This morning, Congressman Ford made an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press. Below is the transcript of the appearance as well as the accompanying video.Via Meet the Press website:
MR. GREGORY: We're back and joined now by Steven Pearlstein, Nina Easton, Rick Stengel, Dick Armey and Harold Ford Jr.
Welcome to all of you.
All right, let's get right into it, because this tax and spending debate that I talked to Dr. Summers about has been very intense this week. FreedomWorks, your, your organization, Congressman Armey, organizing a lot of the so-called TEA parties around the countries. These were protests about tax policy in the administration. Big placards and not a lot of love for President Obama around the country as people are concerned about taxes and spending. But look at this. This is the new Gallup poll that came out this week. "Views of income taxes among the most positive since 1956." The new poll "finds 48 percent of Americans saying the amount of federal income taxes they pay is `about right,' with 46 percent saying they're too high--one of the most positive assessments Gallup has measured since 1956." As Dr. Summers says, the president is cutting taxes for 95 percent of Americans. What's everybody so upset about?
FMR. REP. DICK ARMEY (R-TX): Well, first of all, I, I want to correct the record. While FreedomWorks did participate and help with the organizing, we had over 800 TEA parties. Now, this is very important. Over 800 TEA parties around the country, with attendance in the hundreds. And Atlanta was 15,000. These were almost exclusively organized by volunteer people. I say they were. And where FreedomWorks helped with technical assistance, in every TEA party that I was aware of a real person in their real community put it together. Now, what they're concerned about is where it's going to go. Quite frankly, the--most of the people that I talked to at the TEA parties and, and who had that sentiment frankly just simply do not believe that the president is either going to hold the line on spending. Look, he's, he's taken the, the deficit up to $2 trillion and promising to halve it. That still makes it, what, a--twice as big as it was when he started. So the fact of the matter is there's real doubts about him, and taxes must inevitably go up if he's going to grow big government.
FMR. REP. HAROLD FORD JR. (D-TN): There was not--but, but, but, Leader, there was not one TEA party in the eight years that President Bush was in office. And this is not meant to litigate the last eight years. But let's be honest, there was a $5 trillion increase in the amount of the, the nation's debt under President Bush. Normally when you use a credit card and you go out and charge things, you're able to show something you got in return. For the last eight years there are no more kids with health care, there are fewer kids who are able to afford college, we have not found new energy sources, and we can make a pretty credible argument that the Middle East is less stable and more dangerous than it was before. I give the president great credit for another attack not occurring on our soil. When we look at the long-term investments and the foundational platform that this president, President Obama is trying to create, one could make a legitimate and I think a compelling argument that in the long run this will produce the new--new investments in energy will produce not only alternatives but less reliance overseas, cheaper energy here at home, a smarter electricity grid, more kids going to college, more people with access to health care, which will lower business costs and allow the economy, for that matter...
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. FORD: ...the kind of prosperity that we want to come back.
MR. GREGORY: But let's just talk about, Steven Pearlstein, the fact of the matter is that Americans are satisfied, according to the polling, with where their tax burden is right now. There may be doubts about President Obama, but he is cutting taxes.
MR. STEVEN PEARLSTEIN: That's right. And the level of taxation, overall tax, the federal taxation, which includes the income tax, but also the corporate tax and the excise tax and things like that, it's, it's at one of the lower points it's been in the last 30 years. And one of the things that everyone has to get sort of comfortable with is it's going up. And Dick is right about that, it's going up. It has to go up. We need to get the deficit down and we need to live within our means in--as households and as governments. So one of the things I, I think I'm a little disappointed in is that Obama has got himself locked into nobody under $250,000 income is going to get a tax increase. I think he's going to find that that's very limiting in terms of putting us on that stable foundation, the rock that he talked about in his speech this week.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. PEARLSTEIN: Putting us back on a, on a stable foundation.
MR. GREGORY: Nina, you talk about the, the way the debate is being framed and the tone of this debate. Paul Begala, former adviser to President Clinton, was on the "Imus in the Morning" program this week, and he really took on those protestors out at TEA parties, and this is what he said.
(Audiotape, Wednesday)
MR. DON IMUS: Just...
MR. PAUL BEGALA: Why are they out there whining with this TEA party thing?
MR. IMUS: I don't--because we're...
MR. BEGALA: Just a bunch of wimpy...
MR. IMUS: No, no.
MR. BEGALA: ...whining weasels...
MR. IMUS: Now you're making me feel bad, because...
MR. BEGALA: ...who don't love their country and don't want to support...
MR. IMUS: Oh.
MR. BEGALA: There are guys at Walter Reed who gave their legs for my country, and they're whining because they're going to have to write a check?
(End audiotape)
MR. GREGORY: Is the broader argument here, as Steven suggests, there has to be a burden because of where the country is; that, that individuals have to pay more?
MS. NINA EASTON: Well, I, I would--first of all, I, I think the media underestimated this as an animating force, a tax--the potential of tax increasing. I think, I think that there is--it's an animating political issue. It's something that the Republicans can hang their hats on. I would recall 1993 Contract with America, when Democrats didn't take that seriously, either. I think tax and spend issues are a real, are a real animating issue for Republicans. I think there's also been a little mini TEA party on the Hill, in that we saw moderate Democrats have already declared, basically, dead on arrival the, the Obama proposal to limit deductions for wealthy households giving charitable contributions. There's concern about the cap and trade, which is the energy plan that's, that a lot of Republicans are countering as a--they're calling a tax increase.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MS. EASTON: And some moderate Democrats are agreeing. So I think that--I, I do think the tax thing, I think the Democrats underestimated at their own peril.
MR. GREGORY: Congressman Armey, is Paul Begala another Democrat saying that this is a patriotism issue?
REP. ARMEY: No.
MR. GREGORY: Like Vice President Biden said, it's patriotic to pay more in taxes?
REP. ARMEY: Well, you know, Paul is a very colorful guy. But the fact of the matter is--and let me talk about the vice president's comment. The president's goal is to have 50 percent of adult Americans not on--not paying taxes. If it's so patriotic to pay taxes, why not include everybody? Why shouldn't every American who's working, making--an adult American share in the tax burden, distribute it more evenly? You can get rates down and it can encourage growth. And by the way, I must mention that the TEA party movement started in response to TARP by Rick Santelli...
REP. FORD: In fairness, you're right.
REP. ARMEY: ...a commentator on early morning TV.
MR. GREGORY: The bailout funds for the banks. Right.
REP. ARMEY: And that's where it started. So President Bush isn't off the hook on this.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. ARMEY: President Obama just wants to take a bad thing and make it bigger.
MR. GREGORY: Rick Stengel, I want you to react to something. The president in his economic speech on Tuesday was very candid about one thing, and that is that people have to pay more for this economy, in this economy, in this crisis. This is that he said.
(Videotape, Tuesday)
PRES. OBAMA: If we don't invest now in renewable energy, if we don't invest now in a skilled work force, if we don't invest now in a more affordable health care system, this economy simply won't grow at the pace it needs to in two or five or 10 years down the road.
(End videotape)
MR. GREGORY: Is that right?
MR. RICK STENGEL: Well, he has a kind of unified field theory of the economy that you just can't fix it by either raising taxes, by recapitalizing the banks. You've got to fix the health care system, you've got to fix so many things, you have to fix education. So he really sees the way that America is going to get better is by changing the nature of the way we are as consumers. He wants us to build things. He doesn't want us to make money off of money, the way the banks were doing. So I think they have a, a, an agenda that they're not quite talking about, but it's a traditional agenda about America getting back to an era of thrift, an era of making things, not buying things that we don't need and then throwing them away.
MR. GREGORY: But, Steven, there's still this fundamental question: Where does the money come from? This is an administration that prides itself on transparency. Where's the money coming from? On tax policy you wrote this this week in your Friday column: "The old Republican fantasy was that tax cuts were the magic elixir that would solve every problem. Now that the public has finally rejected it, it's disappointing to see Democrats offering up the equally fantastic notion that Americans can have all the government they want while getting someone else to pay for it."
MR. PEARLSTEIN: Well, you know, I think the president was--in this speech was trying to get us off of the idea that all of this is just spending. Some of it is investment, and it's investment that will pay dividends down the road. And if he can redirect the conversation and say, yeah, this--some of the stuff that government does that we consume every year--we send people checks, that's consumption. But if we're investing in these things, it's good for the public--for the private sector, people in the private sector to invest, but it's also good for the public sector. But what he's got to say is in order to invest, you've got to stop consuming certain things.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. PEARLSTEIN: That is, allow yourself to be taxed so that we can make these investments.
MR. STENGEL: But we used to consume our way out of problems.
REP. ARMEY: Right.
MR. PEARLSTEIN: He's saying we can't do that anymore. So consumption is something like 65 or 68 percent of GDP, it's got to go down. And that, that is a big change for Americans.
MR. PEARLSTEIN: It certainly is.
REP. ARMEY: Let me make a couple points. As Milton Friedman said, "The real rate of taxation is the rate of spending." It's going to be pay me now or pay me later, but eventually every dime's worth of government spending is going to be taxation. But I think there's a fundamental question here that Hubert Humphrey would appreciate. The fact is, even by Hubert Humphey's standards, Humphrey-Hawkins, this government is too big. It's too much of a burden on the economy. And people sense that this president wants to take an already existing burden on the American economy and make it even bigger with a questionable ability...
MR. STENGEL: Well, I...(unintelligible).
REP. FORD: All right.
REP. ARMEY: ...to do any good. Has the government actually made health care better in America? I would argue probably not.
MR. GREGORY: All right.
Comment, Harold?
REP. FORD: Two things. We use the term "bailout" when we talk about the help on the financial side. It's important to note that the TARP is designed to actually be paid back. If the banks perform at the rate that some have suggested they performed this quarter and across the year, you're looking at a dividend payment from the banks back to the taxpayer, rightly so, between $12 to $15 billion this year, number one. Number two...
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. FORD: ...I would agree with you, Leader, in this regard. Spending is large, but what is the alternative? Government's playing the role of the, the, the, the, the financial investor of last resort, the spender of last resort. We, we fought this, we fought this battle for many years in this country. Think if we'd decided not to pass the Servicemen Readjustment Act back in 1944 called the GI Bill. It was an enormous expenditure. You sent eight million veterans to college, you provided one year of unemployment compensation and you ensured they could buy a home. The impact that had on the nation's economy going forward, educating that greatest generation, has been enormous. Think if Eisenhower's national interstate, the highway system would not have passed. It cost $425 billion in real day terms. The impact it's had on commerce, prosperity and growth has been immeasurable. We face one of those moments. This is one of those 100-year flood moments. And as much as I'd like to see government not engage and involve itself in so many enterprises, I don't know the alternative. And as much as I like and respect you, I've not heard from Republicans or conservatives or the TEA party attenders, what is the alternative? If the alternative, alternative is to sit back and do nothing, the majority of Americans, evidenced by poll after poll, say, "Do something. Be active and get us out of this mess."
MR. GREGORY: I, I want to get in here. We're going to take a break here. We're going to come back and talk more about the economy and specifically the effects of this recession on people's lives. We're going to take a break. We'll come back with our roundtable discussion right after this brief station break.
(Announcements)
MR. GREGORY: And we're back now with our roundtable.
Rick Stengel, I, I talked to Dr. Summers about where does capitalism go from here once this recession is over? And it's something you're thinking about on the cover of Time magazine this week, and here it is. The title is "The New Frugality. The recession has changed more than just how we live. It's changed what we value, what we expect even after the economy recovers." That's a special report in the magazine. What has your reporting revealed about how it's changing people's lives?
MR. STENGEL: People are recalibrating their lives. They're--it's a reset that's going on. They're thinking about how they consume, they're thinking about how they live. They're thinking that those endless horizons that we were always told we'd have are not there anymore. And so this is really going to affect the Obama policy. They're cutting back on things like bottled water. They're growing their own gardens. They're not--they're exercising more but going to health clubs less. So they're resetting their lives. At the same time there is this odd, curious, wonderful spirit of optimism. You know, 57 percent of people say the American dream is harder to get to, but that same number say America's best days are ahead of us.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MR. STENGEL: That combination of realism and idealism is quintessential in the American character, and that will help us get out of it.
MR. GREGORY: You did a poll for this report, and we can reveal another aspect of it this morning. And this was the question about spending for Americans going through this recession. Once the economy does recovery, what will you do? Twenty-five percent say go back to spending the way they did before. Sixty-one percent say they will continue to spend less.
And, Nina Easton, what's, what's interesting here is that there seems to be a recognition that even if credit does start flowing again...
MS. EASTON: Right.
MR. GREGORY: ...even if there is some return to profitability, the economy's not coming back to where we were before, because where we were before was simply not sustainable.
MS. EASTON: Or it's not coming back certainly in the short term. I mean, just to give you some perspective on how bad things were, we released this morning, actually, our Fortune 500 issue. We've been doing this for 55 years. The earnings drop among the Fortune 500 was 85 percent last year.
MR. STENGEL: Wow.
MS. EASTON: That is the largest drop, the steepest drop in the history since we've been releasing this issue.
MR. GREGORY: Let's actually refer to that more specifically. This is from the, the cover piece...
MS. EASTON: Yeah.
MR. GREGORY: ...out of Fortune magazine that talks about economic performers of the, of the Fortune 500. Last year the worst economic performance in the 55-year history of, of the Fortune 500 list, biggest 500 companies, earnings dropped 84.7 percent, as you just said, from the previous year, from $645 billion to $98.9 billion. It's the largest ever one-year decline.
MS. EASTON: So while things are--there are signs, and as, as President Obama says in our issue, you know, there are signs of some stabilizing, but there are a lot of risks to this economy still. And it's--I think people have to understand that this is a long haul, and the, the key to this long haul is the banking system...
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
MS. EASTON: ...and the recovery of the banking system. And I find--and what's happening is that Barack Obama has--is facing a very difficult political issue on that. And we saw that in his Georgetown speech. He needs banks to come back. He needs their profitability.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MS. EASTON: He needs them to lend. But he's also got the liberal wing of his party saying, "Oh, you know, we--they're too profitable now." So you saw him spend a lot of time in this speech dwelling on...
MR. GREGORY: But it's not just the left. It is the--populism on the left and the right...
MS. EASTON: Right. That's--yes.
MR. GREGORY: ...Steven Pearlstein, that says, "Hey, wait a minute. I'm still losing jobs, I'm worried about my job. And wait a minute, the bankers, we've given them hundreds of billions of dollars, they're profitable again in the first quarter?" How does that compute? Is that not a political risk for their recovery effort?
MR. PEARLSTEIN: It is. And it's, it's always been the hard thing about this financial rescue thing. You know, we can't, we can't rescue the economy without rescuing the banking system, and you can't rescue the banking system without rescuing banks. And people got to get over it, you know. First of all, we didn't give them the money, as Harold points out, we lent them the money. And some of them want to pay it back. And in the meantime we're earning interest. So we didn't give it to them. But we ought to really--you know, if the banks are getting healthy, we should--that's a good thing for us. And we've got to get over this thing, "Well, if it's good for them, it's, it's bad for us." We are all in this together. We own the--part of the banks now, so as shareholders maybe we would be...
MR. GREGORY: Can I...
MR. PEARLSTEIN: ...be cheering the fact that they made a profit.
MR. GREGORY: I want to follow up on one point, this question of recovery. We know that unemployment is something that lags. So if the recession were to end, say this fall, as some forecasters think it will, when do you think unemployment would actually peak?
MR. PEARLSTEIN: Not till the end of next year at the earliest.
MR. GREGORY: So it could take an additional year...
MR. PEARLSTEIN: Yes, sir.
MR. GREGORY: ...of job losses. That's pretty frightening.
MR. STENGEL: And then people--by the way, we call it a lagging indicator. You lose your job, you're not a lagging indicator. You are in serious trouble.
MR. GREGORY: Sure.
MR. STENGEL: And the thing is...
MR. PEARLSTEIN: You're a present indicator.
MS. EASTON: Right.
MR. STENGEL: Well, that's right, you're a present indicator. And the point is, is we're, we're thinking, "Oh, the economy will be healthy but unemployment will go up to 10 percent." I mean, does anybody here at this table think it's not going to go up to 10 percent?
MR. PEARLSTEIN: No.
MR. STENGEL: Everybody does.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. FORD: You know, the interesting thing about your numbers as you, as you showed, from $650 to $84 billion, $85, I can't remember the exact numbers, that was not a function of taxes being too high. That was a function of revenue going down and incomes being too low. So as much as this conversation about taxes is relevant, what is more relevant is how do we drive incomes up? How do we create more jobs? And I think a legitimate argument--and I hope that people stop questioning President Obama's intentions here in calling him a socialist and suggesting he's making the nation unsafe--I think Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, said it best. His intention shouldn't be a question. I never questioned President Bush's intentions. We can debate the policy. And his policies, I think there's a legitimate debate that's under way. I happen to think the investments in these places will drive incomes up...
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. FORD: ...and make the Fortune 500 list more attractive next year than it was this year.
MR. GREGORY: I just--we've only got a couple minutes left, and I want to move from the economy to another big issue this week, Congressman Armey, and that was the release by the administration of these so-called torture memos. These were memos that were produced by the Justice Department giving a legal opinion about how terrorism suspects could be interrogated; the use of techniques like waterboarding, which the Obama administration says is torture, stress positions, slaps, the discussion of, of the use of insects, etc. A lot of controversy, Congressman Armey, about the release of these memos by the administration. Former CIA director Michael Hayden wrote this in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal: "The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11th, 2001." Do you agree?
REP. ARMEY: Yeah. It--clearly it was a political act, and I think one thing I would hope that President Obama could finally get to the point where he can put George Bush away. He's retired, his time is over. Forget about--why are you taking smacking George Bush around now? Look for the future. But as a strategic decision with respect to the security of the United States it was, frankly, a grotesquely irresponsible move and it's going to diminish our ability to maintain better security.
MR. GREGORY: Rick Stengel:
MR. STENGEL: Congressman, you--but you--he's basically saying let bygones be bygones. He's not prosecuting anybody. He could prosecute people. He could prosecute the former CIA director. I mean, he's very Mandelalike in the sense that he's saying let the past be the past and let us move into the future.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MS. EASTON: But there's still...
REP. ARMEY: So then why release the report, if not to take a shot at President Bush, former President Bush?
MS. EASTON: And it...
MR. GREGORY: But isn't it bigger than taking a shot at President Bush?
REP. ARMEY: That's...
MR. GREGORY: I mean, you've got--Harold, you've got the fact that Pat Leahy in the Senate is saying we need some kind of truth commission here to find out exactly what it was done and why it was done. I mean, look, this is a bigger debate about how we treat America's enemies. Is that a debate worth having, or is it just looking back?
REP. FORD: Look, I think the president said it best at the, at the summit with some of the Latin American and South American leaders. He said look, the past is the past, let's move forward. He's talked about moving along the, the--with Cuba. It's important to note, as much as we want to do that, if this debate took place in Cuba right now half of us would be arrested if we disagreed with the government. So dissent is still not encouraged. I'd say this. After September the 11th we asked men and women in this country serving in our military and our intelligence agencies to go out and find bad guys. I'm always a little hesitant afterwards when we try to judge the kinds of things they did. That being said, we are America and we got to live up to a certain standard, and I think what the president did was strike the right balance in how they went about dealing with this.
MR. GREGORY: Nina, you were going to make a point.
MS. EASTON: I was just going to say that he clearly wanted to put this behind him, or behind the country, by releasing them. And the question is, did he, or are there more reverberations? Is it going to harm the CIA? Is the Hill going to investigate the authors of those legal memos, which is the next shoe to drop in this?
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MS. EASTON: And so while he says there aren't going to be prosecutions, there could very well be John Conyer's investigating the authors of these legal memos on, on these--and I just wanted to point out one thing. Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence, said in, in one very telling quote, "It's very easy to look back on this safe, warm April 2009 day and second guess a lot of these decisions."
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
Fifteen seconds, Congressman. Would Democrats in power have treated terrorism suspects differently?
REP. ARMEY: I don't know. I mean, quite frankly, it's a technical question. It's a question of very desperate circumstances and high anxiety. It's very difficult to tell who would've done what.
MR. GREGORY: OK.
REP. ARMEY: But I do think forget about it. But again, this was, in my estimation, strictly a political action and it was irresponsible.
MR. GREGORY: We're going to leave it there. Thank you all very much. We're going to continue our discussion with Congressman Armey and Harold Ford Jr. online, ask them some questions our viewers have submitted via e-mail and Twitter. Watch our MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web extra. It's up this afternoon on our Web site. Plus, look for updates from me throughout the week all on mtp.msnbc.com.
And we'll be right back with an important program note about next week's guest.
(Announcements)
MR. GREGORY: That's all for today. Next week, an exclusive interview with King Abdullah of Jordan just days after his first White House meeting with the president. That's right here next week. If it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.
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WATCH CONGRESSMAN FORD AND REP. DICK ARMEY IN MEET THE PRESS TAKE TWO
