MSNBC "Daily Rundown" - Transcript: IRS, National Security, Immigration

Interview

Today Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen appeared on MSNBC's Daily Rundown with guest host Peter Alexander to talk about the IRS, national security, and immigration. Below is video and a transcript of his interview.

PETER ALEXANDER, MSNBC: Joining us now is Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the Budget Committee. Thanks for joining us in studio.

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Good to be with you, Peter.

ALEXANDER: Give us a sense, if you can, just your reaction to this paid administrative leave that Lois Lerner's been put on right now, is this -- what happens, and is that sufficient?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, I think it was very important to get her out of the way here so that we could start fresh leadership. So, it's good that they're moving forward right now. And we have to continue the investigation, get to the bottom of this issue, which was clearly unacceptable -- but also look at the larger issues involved here, which is the IRS saw a doubling of these applications for this particular tax status after Citizens United, and they really shouldn't be in the business, in my view, of trying to figure out if most of what you're doing is political activity versus, you know, education and social welfare.

ALEXANDER: The 501(c)(4), that's a complicated topic right now. Does this as a broad picture -- I mean, you're the budget guy on this, does this require tax reform? Is this something that could be changed as a result of this?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, you could certainly look at this issue through tax reform. But you may also be able to do this through regulatory changes. For example, I think people have learned that originally this tax status was supposed to go to groups that do exclusively...

ALEXANDER: Yeah.

VAN HOLLEN: ... social welfare work and are not involved in political campaigns. I don't know how "exclusively" somehow morphed into that being the primary purpose. I think any dictionary will tell you that's not the same meaning.

ALEXANDER: We're going to shift topics the same way the President's now shifting definitions in terms of how we look at the war on terror, quickly. He argued yesterday that he wants to impose a sort of more restrictive set of guidelines in terms of the way that we pursue this. He says it's no longer the boundless global war on terror.

Yesterday we heard -- we heard from Senator Chambliss, who questioned the decision. I want to put up on the screen what he said specifically, which was "rather than continuing successful counterterrorism activities, we are changing course with no clear operational benefit." Will the President's decision improve national security?

VAN HOLLEN: I think it will. And I think that statement that was made is a total misinterpretation of what the President said yesterday. The point the President made was we've made incredible progress in the war against central Al Qaida in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and therefore some of the authority, legal authority that was in place to conduct that war needs to be revised. We need to look at it; we need to update it for the newer threats, but make sure we also don't have an open-ended authority for presidents to do whatever they want without greater oversight and transparency.

ALEXANDER: So we're going to try to get through a bunch of topics. The last one, I think, is probably the issue of immigration. It looks like this debate will be re-picked up post-Memorial Day holiday, of course. But the question really is, do you think that the bill that the House ends up voting on will be the one coming out of the Senate, or is there going to be a bipartisan bill specifically from the House, do you think, that -- that can sufficiently be manufactured to accomplish what you're looking for?

VAN HOLLEN: Sure. Well, I hope, Peter, that it's either the Senate bill or something very close to it. I mean, if the House was to put together something...

ALEXANDER: Is that likely?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, I'm not sure you've got a -- certainly there are not a majority of Republicans in the House who support a bill like the Senate bill. So if we can put something together in the House that's like the Senate bill and still get it out with a, you know, a majority vote, let the House work its will, that would be -- that would be the way to go. But we cannot allow the momentum from the immigration reform bill in the Senate to slow down.

ALEXANDER: Beautiful beaches across your great state…

VAN HOLLEN: Yes indeed.

ALEXANDER: We hope it's a good holiday weekend.

VAN HOLLEN: Hope so. Absolutely, hope everyone drives safely.

ALEXANDER: Absolutely. Thanks very much.

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