CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript

Interview

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BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, let's listen-- let's talk a little bit about what Senator McConnell just said. He said the stimulus package did not work and the main problem with getting people back to-- people back to work is simply to stop the President doing what he's doing. Democrats are going to be vulnerable on this, are they not? I mean, what's your reaction to what Senator McConnell just said?

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: Well, you know, my reaction is Senator McConnell didn't say one thing about how to create jobs and we should be doing that. We should be doing-- deficit reduction is necessary but not sufficient. And there hasn't been enough focus on jobs and job creation. And we Democrats are going to put forth an agenda this summer and this fall, jobs first. Now economists will tell you or-- or rather you look at the election and there were two mandates. One, get the deficit down, get rid of wasteful spending. But two, and even more important create jobs and get the economy growing. An economist will tell you that one of the best ways to do that--we're going to look at two things. One is, deficit-- one is infrastructure and one is some kind of encouraging of employment. Now economists will tell you that when you build infrastructure, it creates new jobs. And we should be doing something like that. Our roads, our highways, our water and sewer, that's the old type of infrastructure. And we should be doing some more of that. We should also be doing some new types of infrastructure a-- like a national power grid, making sure every home gets broadband. And we have a bunch of different ideas to do that. Barbara Boxer has a highway bill. There's an infrastructure bank, Build America Bonds and helping green jobs. And then, we will also look at a payroll tax holiday for employers. That's
one of the possible proposals. And what we would say is if an employer who hires a new employee, an additional employee, gets a payroll tax holiday for a year. And that's aimed at sort of bringing our Republican colleagues along to do something. If they're against a business tax cut to help employment, they've always been for business tax cuts in the past. You got to wonder maybe they don't want the economy to grow. Our overall guidepost is this. We want to do deficit reduction and we have to. There's a fourteen-trillion-dollar deficit. We should have as a goal, as a guidepost for every trillion we cut in the deficit we should seek to create a million jobs in the short term. And we can do both. Economists will tell you, we need to deal with--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): All right.

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: --deficit reduction over the next ten years but we need to deal with job creation now.

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Well, you're certainly talking--

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (overlapping): We should be doing both.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You're really talking about some very grandiose plans there when you're talking about a-- a big new construction bill, cutting the payroll tax. I guess the question-- first question has to be how you're going to pay for any of this?

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: Well, you know, the bottom line is if-- if they should be factored into the ten-year deficit reduction plan. But in the immediate, you need to get this economy going. We only created fifty-four thousand jobs in the-- in-- in May and that was a shot across the bow. And just about, you know, the vast majority of economists, including some
conservative economists see-- say if you're not going to create jobs, we're never going to get out of this rut. And we will never really reduce the deficit either.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, you heard what Senator McConnell said. He said the stimulus that the President put forward last time out just didn't work. Why do you think--

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (overlapping): Well, you know--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): --this will work?

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: Yeah, he was, he-- he didn't state it correctly. About forty percent of the stimulus was a tax cut. About twenty, twenty-five percent were infrastructure jobs.

And yes, some of the jobs were saved were teachers and firefighters and cops. Those were the government jobs he's talking about, jobs that help our kids and help k-- keep our streets safe.

And so, the bottom line is that the stimulus probably prevented us from go-- going into a depression, a deflationary spiral. Most economists say it was successful. But the economy is because of the difficult situation, the worst recession around, the typical medicine we use to get the economy going, low interest rates, you lowering interest rates, we couldn't do that because--
they were already at zero. If to just sit there and twiddle your thumbs and say we're not going to do anything to create jobs and get the economy going is flying in the face of good economics and what the American people have ordered us to do, both things--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Let me--

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (overlapping): --reduce the deficit but create jobs.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about this, the Association of Retired People, AARP, their spokesman said last week that they are willing to discuss a reduction in Social Security benefits as part of reform. Now he said it's got to be down the line not affecting people now. Do you see this as a significant statement? I mean what do you make of that?

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: Well, actually the main thing they said, which is something Democrats agree with is that Social Security should not be part of the deficit reduction plan.

That makes sense. Why? First, it is not adding to the deficit, Social Security isn't. It has its own trust fund. And second, it's solvent until 2037. Our deficit problem is more immediate than that and caused by other things. So we ought to-- here is my view of what we ought to do. And I'm--I don't know if it's that different than AARP. I don't know the details and they sort of backtracked a little bit yesterday. But my view is we ought to first solve the deficit problem and get America working again. Once we do that, we should look at Social Security because it does have to be dealt with, but the way to do it is the way we did it in 1983, when Democrats and Republicans
led-- then by Moynihan and Greenspan get together, figure out a plan and present it to all of us.

Anyone who says do this, don't do that, do that, don't do this ahead of time is making it harder to solve that problem.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Senator, we-- we're about out of time. And let me just ask you quickly about Afghanistan. The President is going to have to make some hard decisions here pretty soon about whether to make a minimal withdrawal of our troops from Afghanistan, which seems to be what the secretary of defense is talking about these days or make a major withdrawal. Where-- where are you on that?

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: Well, my view is that the success our troops have had and the great job they've done over the last ten years culminating in the elimination of Bin Laden has given us the ability to protect ourselves with fewer troops. The drones, they are doing a very, very good job. And it seems that we can keep America safe with a significantly fewer amount of
troops using the drones. A-- a mission that involves nation building, I-- I'm dubious of that.

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Or--

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER: It's very costly in terms of both life and treasure. And we have huge deficit problems here in terms of the treasure part.

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): So you want--

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (overlapping): Having Karzai as the head of this country. It's a large country, a tribal country, a divided country where nobody seems, none of his countrymen seem to like Karzai. I think we should just focus on the first mission, protecting ourselves, and I think that can be done with significantly fewer troops.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, senator, thank you so much. Happy Father's Day. We'll be back in a minute to talk about that--

SENATOR CHARLES SCHUMER (overlapping): Thank you.

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