sizes and, very frankly, put a lot of people...
CROWLEY: So the Defense authorization bill -- is that what you're talking about or is this separate?
HOYER: Well, part of the supplemental, but as you recall, in the House, we had not only the funding for the troops, which we're going to pass -- we need to do that -- but it also had some dollars to continue to try to make sure that we don't have more unemployment and lose teachers around the country.
The president's $50 billion clearly does not have the votes, but we clearly are focused on continuing to create jobs and grow the economy.
CROWLEY: Let me read you something in the sheer politics category. It's from Charles Krauthammer, who, if our viewers don't know, is a conservative columnist who wrote about the tensions between the House Democrats and the president.
(LAUGHTER) "For Obama, 2010 matters little. If Democrats lose control of one or both houses, Obama will probably have an easier time in 2012, just as Bill Clinton used Newt Gingrich and the Republicans as the foil for his 1996 re-election campaign."
And I've heard Democrats say something similar. Do you all feel that the president has not been out there enough for House members?
HOYER: No, you know, we had a very positive meeting with the president...
CROWLEY: OK, but we're not going to do kum-ba-yah; there's tension there, right? HOYER: There -- there's always tension. You pointed out earlier that there's always tension between the White House and the House and the Senate.
I pointed out that there was great tension between the Bush White House and the Republicans in the House of Representatives, and they were very nervous about his policies and what he was doing with the country, although they supported those policies, which, of course, got us to the point where we now are.
But my view is that the president and the Democrats in the House and the Democrats in the Senate have the same objective: keep this economy moving and growing; keep moving forward. We have a joint interest in the success of both. And the meeting that we had was a very positive one. And the president has been working hard. Joe Biden's been working hard on behalf of our candidates. And we think we're going to do well.
CROWLEY: One of the things that is, sort of, Politics 101 says that people, by the summer, have pretty much made up their mind how they feel their economy is going, and that that's probably not going to change between now and November. Assuming that's the case, how big a loss are we talking about for Democrats?
HOYER: I don't think we're talking about a big loss, Candy.
Let me look at three races for you, just to -- as specific examples. You can talk; you can speculate. After the last summer, which was a very hot summer politically, as you recall, we won a number of races during that period of time. Health care was a very hot topic. It was a very hot topic with Bill Owens and with Scott Murphy in New York. Bill Owens won a district in that context which we hadn't won in 158 years. Scott Murphy won a district when, again, health care was the number one issue.
You then move to Pennsylvania 12, and you see Mark Critz. The Republicans went after him with exactly the same arguments they're making today. What did Mark Critz say? "Look, I'm going to focus on building jobs, bringing jobs homes, making sure the economy is growing." And Mark Critz won. He didn't win by one or two points; he won by eight points. And that was, as you know, just a couple of months ago.
So we think that, when the real polls are taken, people look at these and say, do I want to return to the Bush policies, which created the worst economy we've seen in three quarters of a century, a time when it was said by economists, if you pursue those policies, worst depression could happen?
Or are they going to say, yes, we're -- we're angry; yes, we're fearful this economy is not doing what it ought to be doing? We agree with that. We've been working on that.
They elected Mark Critz handily, so that, in the elections that we have seen recently, in this time frame -- I don't mean years ago, but I mean in this special election time frame, we've won. CROWLEY: So hope springs eternal. Let me...
(LAUGHTER)
Let me turn you to one last subject, and that is, this week, lots of talk about the Tea Party. Now, that is where the passion is in politics these days, is inside the Tea Party, against a lot of big government spending, against big government in general.
Do you think that the Tea Party, as you know it to be, condones racism?
HOYER: I think there -- there are some members who have used the Tea Party -- whether it's the Tea Party itself, there are some individuals who have tried to exacerbate racial tensions in this country.
I have seen some virulent flyers that have been directed at our members, clearly referencing race, the president's race and race generally.
We saw in the paper today a billboard, which has now been taken down, which, in my opinion, went over the top. What we need to be doing is talking about the issues and solutions and what happened in the past to get us in the ditch that we're in.
If we do that, I think this will be a positive election. If we try to simply inflame differences and create division, I think that will not be positive. And I think that's, frankly, what some are doing.
CROWLEY: House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer, thanks for joining us this morning. Appreciate it.
HOYER: Thanks so much, Candy. Always good to be with you.
CROWLEY: Thank you.
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