NBC "Meet the Press" - Transcript

Interview

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MR. GREGORY: Leader, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.

SEN. HARRY REID (D-NV): Glad to be here.

MR. GREGORY: It's a new Congress, but the issues seem to be old that are making news. I want to ask you about healthcare reform. The bill passed, of course, in the last Congress, but now Republicans, who are in charge of the House, promise to vote to repeal that. And the feeling among Republicans is that if they vote resoundingly to repeal health care, it will increase the pressure on the Senate to do the same. Do you agree?

SEN. REID: Even the reporters, people who read the news, report the news--not the pundits, not the editorial writers--even the people who report the news recognize that this is just a gesture in futility. Was the bill that we passed perfect? Of course not. And that's why Chairman Harkin, Chairman Baucus, and others are holding hearings, to determine what we can do to improve the health care for the people of this country.

They can't be serious. To increase the debt by more than $1 trillion? They can't be serious to want to have people now that have pre-existing disabilities no longer be able to get insurance. They can't be serious when people who are on Social Security now can get a free checkup, well--they can have wellness checks anytime they want and not have to pay for it.

MR. GREGORY: What about the--the very name of the repeal bill is the Job-killing Health Care Law. That's what the Republicans call it. If you look at the cost associated with healthcare reform as it was passed, is it going to cost businesses more? Is it going to stop them from hiring? There is an uncertainty about the outcome that has to trouble you as a lawmaker.

SEN. REID: David, the name of the bill is as senseless as these people sleeping in their offices. The, the, the situation is this: Health care is something that the American people need, and they need it for everyone, not just a few people who are rich. We--healthcare reform is something that's extremely important. And we're going to continue to improve it, but we're going to continue to keep what we have. It's important we've made these strides. We have millions of small businesses who now have tax benefits from having insurance for their employees. We have a situation now where 80 to 85 percent of all the premiums that are received by these insurance companies have to go to take care of people, not pay salaries.

MR. GREGORY: Let's turn to the economy. The unemployment rate fell this week down to 9.4 percent. That's positive news. What's the outlook to you for 2011 in terms of joblessness in this country?

SEN. REID: The economists are saying that the year 2011 is going to be better than 2010. I hope so. The economy is far from being good. It's better, but it's far from being good. That's why I think we have to focus like a laser on creating jobs. What do you need to do? We have to make sure that we continue to help the manufacturing base. These job numbers that came out this week, they say that most of the jobs in the private sector created were in the manufacturing sector. That's good. We have to do something about our deteriorating infrastructure--roads, bridges, dams. For every billion dollars we spend, we create almost 50,000 jobs. So we need to do that.

MR. GREGORY: More spending, you're talking about, on infrastructure.

SEN. REID: And we, we also have to understand that with the price of oil going up to almost $100 a barrel that we need to continue our clean energy revolution all over the country, not just in the West where we have a lot of good things going on in Nevada, but all over the country...

MR. GREGORY: But Senator, you...

SEN. REID: ...to be able to--so those are job...

MR. GREGORY: All right, but you're, you're ticking off, you're ticking off some things.

SEN. REID: And, and finally we have to make sure that we continue what we did during the lame duck and give tax incentives for the creation of jobs.

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the debt. Back in 2006, both you and then-Senator Obama opposed raising the debt ceiling. And in a floor statement, then-Senator Obama said this: "Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that `the buck stop here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership."

Well, here we are now and the Treasury secretary says we have to raise that debt ceiling again come spring. The president's economic adviser says you don't play chicken with this, that you have to raise the debt ceiling or else if you don't it's catastrophic. So which is it? Is raising the debt ceiling a failure of leadership as then-Senator Obama said in 2006, which you agreed with, or is it something you have to do now to ward off catastrophe in the economy?

SEN. REID: I agree with the speaker, John Boehner. John Boehner said in November, when he was asked questions similar to the one you've asked me, "What are we going to do about this raising the debt ceiling?" He said, "we have to act as adults." And that's true. We, we can't, we can't back out on the money we owe the rest of the world. We can't, we can't do as the Gingrich crowd did a few years ago, close government. Doing that, we cut off Social Security checks and the whole works.

MR. GREGORY: Senator, 2006 you voted against raising the debt ceiling, and so did Senator Obama. Was that not an adult step?

SEN. REID: I have been in Congress a long time, and 99 percent of the time I have voted for increasing the debt. And we have to do it this time.

MR. GREGORY: But why didn't you do it then?

SEN. REID: I don't really know what vote you're talking about. I've cast about 15,000 votes. When...
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MR. GREGORY: But you opposed raising the debt ceiling in 2006, and now you're saying to do so is not an adult step to take.

SEN. REID: I'm saying today that we have to raise the debt ceiling. There's no alternative. In 2006, the debt ceiling was raised. Of course it had to be raised then, it has to be raised now.

MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about the new Congress, talk a little bit more broadly. The new House, Republican-controlled, and on their first day what do they do, they read the Constitution aloud, which is something that hasn't been done before in the chamber. What did you make of that?

SEN. REID: I make of that--I'm glad that they recognized that we have a Constitution. I'm glad that they read it. It's something that I carry with me all the time. I have one in my pocket right now. But I, but I think that other--rather than reading the Constitution, which some of the journalists around the country have made fun of that, I'm not going to make fun of it, I'm glad they did that, it doesn't hurt anything, it doesn't take long to read it. But I would hope that they would understand what the Constitution is all about. The Constitution itself came about as a result of a compromise, called the Great Compromise. The Great Compromise was making sure that we have a legislative branch of government, as we have now a House and the Senate. Legislation is the art of compromise. And all these people, these new members, who are flexing their muscles about all the things that they're going to do to the country should understand that we're going to have to continue down the path that we've had for many years, and that is work together to get things done.

MR. GREGORY: You ran against Sharron Angle in Nevada, tough race, for re-election, and you prevailed. She was tea party-backed, a tea party candidate. Certainly made a lot of headlines around the country. Do she and others as part of this tea party represent a lasting force in American politics?

SEN. REID: The tea party was born because of the economy. The economy is probably the worst it's ever been except for maybe the Great Depression. The tea party will disappear as soon as the economy gets better, and the economy's getting better all the time. And I wouldn't--I don't think the tea party had the vigor and support that people thought it would. You know, a couple of them won, but most of them lost.

MR. GREGORY: That's a pretty newsy prediction that the tea party is not here to stay, it will go away once the economy improves.

SEN. REID: Well, it's true. I--that's nothing original with me, but that's how I feel about it. What the election showed me is that we had a terribly bad economy, and that's where the tea party came from. And number two, that the American people want us to work together. So that's what I took back from this election.

MR. GREGORY: You talked about the American people wanting you to work together. And as a matter of fact, right after the election, you said more than 30 times that that message was work together, work together. And yet, just this past week, your spokesman said of Representative Cantor from Virginia in the House, that he's laying the groundwork for Republicans' "extremist agenda." Does that set the tone for working together?

SEN. REID: Well, I think we set the tone working together in the lame duck session, the most productive in the history of our country. And we did that by working together. And I say to my friend Eric Cantor, let's stop throwing these bombs and doing things like thinking it's--the American people are happy that you're sleeping in your office or reading the Constitution. There are things we need to do to deal with real people problems. People have been out of work for long periods of time. People who are sick and tired of paying governments like Saudi Arabia billions of dollars every year for--to burn in these gas guzzlers that we have. So there are things we can do to work together, but I, I think that throwing these bombs doesn't do the trick.

MR. GREGORY: What about the role of government, however? Under President Obama, federal debt has expanded by 32 percent. Are people rightfully concerned about the role of government under this president, under Democratic leadership?

SEN. REID: People are concerned about the debt, as they should be. But let's just go back a little bit and look at history. It's not as if we Democrats don't know how to run government. Bill Clinton had a program called PAYGO. If you're going to have a new program, pay for it, either by increasing revenue or cutting other programs. We did that, and, as a result of that, we were paying down the debt. And during the eight years of Bush, the first thing they did was get rid of the PAYGO rules. We have them now re-established. And this last Congress, 111th Congress and President Obama, found ourselves in a hole so deep, you couldn't see the top of it. And we're working our way out of that hole.

MR. GREGORY: Social Security, how does it have to change? What they put on the agenda is raising the retirement age, maybe means testing benefits. Is it time for Social Security to fundamentally change if you're going to deal with the debt problem?

SEN. REID: One of the things that always troubles me is, when we start talking about the debt, the first thing people do is run to Social Security. Social Security is a program that works, and it's going to be--it's fully funded for the next 40 years. Stop picking on Social Security. There are a lot places we can go to...

MR. GREGORY: Senator, you're really saying the arithmetic on Social Security works?

SEN. REID: I'm saying the arithmetic on Social Security works. I have no doubt it does. For the next...

MR. GREGORY: It's not in crisis?

SEN. REID: No, it's not in crisis. This is, this is, this is something that's perpetuated by people who don't like government. Social Security is fine. Are there things we can do to improve Social Security? Of course. But don't, don't...

MR. GREGORY: Means testing? Raising the retirement age?

SEN. REID: ...don't--I'm...

MR. GREGORY: Do you agree with either of those?

SEN. REID: I'm not going to go to any of those back-door methods to whack Social Security recipients. I'm not going to do that. We have a lot of things we can do with this debt that's a problem. But one of the places where I'm not going to be part of picking on is Social Security.

MR. GREGORY: Before you go, you're still the leader of the Democrats. Fewer Democrats now. How do you see your role in the Senate in this 112th Congress?

SEN. REID: My role is to set the agenda for what we do in the Senate and do my very best to work with the president and the Republican House of Representatives and, of course, my friend, Mitch McConnell, to move this country around.

MR. GREGORY: We'll leave it there. Senator, thank you very much.

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