CBS "Face the Nation" - Transcript

Interview

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BOB SCHIEFFER: We're going to shift gears now and talk about what's going on in Washington inside the Beltway. And that is this whole business of what are we going to do about the deficit, the so-called supercommittee. Joining us this morning, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, who's in the studio with us. And, Senator, it looks to me like this so-called supercommittee, you might just call it the business-as-usual committee because it looks like the whole thing's just going to fizzle out. That nothing is going to happen.

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY (R-Pennsylvania): Well, I will acknowledge the time is short now. It's going to be very difficult. But there were twelve members of this committee put in an enormous amount of time and effort into trying to accomplish something. It's not entirely too late yet. It's still-- it's still possible to reach an agreement. But it's going to be tough given where the clock is.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Why? I mean, everybody in America knows that something has to be done. Everybody in America knows there's going to be some bad things that everybody is going to have to take a little--

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --bit of the bitter pill. And yet the Congress cannot find a way to come together. Compromise has been a dirty word. Why-- why do you think that's happening, Senator?

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: You know it's been enormously frustrating for me and for many of my colleagues. As I said we've got twelve good people that worked hard on this. But on the other side, there was an insistence that we have a trillion-dollar tax increase. There was an unwillingness to cut any kind of spending at all unless there was a huge tax increase. Our friend Jim Clyburn, the congressman from South Carolina said-- as recently as last week said twice, in fact, that the Democrats never coalesced around any plan. So it was-- it was just very, very challenging, very, very difficult. There is still an opportunity. There's a plan on the table that would at least take us halfway to our goal which is-- it's on the shelf, it's scored, it's ready to go. If the Democrats would agree to that we could still get something done. If they come back with a counterproposal, we'd work on it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, I mean, if the dog hadn't stopped to make a phone call--

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --I mean it would have caught the rabbit. I mean it's-- it's-- it's all if. As a member of this su- supercommittee, you actually proposed a modest increase in revenues by eliminating loopholes and some deductions.

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Some people are calling that a tax increase in exchange for some serious spending cuts and some entitled reform that went nowhere. One of the-- the problems, Senator, is that so many Republicans, I think that two hundred and thirty-eight congressmen, forty-eight senators, including one Democratic Senator Ben Nelson, and two Democratic representatives; plus, all of the GOP candidates, including yourself--Huntsman did not--signed a pledge sponsored by this group called the Americans for Tax Reform. Now this is a group headed by Grover Norquist. He's not a household name but people in Washington are clearly afraid of him. It just so happens that our friend Steve Kroft interviewed Grover Norquist. And they're going to do a story about him tonight on 60 MINUTES. Let's just get a little sample of-- of Grover Norquist here.

STEVE KROFT: I mean you make it pretty clear if someone breaks the pledge you're going to do everything you can to get rid of them.

GROVER NORQUIST: To educate the voters that they raise taxes. And again, we educate people--

STEVE KROFT (overlapping): To get rid of them.

GROVER NORQUIST: --to encourage them to go into another line of work, like shoplifting or bank robbing where they have to do their own stealing.

STEVE KROFT: You got them by the shorthairs.

GROVER NORQUIST: The voters do, yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So there you are. Now you did actually signed that pledge, the Grover Norquist pledge.

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Mm-Hm.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But you were willing to go ahead and put this plan out on the table. I think he said that if your plan was actually enacted, it would be poison.

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Well, let-- let's look. This is an indication of how far Republicans were willing to go to try to find a solution here. First of all, I don't think we have a tax revenue problem in Washington. We have a spending problem. As recently as 2007 with the current tax rate, we had a budget deficit that was tiny 1.2 percent of GDP. But if we just both went into our respective foxholes and weren't willing to consider the other side, we were surely not going to get an agreement. So we asked ourselves is there anyway we could find of putting some revenue on the table because the Democrats are absolutely adamantly insisting on this and do it in a way that wouldn't be harmful to the economy. So consider this. We have an irrational counterproductive tax code that's unfair and hinders economic growth. And we have in thirteen months the biggest tax increase in American history. So what we suggested was if we could reform the tax code, simplify it, lower rates, get rid of some of the loopholes and write-offs and the special interest treatments, avoid this gigantic tax increase that's coming, we shouldn't have to increase revenue to do that because it's good pro-growth and pro-jobs policy. But we'd be willing to. If that was the price it would take to get Democrats to agree to the strong economic growth program and some reforms that are really driving this problem. Reforms are the big entitlement programs. It was a-- it was a reach for us to put that on the table. Grover Norquist was very critical of me personally and-- and this idea as--

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): But you actually went against him.

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: That's-- yeah. You know, my-- I-- I think what I've done is consistent with the commitment I made to my constituents because it would have gotten us that pro-growth tax reform and avoided a huge tax increase. But not everybody sees it that way. And I've taken a lot of arrows for this of my-- as my colleagues have.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So what happens now? Let's say the committee fails. Nothing happens. These--

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Yeah.

BOB SCHIEFFER: --automatic cuts go into effect at the end of next year. Do you think Congress will actually let that happen or will they change the law before we get to this?

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Here's the silver lining in what is going to be a huge disappointment for me if we don't have a-- a real success here, the silver lining is that we're going to get the spending cuts anyway. That was designed into the bill that created the committee in the first place that raised the debt ceiling. The 1.2 trillion dollars in spending cuts, however, I think need to be reconfigured. They're done in a way that would be very harmful to our nation's defense, our won Defense Secretary Leon Penetta has said that they would hollow out our military. So I think it's very important that we change the configuration but that we not abandon the spending cuts because we need them.

BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Senator, thank you so much for being with us.

SENATOR PAT TOOMEY: Thanks for having me, Bob.

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