MSNBC Hardball - Transcript
MSNBC Hardball - Transcript
4/27/2005
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
MATTHEWS: Thank you, David Shuster.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa is a member of the Judiciary Committee. He is also chairman of the Finance Committee, which is taking up Social Security reform. And Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, which is currently expanding its inquiry into John Bolton's nomination to be ambassador to the United Nations.
Let me to go Senator Nelson first.
Do you think Al Gore is contributing positively to this debate?
SEN. BILL NELSON (D), FLORIDA: Well, I think it needs to get out on the table, because most people don't have any idea what the nuclear option is. And the more it is explained, that it is an attempt to change the Senate rules of over 200 years by breaking the rules, eliminating a senator's right to filibuster, then eliminating the checks and balances in our system and overruling the parliamentarian to get these judges through, then I think, once the people understand that, then they'll see, it is not the fair way to play.
MATTHEWS: Do you think it is fair to deny a nominee for a federal judgeship at the appellate level-this is a big job-a vote, just say, we're not going to give you the dignity, the respect of having a vote on you; we're just going to bury this nomination? Is that fair?
NELSON: Well, in some cases, I agree. In some cases, I don't. For example, I agreed with the Republicans on Miguel Estrada. And I voted for Miguel Estrada.
But when I see judges that do not have the judicial temperament, that they would apply the law to the facts, and instead have a know-it-all attitude, that's not the kind of judge I want. And I have already voted for 206 of President Bush's nominees out of 215.
MATTHEWS: Let me to go Senator Grassley.
Why doesn't the Republican Party meet the Democrats, talk of a compromise, and say, there's a handful of judges here in dispute; why don't we split it in half and accept half of them put the others on a shelf?
SEN. CHARLES GRASSLEY ®, IOWA: There shouldn't be compromise, because, on this particular issue, what happened over the last two years is totally untraditional of the Senate for the first 214 years.
So, what we want to do from here into the future is exactly the way it was done between 1789 and 2003. And we call this the constitutional option because we're doing the same thing that Senator Byrd did on two or three occasions when he was Senate majority leader. And, one time, he rewrote the rules this way, the way we're intending to rewrite them, because there was opposition to even going to a motion to proceed on a nomination.
So, he eliminated the motion to proceed. I think it was in 1980 when he was leader. And so we're just doing it the same way that's been done. And that's why we call it the constitutional option.
MATTHEWS: So, constitutionally, you're going to get rid of the right to unlimited debate. But, since we're talking physics here and nuclear options...
GRASSLEY: Well...
MATTHEWS: Don't you think there's a reaction that's coming, as there always is in the rule of physics, to your action?
GRASSLEY: Don't you think that people realize that, when something was done, something, for 214 years one way, then the exception isn't what we're trying to do? The exception was started two years ago.
We see it this way, that every nominee should have an opportunity to have an up-or-down vote. And that's all this is about. And we're dealing with some situations where these, all of these nominations had a majority vote, a bipartisan majority that would have voted for them. And they would have been on the bench two years ago.
MATTHEWS: Let me go to Senator Nelson on another matter. And I want to bring both of you in on this. This is question of who should represent, what kind of person should represent this country in the United Nations in a very troubling time.
Senator Nelson, is the objection of most Democrats to Bolton's ideology, his hawkish attitude about the world, sort of always looking for problems in the world, and finding them in some cases, or is it because he isn't nice to his colleagues?
NELSON: Neither.
In my case, my objection is that he hasn't done a good job in his present job. And he doesn't deserve to be promoted. He is the chief arms negotiator. And look where we are with North Korea four years later, where they have more nukes than they had to begin with.
Chris, I want to just rebut the senator, the distinguished chairman of the Finance Committee. The filibuster has been used in judicial nominations before. It was first done in 1881 with Stanley Matthews. It was done again in 1968 with Abe Fortas and has been done 12 times since that 1968 time of Abe Fortas.
GRASSLEY: In each of those instances, it was not a partisan filibuster. In the case of Abe Fortas, the vote was-they had 24 Republicans and 19 Democrats. It was a bipartisan filibuster that never even turned out to be a filibuster because Abe Fortas never even had a majority vote to get passed in the first place. And he withdrew.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you-OK, I'm sorry to interrupt.
(CROSSTALK)
NELSON: If it looks like a duck...
MATTHEWS: OK.
(CROSSTALK)
NELSON: Chris, I was just going to say, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. It is a filibuster.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you, Senator Grassley, about-you're not on the committee. But you have to rule, apparently. It's probable that you'll to have rule on this nomination of John Bolton.
If you had someone coming to work for you whose boss would not endorse them, in fact, put out the word that they were not the right person for the job, would you still hire them, in this case, Bolton? Because Colin Powell says he doesn't want this person in that job.
GRASSLEY: Well, let me-if this is based upon the proposition that there's a temperament, because he has been harsh with people that worked for him-and those people didn't even lose their jobs. But even if they had lost their jobs, I'll tell you, all you got to do is hear the rumors about the United States Senate, about the activities of some senators being mean to their personnel and people that have big turnovers in the United States Senate, you would probably eliminate 25 percent of the senators from being senators.
And what this is all about is not how he handles personnel. This is all about people that want to defend the status quo at the United Nations. And it gives us an opportunity to send a John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations and to get the reform that the United Nations needs, as best illustrated by the oil-for-food program in Iraq.
MATTHEWS: Right.
GRASSLEY: And how Kofi Annan was a participant in that cover.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you a final question.
NELSON: Chris.
MATTHEWS: I have to go to the other question of Social Security. I can start with you, Senator Nelson.
Is it your belief that we're going to have personal accounts in Social Security by the end of this congress?
NELSON: No. The public is not there. Especially senior citizens aren't there. I'm not there.
It would cause a huge, huge borrowing over 10 years. The change of the formula would ultimately give young people, when they retire on Social Security, less than what they would under the current laws. It is not going to happen. And it is not going to happen with a lot of Republican senators.
MATTHEWS: Senator Grassley, you're chair of Finance. Will it happen?
Will we have personal accounts by the end of this Congress?
GRASSLEY: I don't know whether it will happen, but I'm committed to personal accounts because young people have great resentment toward paying high taxes today for something they are not going to get anything out of, or, at best, 70 percent of what I get today.
And we need to have young people feel ownership in the Social Security system. We need to end this intergenerational resentment that young people have. We need to give them ownership. We need to give them inheritability. And nobody needs to worry about Social Security being harmed, because we're giving people choice of personal accounts. Nobody has to take a personal account if they don't want to. And they can have the certainty of Social Security, if they don't want any risk whatsoever involved.
But we ought to give people choice. They pay the tax. It is their money. It is set aside for social insurance. If they want to take some of their money set aside for social insurance and have some control over their destiny, we ought to give them that opportunity.
MATTHEWS: OK.
It's great having you on, Senator Charles Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Bill Nelson of Florida.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7668667/