MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

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MR. MATTHEWS: We're joined by two Republican lawmakers who met the president just today, Senator John Ensign of Nevada and U.S. Congressman Mike Pence of Indiana.

REP. PENCE: Hi, Chris.

MR. MATTHEWS: You first, Senator. What did you think of Obama's pitch today? Did you buy it?

SEN. ENSIGN: Well, he's a very skilled politician; there's no question. He's smooth. And really he wasn't strongly pitching the exact plan, because he even admitted there were problems with the plan, some things that he didn't like in the plan. He listened to a lot of our ideas, and there was a good give and take in the lunch today.

The advantage that we have in the Senate is that we're able to amend the bill. I feel sorry for those House members who are just going to basically have probably one alternative. It won't be open for amendment. The Democrats in the House are afraid of amendments, and they aren't going to allow those kinds of amendments. That's a shame.

In the Senate, we're going to get our chance to actually change the bill, to change some of the priorities, because, you know, right now the new score on this bill is over $1.1 trillion. There's a lot of wasteful spending in it. Some of the tax cuts are not targeted correctly to actually create jobs, and we don't do enough to fix the housing crisis in this country. So there are some changes.

I'd like to be able to vote for a good stimulus bill, but frankly, as what the Democrats in the Congress drew up, this is not a good stimulus bill. It's not really even a stimulus bill.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, let's talk, Congressman, what you don't want in and what you want in that's not in. What about these contraceptive -- this whole condom thing? The president apparently called Henry Waxman, the chair of the committee that put that stuff in, and says, "Yank it out of there." Was that a smart move to get that embarrassment out of the bill?

REP. PENCE: Well, sure it was a smart move, and it was especially smart when Republican leader John Boehner raised the issue at the White House on Friday, and the American people were outraged over the weekend, Chris. But taking out the couple of hundred million bucks for contraceptives doesn't solve the problem here.

What this bill is and what President Obama heard, in what was a frank but cordial dialogue on the House side of the Capitol today, was, look, this bill is a long litany of liberal pet programs that will have very little to do with actually getting this economy moving again. There's token tax cuts in the form of rebates.

But Chris, I would ask you -- and many members asked the president this -- what is $50 million to the National Endowment for the Arts going to do to create jobs? You know, what is $200 million in improving the National Mall going to do to put Americans back to work? This is a flawed bill.

And as I said to the president personally, this is a bill that was not fashioned with what I believe is his very genuine desire for a bipartisan compromise on issues like the stimulus. The Democrats in Congress, as I told him, have completely ignored his call for bipartisan compromise, and they're bringing a partisan Democrat bill to the floor tomorrow that will not create jobs, will not lift our economy. And Republicans are poised to oppose it.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, Senator, I want to ask you, and then the congressman the same question, it seems like there's a real fight over taxes here. It's not just the amount of tax cuts. It's who gets them. You want a reduction in the rates so people who pay -- even working people that pay maybe the 15 percent rate will get a lower rate, maybe 10 percent.

The president seems to want to give a lot of the tax cuts to people who don't even pay income taxes, people way at the bottom. What do you think the politics of that is about? Is he going for the very poor people as opposed to the working people? What's he doing? And what are you guys trying to do politically?

SEN. ENSIGN: You know, politically what we're trying to do is choose the right policy, something that actually stimulates the economy, that creates jobs. And so it's not just what we give to individuals. It's also the kind of business tax breaks that we can do to actually create jobs.

You know, we have the second-highest corporate tax rate in the industrialized world. Microsoft, which is a great American company, has zero exports from the United States. They have a lot of exports from Ireland because, guess what, Ireland has a 12 and a half percent corporate tax rate. We have a 35 percent corporate tax rate. If we could lower the corporate tax rate, that would be one of the best things we could do to make American business more competitive in the world and actually help stimulate the economy.

MR. MATTHEWS: But isn't that an old Republican thing you've wanted to do for years too? I mean, you accuse the Democrats of basically emptying out their file drawer of all their old goals. Isn't that an old goal of the Republicans, lower corporate taxes?

SEN. ENSIGN: You know what's funny about that, though, Chris, is it may be an old goal, but it's something that's worked. As a matter of fact, Europe is copying the United States. And what are we doing in the United States? We're going to go the other way. Under the Democrats, we're going to actually raise the marginal rates. We're going to raise capital gains taxes. We're going to raise taxes on dividends.

That's the opposite way of Europe is going. Europe, to be more competitive with the United States, went in the other direction. That's the direction we should be going, because we're in a global economy today, and it's about finding ways that we can compete in this global economy to create jobs in the United States so we can have a healthy economy.

MR. MATTHEWS: Congressman, let me ask you this about the tax cut thing. Do you agree that the president's tax cuts have been aimed at the very poor, the people that don't pay income taxes, and they should be aimed at people who work and pay taxes? What's your philosophy about this, your policy goal here?

REP. PENCE: Well, look, yeah, Chris --

MR. MATTHEWS: How are you different than him?

REP. PENCE: Chris, I can't say it any better than John did. What Republicans would like the opportunity to do is advance the kind of tax relief that will create jobs. We just did the rebate check thing a year ago. I mean, basically, you know, a $500 tax rebate to individuals -- what does that turn out to be, about 10 bucks a week? That's not going to lift the economy, putting 10 bucks a week in everybody's pocket.

What's going to lift the economy is if we lower taxes dramatically on working families. Under the Republican proposal, which we have not had the opportunity to add to this bill in a spirit of bipartisanship, you'd see the average married couple looking at $3,000 in tax relief this year. And you'd also allow small businesses, Chris, small businesses, which are the economic engine of this economy, to deduct 20 percent of their profits. So we're pushing for the kind of relief that, as John said, is time-tested, time- honored. It will lift this economy. And this rebate tax cut business just won't work.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let's take a look at the president today up on Capitol Hill. This is when he was speaking between meeting with the House and the Senate.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: (From videotape.

) There are some legitimate philosophical differences with parts of my plan that the Republicans have, and I respect that. In some cases, they may just not be as familiar with what's in the package as I would like. I don't expect 100 percent agreement from my Republican colleagues, but I do hope that we can all put politics aside and do the American people's business right now.

MR. MATTHEWS: Senator Ensign, how is this going to work? The House is going to pass this without amendment, apparently. The Republicans won't have the votes to stop it, right? Then you're going to amend it and then send it back to the House. This is going to take a while, right?

SEN. ENSIGN: Yeah, it'll take a little bit of time, at least a couple of weeks. You know, the bottom line, Chris, is that the president has set the right tone. He came. He was actually wonderfully gracious today. He listened to people. He had the right tone. But the Democrats in the House and the Senate have done just the opposite.

The two first bills to come out of the Finance Committee, the two major bills to come to the floor of the U.S. Senate, were done without any Republican input whatsoever; an SCHIP bill, that was a bipartisan bill -- it's the children's health insurance bill -- a bipartisan bill that came out that President Bush vetoed last year.

They could have taken that bill and passed it again in a bipartisan fashion. Instead, the very first thing they do is they exclude Republicans from the debate and they craft a bill that they want. They defeat all Republican amendments, and then they just make this a partisan exercise. And they're doing the same thing with the stimulus bill. This is not the spirit that President Obama wanted to bring here to Capitol Hill, and it's unfortunate that the left and the Democrat Party are not allowing him to be bipartisan the way he wants to be.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, Congressman --

REP. PENCE: Chris, if I could jump in --

MR. MATTHEWS: -- are they stacking the -- yeah, go ahead.

REP. PENCE: -- I really do think -- thank you. I really do think that we were impressed. I get the impression my Senate colleagues were impressed. The president is very sincere about this. I think he really would like, on these major issues -- he said, "Look, there's going to be differences, ideological differences, down the road. But on these big items where we've got to figure out what's right for the country, I want all the best ideas at the table and foster bipartisanship."

But, you know, it may have been a rude awakening for the president today to learn, at least with regard to the House side, Republicans have had no input whatsoever in the bill that's coming to the floor tomorrow. So there is a huge chasm between President Obama's very sincere call for bipartisan compromise to aid our economy and the conduct of House Democrats, which is a my-way-or-the-highway laundry list of pet projects and big government spending that won't stimulate the economy. They'll just stimulate more government and more debt.

MR. MATTHEWS: But didn't President Bush push through his tax cut back in 2001 basically with Republican votes, with the Democrats screaming opposition, but it didn't have any effect? Did he have Democrat participation in that tax cut of his?

SEN. ENSIGN: There was very much Democrat -- leading up to, it was working together. It got partisan as the process went along, but it was very much bipartisan going into it. And that's what we need to do, at least start in a bipartisan fashion so that, you know, at the end of the day you may not agree. You may not even be able to vote for the bill. But Democrats don't have all the answers. Republicans don't have all the answers.

The challenges that we face today are the same kind of challenges, and maybe even greater in some degrees, than they faced back in the Great Depression. It is not time to be partisan. It's time to be Americans and to solve these major problems.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, I want to have the debate on this show, "Hardball." Please tell your colleagues to come on. I want this debate to happen here, even if it doesn't happen on the floor.

Gentlemen, thank you very much --

REP. PENCE: We welcome it, Chris.

MR. MATTHEWS: -- Senator John Ensign of Nevada. Congressman Mike Pence, thank you for joining us from Indiana.

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