MSNBC Interview - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC Interview - Transcript

MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR AMY KLOBUCHAR (D-MN)

SUBJECT: FINANCIAL INDUSTRY

INTERVIEWER: NORAH O'DONNELL

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MS. O'DONNELL: President Obama is about to speak from the White House on stronger regulation in the financial sector. Earlier this hour, he met with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, also with members of the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee.

Senator Amy Klobuchar is a Democrat from Minnesota and she serves on the Joint Economic Committee.

Senator, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: Well, thanks so much. It's great to be on again.

MS. O'DONNELL: And let me start with what the president is going to do today. A lot of people have heard him talk about this stool, one of them -- this three-legged stool and one of them, of course, is regulatory reform. We've got this alphabet soup of agencies out there, whether it's the FTC, the OTC, the SEC. What do any of them do?

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: You're good.

MS. O'DONNELL: Gosh, there's been a lot of abuses out there.

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: I heard someone say they do a lot of CYA, but here's the deal, here's the deal. I think that we need streamlining of these agencies; there's no doubt about that. We're also going to need some streamlining of the silos in Congress to be able to better regulate these agencies and perform the kind of oversight that we need.

There is no doubt that the regulatory agencies failed us, some of it is the rules and the Byzantine system you mentioned, but some of it is also the people that were in charge of those agencies that President Obama has already shown a clear commitment to change. Why did the Madoff scandal happen? Why didn't anyone from the SEC notice that?

So I think you're going to see a closing of some of these loopholes, doing something about the credit rating agencies failing us, the accounting rules. I'm very excited that we're moving forward on this because this has got to -- we've got to get the jobs going, but we have to make sure that this doesn't happen again.

MS. O'DONNELL: Well, what specific new regulations could be put in place?

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: Well, again, the streamlining of the agencies is going to be very important and the people that are put in charge. I think the other piece of this is looking at some of these loopholes that have allowed some of these Wall Street firms to elude regulation. The Enron loophole we pretty much closed; there's some more work that can be done with that. There's rules that have been opened up that allowed some of this trading to go on overseas by computers that you can't really check up on. As I mentioned, the credit rating agencies failed us, they were raking these things as gold and then the next day they failed, the way some of the accounting principles worked, credit default swaps.

I'm looking forward to the administration coming forward with a package with some changes here that will protect the people of our country.

MS. O'DONNELL: And we are looking at live pictures now where President Obama is expected to speak shortly and announce that he is beefing up some of these regulations. Senator, I know you were there in the chamber last night. Did you get a chance to see the Republican response from Governor Bobby Jindal?

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: I saw pieces of it and I especially like David Brooks comment as you know, a more conservative commentator, but he basically talked about how it was a lot of rehashing of old ideas. I thought that was unfortunate.

I think President Obama reached out, and I saw some enthusiasm for many of his ideas on the Republican side of the aisle, sometimes they'd all stand up, sometimes some of them would stand up and I believe that we're going to see more bipartisan work in the future and this is why health care and energy, the seeds are already there for bipartisan work.

We've got the gang of 20 on the energy issue that's been working on it for the past six months, health care, we already have some very strong bipartisan proposals.

So unlike the stimulus package, which was something that we had to do to respond to the immediate crisis, there's been much more long- term work that has gone in these two areas. So I'm hopeful there will be more bipartisan support.

MS. O'DONNELL: All right. Senator Amy Klobuchar, I'm just going to ask you to stand by just a moment because we are seeing members of the president's team coming in now and just a peak of the door, it doesn't look like the president is ready to join --

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: Well, I'm always ready to allow the president to supersede me on your show, Norah. That's okay.

MS. O'DONNELL: I know. Let me just get your take one other matter. Senator Roland Burris met with Dick Durbin, the number two Democratic leader there in the Senate and Dick Durbin said that if it were him, Burris should resign and Burris said he's not resigning.

Do you believe that Burris should step aside?

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: You know, I'm not getting into the middle of Illinois internal politics; we have enough going on in Minnesota right now, but I will say that I have a lot of faith in Dick Durbin and his judgment of the situation and I hope that it can get resolved for the state of Illinois.

What I want right now is to get the Minnesota situation resolved.

MS. O'DONNELL: All right. Senator Amy Klobuchar, thank you so much for joining us.

SEN. KLOBUCHAR: Thank you, Norah. Great to be on.

END.

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