MSNBC Interview - Transcript

Interview

MSNBC Interview - Transcript

MSNBC INTERVIEW WITH SENATOR JOHN THUNE (R-SD) INTERVIEWER: NORAH O'DONNELL

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MS. O'DONNELL: Republican Senator John Thune joins me now live from Capitol Hill.

Senator, good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

SEN. THUNE: Good afternoon, Norah.

MS. O'DONNELL: The president's "money men," as they say, were up there on Capitol Hill today. We heard the Treasury secretary, of course, Tim Geithner saying today that he wants this new authority for the Treasury Department. Is it as a power grab, as was described by House Minority Leader John Boehner?

SEN. THUNE: (Laughs.) Well, I think it's very early on to evaluate. I think the more important issue is what the markets perceive about this plan and whether or not it will work.

And I think the banks have to be willing to participate. Investors have to be willing to participate in this. But there clearly is still an awful lot of taxpayer downside risk associated with this. The taxpayers are assuming the largest amount of this, creating a lot of leverage to be able to do a lot out there, we hope at least, in getting some of these toxic assets off the balance sheets of the banks. But I think it's very early at this point to determine whether or not it is going to work. But I think the important signal or indicator is going to be whether or not the markets interpret it as a positive thing, and it looks like they do at this point.

MS. O'DONNELL: Senator, I'm talking about what Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner laid out today, essentially a board like the FDIC that can oversee something like AIG. I mean, what's wrong with more oversight? We heard the Fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, say today that if the government had been able to assume control of AIG, there never would have been seven-figure bonuses paid to executives even while the company was receiving these billions of dollars in government backing. Why not have that kind of oversight?

SEN. THUNE: Well, I think they needed more oversight. There's no question about that. And what they proposed today was similar to an FDIC allowing companies like an AIG to go into receivership or some sort of conservatorship, figure out a way to unwind these companies. And that mechanism doesn't exist for some of these financial institutions that are sort of outside the realm of the FDIC, which regulates banks. So it seems to me that they are at least sounding what I think is an important need to do a little bit more in the form of regulation when it comes to these types of firms, like AIG.

I think that they -- something has to be done. What form that takes at this point I'm not sure we know the answer to that, but they've talked about it in sort of generic terms. It seems to me, at least, that they've laid out a plan that could, in fact, get some support up here on Capitol Hill.

MS. O'DONNELL: Senator, let me ask you about the president's budget. Of course, over the weekend we saw that it would result in $2 trillion more in debt, adding to our deficit. Republicans, of course have been critical of the president's budget. Why don't the Republicans in the Senate there come up with a counter proposal?

SEN. THUNE: Well, we'll be offering some amendments, Norah, to the budget when it's on the floor next week. What we think of this budget is that it does spend too much, tax too much and borrow too much; that the amount of debt that it entails, if you look at the 10 years of the budget window that's associated with the president's budget, it actually puts more public debt on the books than we've accumulated in the entire time from the presidency of George Washington through the presidency of George Bush. So the amount of borrowing, all of the other things that it does, the energy tax it imposes through cap-and-trade program, a health -- health reform program, there are all these things in this budget that really don't focus on the basic issue that the president and his administration ought to be focused on right now, and that's fixing the economy. We think that they're -- they're creating a whole lot of new borrowing that's going to be bad for the economy, a whole lot of new taxes that are going to be bad for the economy. And so that's why we think the budget in its current form is a bad idea, and we will be offering a lot of amendments when it comes to the floor next week that we hope will improve it.

MS. O'DONNELL: All right. Republican Senator John Thune, great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.

SEN. THUNE: Thanks, Norah.

END.

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