MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" - Transcript

Interview

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MR. MATTHEWS: Well, Wells Fargo the bank has become the latest bank to thumb its nose, if you will, at the American taxpayer. The bank took $25 billion in bailout money from the government -- that's us -- and now it's planning a corporate junket at Las Vegas casinos to honor their top mortgage lenders.

Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri wants to cap salaries of banking executives at $400K a year -- that's 400,000 bucks -- which is what the president gets. She's a member of the Commerce and Armed Services Committee.

Senator McCaskill, I'm a big fan of yours, but I have to ask you, do you really, really believe that you have the constitutional authority to cap salaries in the private sector, really?

SEN. MCCASKILL: Only under very limited circumstances, Chris; only if they are dependent on public money, and only until they pay us back the public money that we've given them. It's none of our business what people make in the private sector unless the taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars.

MR. MATTHEWS: Well, how do you pass this law? Let's get to the final details. How do you get a law signed by the president, passed by both houses, that says employers, big shots at these big firms in New York, mainly, can't give themselves more than $400,000 a year? How do you get that into law and make it actually happen, not just talk about it?

SEN. MCCASKILL: I believe we've got a real chance of getting that done, Chris, because we're going to try to offer an amendment on this bill in the next few days which will basically say, going forward, if you want federal money, then you must agree, as a condition of getting public money, that everyone who works at your company must limit themselves to $400,000, $500,000 a year. And if you want to make more, if you want to have deferred compensation, that's fine, but you can't get it until you pay us back.

MR. MATTHEWS: Are you going to get that past the big-shot senators from New York like Chuck Schumer and the new senator up there, Gillibrand? Are you going to get that past Chris Dodd and Lieberman, the ones who have all those Wall Street people in their states? They're not going to go along with this, are they?

SEN. MCCASKILL: I don't need --

MR. MATTHEWS: That's their constituency.

SEN. MCCASKILL: The good news is I don't need every vote.

MR. MATTHEWS: Right.

SEN. MCCASKILL: But I think there's wide support for this, Chris. I really do. My phones have not stopped ringing since we proposed this.

MR. MATTHEWS: Do you think President Obama will sign a bill that cuts the salaries of people that may be his contributors next time around?

SEN. MCCASKILL: I'm optimistic that he will. And I'm busy trying to work with the White House as we speak to work out this plan.

MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, I'm going to ask you the same question I asked Governor Charlie Crist, who was on. He's from Florida. He's a Republican. I guess you'd call him a moderate Republican, because he doesn't want Barack Obama to fail as president. I guess that's a moderate these days. He wants him to succeed, he said, which is refreshing to hear from any politician, especially one from the other side of the aisle.

I want to ask you the same question I put to him. You're on television right now. Explain to the person watching how spending almost a trillion dollars in either tax cuts -- because that's what it affects; you're not collecting the money, you're giving it back to people that gave it in the first place, in most cases -- or you're spending money on building things or whatever -- how does that get banks to start lending money again? How does that solve the housing problem? How does it deal with the problem that started all this?

SEN. MCCASKILL: Well, what has happened is, because there's such uncertainty and lack of confidence in the market, there's this retraction. That's what a recession is. What this does, it puts money into the economy. It causes growth in businesses. If a business goes to a bank and says, "Hey, I just got a contract to build this building for the federal government," that bank is going to look at that loan application in a whole different light than they would today without that kind of stimulative effect. So this is, in fact, a way of injecting this money into the economy to put people back to work. It's just that simple.

MR. MATTHEWS: So you're counting on the checks that the government is going to write, either in tax cuts or in spending for jobs or in transfers through Medicare, Social Security, whatever; you're counting on those checks going to people right now who have mortgage problems.

SEN. MCCASKILL: I'm counting on that --

MR. MATTHEWS: That's what I don't get.

SEN. MCCASKILL: I think there will be some housing provisions in this bill too, Chris. This is a work in progress. We've got to do three things in this bill. We've got to help the safety net, because that money goes right into the economy -- food stamps, unemployment insurance. We've got to make sure we're creating jobs in the infrastructure by spending money in a stimulative way on jobs. And then, finally, we need to do something in the housing sector. And I think we're trying to find that way forward right now in a bipartisan way. And I'm optimistic we're going to get it done.

The big stuff in this bill is so important. If we do nothing, it is a disaster. And the Republicans who are not honest about that really need to do a gut check.

MR. MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this. Somebody buys a house for $400,000. Their income doesn't justify that kind of expenditure. They got talked into buying a house with a balloon mortgage; an ARM, if you will. It came due. It got switched back. They realize they're facing higher interest rates. Then they realize the economy is not growing. They're not getting a raise. They're not getting a promotion. They're stuck. They can't make the payments. They can't afford to live in this house.

Now they realize the house's value is going down, but they owe the money on a much more expensive house than it now is. They're afraid of an appraisal. They're afraid of a reassessment. They're afraid of everything. They're afraid of the company even going back to them for a refi. They're scared to death. They won't even answer the phone calls when the mortgage company and the bank calls them.

What do we do about that problem? Because people tell me that situation is in the millions right now and it's at the heart of our problem. How do we solve it, people that can't afford the house they live in? Should the government bail them out, skip all the intermediaries, give them the checks? I'm just asking.

SEN. MCCASKILL: Well, first of all, if we start just giving checks to everyone who can't pay their mortgage, then we're going to have a lot of people deciding not to pay their mortgage. That's not the right answer. We do need to do something about the housing inventory. We do need to give people the tools to renegotiate their mortgages, which most of these companies want to do, Chris. The people who are going to own these houses if people walk away, they don't want more housing inventory. Really there's an emphasis right there to get it worked out.

And the worst thing people can do is not answer the phone. They need to be picking up the phone, calling the housing agencies in their communities, calling all of the do-gooders that are out there helping people. We've helped a lot of people in Missouri work through this crisis. At the end of the day, there are going to be some people that lose their homes, and we can't fix every single problem in the housing sector.

But I think we can take some valuable steps in this bill.

MR. MATTHEWS: Does it bother you that Tom Daschle didn't pay $140,000 in taxes?

SEN. MCCASKILL: Yeah, but, you know, this whole situation kind of gives me a stomach ache. You know, this is a good guy who has worked hard and has such respect up on the Hill. I get the rules around here. The rules are you live in a glass house. And if you make a serious mistake like this, you pay the price.

But it is too bad, because he had a lot to offer our country. And I really admire him, because nobody made him do this. This wasn't the White House. This wasn't people in Congress. He decided it was the patriotic thing to do, because he was a distraction to this president at a time of crisis. He stepped aside. And he deserves a pat on the back for that.

MR. MATTHEWS: What's the bad blood between Obama and his crowd in the White House and Howard Dean? Howard Dean's the chairman of the Democratic Party. He had a big hand in bringing this big victory you all enjoyed this year. He's a medical doctor. He succeeds in so many ways in building your party up, in raising money and doing everything right. He began this whole populist thing back in the last election. He didn't get there, but he helped Obama. How come he's not HHS secretary? He's getting squat from the president. What is that all about?

SEN. MCCASKILL: I don't know that he's --

MR. MATTHEWS: I don't get it.

SEN. MCCASKILL: I don't know that he's getting squat. I don't know. I think that --

MR. MATTHEWS: He's getting nothing.

SEN. MCCASKILL: Well, I don't know that he wants anything, Chris. I think that there's a perfectly cordial relationship between Howard Dean and the White House.

MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah.

SEN. MCCASKILL: I think he's respected in Democratic circles for the job that he did. And I think he'll continue to play a role in our party. I don't think there's any bad blood there.

MR. MATTHEWS: He's going overseas to Europe to help liberal parties do well in elections. I can't believe that's his first goal in life. It sounds to me like he didn't get what he wanted, which was a role in this administration. Just asking; he's a medical doctor. It seems perfect to make him head of HHS. You've got an opening now, Senator. I'm just curious why these things don't fit into place. Anyway, just a thought.

Thank you very much for coming on, Senator Claire McCaskill, a big Obama booster from Missouri.

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