MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Current Environment in Washington, DC

Interview

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U.S. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is a Democrat from Missouri and Joan
Walsh is an MSNBC political analyst and editor-at-large at Salon.

Congressman, I`ve been listening to you lately, and I think you --
you`ve got a lot to say about this, but I am dumbfounded at the utter
incompetence of our government, coming at this thing in a crisis mode for
three weeks, everyone in America caring about those kids one way or the
other, and nothing! Looks like the Congress is going to leave with nothing
done.

REP. EMANUEL CLEAVER (D), MISSOURI: Well, they`re talking about
trying to stay overnight and do something tomorrow morning, but even that,
Chris, is absolutely nothing.

This is insulting to the people of this country. It`s insulting to
people who are in Washington because we thought we were here to solve
problems. And I`m not a name caller, a bomb thrower, but I can tell you
I`m sick and tired of what`s going on here in Congress because there`s
nothing going on.

And you know, there are people who, it seems, are coming -- have come
to Washington for the sole purpose of disrupting the government. They are
anti-government. And the people out in the country are the ones who are
going to have to stop this.

MATTHEWS: Well, who wins when Ted Cruz, the senator from Texas, the
firebrand of all firebrands -- he comes over and meets with a dozen of your
Republican colleagues. Next thing you know, Boehner, the supposed speaker,
at least the nominal speaker of the House, finds he doesn`t have a majority
to do anything.

What`s going on where a senator -- there he is walking across the
Capitol or whatever, and just jamming everything up.

CLEAVER: Well you know, in some ways -- I don`t want -- I hate -- it
troubles me deeply to believe that one human being can disrupt the
compassion a nation of 300 million people. In a real sense, that troubles
me deeply. But I know that there are some people who, under normal
circumstances, are good and decent people, but they come around here with
people who hate the government, and they are different. They don`t get
ulcers, they`re carriers.

And that`s what`s going on here. We have a lot of carriers of people
who come in and get the whole body of politics sick. And we are sick right
now, maybe sick unto death.

MATTHEWS: Is there a fear in the Republican caucus any time there`s a
line drawn -- for example, are you for suing the president or not -- you
have to always be on the right side of that, the right-wing side of that?

CLEAVER: Well, I mean, what people won`t say -- and Nancy Pelosi,
I`ve got to give her a lot of credit. I mean, she continues to remind
people that that was a question that the media dropped on her repeatedly
during her speakership, and she always said impeachment is not on the
table. No matter how many weapons of mass destruction...

MATTHEWS: Yes.

CLEAVER: ... were not found, that`s not going to be impeachment,
Speaker Boehner won`t do that.

MATTHEWS: Yes, he won`t. He doesn`t want to offend anybody. He
won`t even say that birtherism is wrong. You remember? He said a while
back, I don`t -- I don`t want to tell people how to think.

I want to go to Joan on this for a second. I`ll be right back to you,
Congressman.

Joan, we`ve been watching politics a lot, me a lot longer than you.
I`ve never seen such failure and such fear. They won`t help those kids.
They won`t give them a nickel -- as I one said, not one Lincoln-headed
penny!

JOAN WALSH, SALON.COM, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Not one Lincoln-
headed penny.

MATTHEWS: Nothing! Your thought.

WALSH: No, it`s tragic, Chris. And you know, the congressman is
right. There are some carriers of a real sickness. And you know, Ted Cruz
is doing his best to spread it.

But Bill Kristol laid it out this morning in "The Weekly Standard." I
got to give him credit. He basically told the House GOP, Kill this bill
because we don`t want to see you do the heavy lifting of governing. We
don`t want you back in your districts having to defend something you did or
didn`t do. We want to drop this on the president. We want the finger of
blame pointing at one man, President Obama, and we don`t want you to get
your hands dirty with compromise, with actually thinking about the
complicated set of reasons that this problem wound up at our border. You
can`t do that. We don`t want you implicated in governing.
And when you have one party...

MATTHEWS: That`s called scorched earth.
WALSH: It`s scorched earth. It`s sabotage.

MATTHEWS: That`s when you burn your own field so the enemy won`t eat.

WALSH: It is sabotage dressed up as political genius. So it`s not
just Ted Cruz, it`s a lot of people. But Ted Cruz is the symbol. He is
one man out for himself. There is no principle in this.

You know, he wanted to -- he wants them to cut the funding for
deferring the deportations. It`s not funded by Congress. These
applications -- it`s a self-funded program by application fees. They can`t
even cut the money. What he`s trying to do can`t really even be done.
But that doesn`t matter. What matters is grinding up the gears of
government and making people believe that we can`t do anything as a
country. And it`s very sad.

MATTHEWS: Anyway, it`s August vacation time.

WALSH: Yes.

MATTHEWS: It looks like Congress is going to leave and not get this
done, although there`s a last-gasp chance tomorrow.

Let me look at this -- Congressman, look at this comment by the
governor of Texas. Anger and outrage has already begun to pour in from
some members of the Republican Party after the House pulled the border bill
today. Texas governor Rick Perry, of all people, issued this statement.
"It`s beyond belief that Congress is abandoning its post while our border
crisis continues to create humanitarian suffering and criminal aliens still
represent a clear threat to our citizens and our nation. Congress should
not go into recess until the job is completed."

What`s your bet right now, Congressman Celler (sic)? Do you think
that the Republicans are going to scatter back tomorrow, have a quickie and
pass it? And will it go anywhere in the Senate? Will we get anything to
the president`s desk?

CLEAVER: I doubt it. They don`t have the votes right now, and so
they`re going to -- they`re going to beat people up all night long and hope
to have them tomorrow morning. And even then, it`s going to be
questionable. And if something comes across, it`s going to be watered down
from what it is now, trying to accommodate the far right in the Republican
conference.

And so when it gets over to Senator Reid and a more sensible Senate, I
don`t think it`s going to go anywhere, which ought to make Americans so
angry that they began to react to all of these people who`ve come to
Washington to disrupt the nation. It is sick. And I`m sick of it, and I
hope the people around the country are sick of it and that they`ll come out
and express their sickness in November.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me ask you about this -- and I`ll go to Joan on
this, too. You know, back in 1948 -- I love history, like you all do, too.
And I was thinking, you know, Harry Truman had a do-nothing Congress back
after World War II. They did nothing except investigate people for
communism. And maybe they caught a communist here or there, but basically,
they were wasting time. They used to open with a prayer and end with a
probe, as somebody once said. It was all wasting time in investigations.

(INAUDIBLE) Darrell Issa right across the floor.

Now, my question is, do you think the American people are going to
vote for nothing, a party that stands for nothing, Congressman? Because
that`s what the Republicans are saying, Elect us, we`ll do nothing.
CLEAVER: My fear is people that don`t realize that there`s only one
human being who can actually bring a measure to the floor in the House of
Representatives, and it is the speaker. And I appreciate what the governor
of Texas is saying. That sounds like something I could have said.

The problem is, he needs to -- instead of saying Congress, he ought to
say the Republicans in Congress and call names because my fear is that the
American public doesn`t understand the nuances and they may not understand
that it is the Republicans.

MATTHEWS: I know.

CLEAVER: It`s not the Congress, it`s the Republicans.

MATTHEWS: Well, the border bill in the House, by the way -- Joan,
respond to this -- was reworked four times, as you know, to appease the
red-hots and it still failed.

WALSH: Right.

MATTHEWS: Here`s the timeline. July 8th, President Obama asks
Congress for $3.7 billion to address the crisis on the border, all those
young kids down there. The House does nothing until July 23rd. Then it
began putting together a $1.5 billion counteroffer. Three days after that,
the package is scaled down to $1 billion. On July 29th, it shrunk to $659
million.

Last night, Ted Cruz began whipping support against it, so this
morning, Boehner announced -- the speaker announced a package to attract
their support by attaching a plan to block the president`s power to halt
deportations of certain groups of immigrant children. And this afternoon,
still without enough support, the speaker pulled the bill from the floor.

Joan, he tried to appeal, he tried to pander to the hard right. It
didn`t work because as Congressman Cleaver just said, they don`t want to be
at peace. They want to be able to go home and say, We don`t have our hands
on this thing.

WALSH: No. Exactly. And if you read that statement that the
speaker`s office released, Chris, where he says the president can take
actions on his own without Congress -- that`s what they`re suing him for!
That`s what some of them want to impeach him for.

MATTHEWS: Isn`t it ironic.

WALSH: They`re saying he does too much through executive action, and
now they`re saying, Well, he can handle this problem through executive
action. It is crazy. It is a set-up.

And I know some of my friends in the mainstream media want to go on
and on about how it`s the left and Democrats that are talking about
impeachment. Certainly, we didn`t start it. I don`t know that we`re going
to be the ones who get to finish it, either. This is designed to make this
man, to depict this man, our president, as a tyrant and a dictator who is
usurping power, and they`re telling him -- they`re now telling him to do
it. And then next week, they`ll be telling us they`re going to impeach him
over it.

MATTHEWS: Thank you so much for joining us, Congressman. By the way,
sorry for misproducing (sic) your name. I was thinking of Manny Celler,
Emanuel Celler, who was around this place for a thousand years.

CLEAVER: I remember.

MATTHEWS: You are far more -- you`re far more lively and more alive
than that gentleman.

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