MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews"-Transcript

Interview

MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews"-Transcript

MR. MATTHEWS: The cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion, according to a Congressional Budget Office estimate released today. The estimates assume that between 30,000 to 70,000 troops will stay in the region for the next 10 years. The two wars have already cost over $600 billion.

U.S. Congressman David Obey is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

Sir, thank you very much for joining us. Tell us the sense, if you can, as an experienced budget guy, how big this cost is.

REP. OBEY: Well, it's incredible. Two-point-four trillion dollars is equivalent to half of the Social Security shortfall over the next 75 years. It could pay for health care for every American for a year, every American who doesn't have it. It's an astounding cost. I mean, the president is asking for 200 billion additional dollars this year. To put that in perspective, the most expensive year of the Vietnam War was 1968. It only cost us in today's dollars about $123 billion.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, where does this -- I mean, this is a financing question, not just a budget question, sir, but is this all borrowed money? Aren't we running a big deficit now, and isn't all this money basically being financed by selling U.S. paper overseas at this point?

REP. OBEY: Well, sure. Without this war, we would be in surplus. We'd have significant surplus. But, I mean, the money is being borrowed from American citizens, it's being borrowed from the Social Security fund, and it's being borrowed from China.

MR. MATTHEWS: And what are the risks in all that in terms of the economy? What does that do to have all this debt piling up -- up to, what, $9 trillion we're getting up to now in national debt?

REP. OBEY: Well, I mean, the problem is that every president from FDR through Jimmy Carter brought the national debt down as a share of our total national income over all those years, regardless of party.

Under Ronald Reagan, when he passed out all the tax cuts on borrowed money, the debt almost doubled as a percentage of our national income. It went down under Clinton. It's now going up again rapidly. That's going to put us in exactly the wrong position as the baby boomers retire, and we need to have the debt run down rather than built up so that we can pay the cost of their retirement.

MR. MATTHEWS: When the president's people, the budget people, come to you and ask for appropriations for spending, do they ever bring up these concerns, the opportunity costs where the money could be spent, the impact on our debt situation and potentially endangering this country's security that owes so much abroad? Do they ever talk about those concerns?

REP. OBEY: Well, I mean, frankly, it's been very hard to get them to talk, period. We've been trying right now to get the administration to sit down and work out compromises on all of the appropriation bills, and I guess they would prefer to go through a veto kabooky dance, which is unfortunate.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah. What do you think about the problem -- a lot of people who are opposed to this war voted Democrat last time because they really thought if they changed the Congress, they could change and end the war. And yet it seems so hard for Congress to end this war.

Why don't you just -- I'll ask you the obvious question, although I guess I know the answer. Why don't you cut up the money and say we're not going to finance this war anymore? You've got 50 percent of the House and the Senate. Just don't give him a majority anymore.

REP. OBEY: Well, the problem we have in the Senate -- I mean, we have control of the House by a narrow vote. In the Senate, people think that we have control of the Senate. We merely have custody of it, because you have to get 60 votes in order to pass something, and we only have 50. But I have made quite clear, since the president has made clear he's sending down a $200 billion supplemental request for Iraq, I've made quite clear that as chairman of the committee, I have no intention whatsoever of reporting one dime of that supplemental for the remainder of this year.

The president just sent down his proposal two days ago. He took over five months to send it down. I think the Congress has an obligation to scrub it. And what I've said is I'd be happy to give him every dollar he's asking for if he would change his policy so that we would have, as a national policy, a target of getting out of combat in Iraq by January of 2009.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, we're going to have a fight.

REP. OBEY: This war has already screwed up one administration. I don't want it to screw up a second one.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, thank you very much, U.S. Congressman David Obey, chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

END.

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