Fox News Channel Interview - Transcript

Interview

Fox News Channel Interview - Transcript

SHEPARD SMITH: Senator Corker is good enough to join us from Capitol Hill now on a busy day.

Sir, we greatly appreciate it.

SEN. CORKER: Hey, Shep, good to be with you.

MR. SMITH: What if they fail, and three or four million people don't have jobs, and the stock markets sells of half? What do we do then?

SEN. CORKER: Yeah.

You know, first of all, the jobs are not necessarily go away.

MR. SMITH: Oh, I know that.

SEN. CORKER: In fact, they won't go away.

MR. SMITH: Well, they may.

SEN. CORKER: You know, these --

MR. SMITH: We don't know.

SEN. CORKER: Well, no.

These companies need to go through reorganization.

Look, I was a card-carrying union member as a young man. I've been in business most of my life. I emphasize with the issues that we're discussing here. But the approach by the Big Three, to come in the way they have, has been very, very sophomoric.

The United Auto Workers have not made the concessions that need to be made. I thought one of the most interesting --

MR. SMITH: They actually made the concessions that were asked of them. And those concessions are on the way. It may be that they weren't asked for enough concessions. But they made them.

SEN. CORKER: Yeah.

Well, the head of Chrysler yesterday and the head of the UAW had a nice discussion, while I was interviewing. And I guess most people aren't aware that they have to continue to pay workers, for up to four years, after a plant has been idle. I don't know of any industry in the world that is under those kinds of conditions. And those kind of things still have to be resolved.

Shep, there are a lot of legacy issues that still haunt these companies. And by the way, I don't know why we would talk about --

MR. SMITH: What's a legacy issue?

SEN. CORKER: A legacy issue is something that's built into the past.

MR. SMITH: Like what?

SEN. CORKER: Contracts, having 7,000 dealers -- GM -- around the country when they need 1,500. State laws prohibit them from doing what they need to do.

The UAW has all kinds of contract issues that now still hang over their head. They're not competitive. And I think that they need to come back in a more sophisticated way, laying out a plan for the future, if they even want to have a chance of receiving any taxpayer money. But the way it's been presented, it's just not going to happen.

MR. SMITH: All right. Let's talk frank politics.

SEN. CORKER: Okay.

MR. SMITH: Republicans want the unions busted, right?

SEN. CORKER: No, no, not at all. That's absolutely not true.

Look, I was a trustee on a union board, for years, to make sure that the funds were solid, that the employees would receive the monies given to them. That's absolutely not a goal, absolutely not.

MR. SMITH: Is the president-elect pushing this issue to save them now? We don't hear him.

SEN. CORKER: I think, let me, Shep, look, what happened yesterday, I think, is what might be called a preliminary loan application, okay?

What they presented was not factual. They had no idea how much money they needed. They have no idea where they're going.

MR. SMITH: Or they don't want to tell us.

SEN. CORKER: Why would we, why would we consider them as a group?

Ford has actually done some of the right things and probably doesn't need the money. Chrysler probably is second in line. GM is in the worse shape. Why we look at them as a group, to me, is silly. It's ridiculous.

MR. SMITH: All right.

We do know that at least in the short term, if one of the Big Three fails, there will be a lot of failures. And at least in the short term, there will be a lot of people out of money and out of jobs and out of hope.

What do we do for those people? Should we put together a plan as a nation, through you as our representatives, to save these people rather than saving the companies? And how do we do that?

SEN. CORKER: Shep, doing -- going through a reorganization, the companies continue to function. They continue to make cars. People continue to receive payroll checks.

Certainly there will be people that will be out of a job. But that doesn't mean, by any means, that the majority of them will. There's a lot of work that they still need to do to be organized properly.

They're making 10 million -- we're selling 10 million cars in America today, down from 17 million. I think one has to ask, do we really need three domestic automakers? Would we be better off with two?

Those are the kind of things that, I think, need to be discussed. They need to be discussed in a very mature way. I thought yesterday's hearing shed light on the fact that really there has not been any thought.

These three gentlemen thought they could make a pact; they could come up here, while the getting was good, and bailout discussions were under way, and take $25 billion away from here. And I think they have seen that that is not going to happen.

I think Democrats and Republicans both saw how unprepared they were to even talk about this topic. And I think they'll be back. I think hopefully they'll talk about it in an intelligent way that we can comprehend and understand where they're going.

MR. SMITH: I'm just out of time again, Senator. Thank you.

SEN. CORKER: Thank you.

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