MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

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Joining me now is New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. She is the chairwoman, the chair, of the Joint Economic Committee.

Congresswoman, good to have you with us tonight.

REP. CAROLYN MALONEY (D), CHAIRWOMAN, JOINT ECONOMIC COMMITTEE: Good

to be with you, Ed.

BLITZER: When do--when does loyalty get cut and results really matter? Your thoughts on Timothy Geithner? Does he still have some time to turn this thing around?

MALONEY: I think he does, and his record shows that. You have to remember, Ed, when President Obama took office 10 months ago, we were shedding jobs at 700,000 jobs a month, well over 700,000 jobs a month. And we‘re trending in a better direction now.

We lost 190,000 jobs last month, but it‘s moving in the right direction. The Standard & Poor‘s is up 500, the stock market was up, the GDP is up. And we need to be more aggressive in coming out with ways to create jobs for American people, but President Obama, he inherited a financial crisis.

SCHULTZ: No doubt about it.

MALONEY: With Wall Street tanking and the financial system tanking and steps we‘re taking to save the financial community, that has happened. We have the stimulus program and the job summit coming up in December, and steps in the right direction.

SCHULTZ: But Congresswoman, you‘re right on all of that. But there doesn‘t seem to be any plan in place to get us to the next phase.

There is a discrepancy when it comes to the availability of money to the big banks versus the small banks. People in the middle of the country don‘t go to Wall Street to borrow money, they go to their community bank and these TARP funds, and this is exactly what Peter DeFazio was talking about. The TARP funds aren‘t being used for what they should be used for.

Now, you‘re on the Joint Economic Committee, the chairwoman of that. Is this it for Geithner? I mean, are you satisfied with his plan the way things are going right now?

MALONEY: Well, he‘s been criticized from the right and criticized from the left. So he is in the middle, putting this together, working, and one person doesn‘t control the economy. He‘s part of the entire Democratic team working with the president and with Congress.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHULTZ: Well, he was influential--now, Congresswoman, in fairness, he was influential enough to get plenty of money for Wall Street, but he doesn‘t seem to be influential enough to stand up there in front of the Congress and give the talk that, look, we have to do this if we‘re going to create jobs. I just don‘t hear him saying that.

MALONEY: Well, just this week he had a summit on small business and came out with a program to increase credit and access to credit for small businesses. We certainly need to do that. We need to take care of and take steps in the commercial real estate crisis, and we need more efforts to create more jobs and create a climate in which the economic prosperity can continue to grow. But we‘re certainly trending in the right direction...

SCHULTZ: Well, on the big stuff, yes.

MALONEY: ... and have reversed the trend of over 700,000 jobs were lost for five straight months before President Obama came in.

SCHULTZ: But Congresswoman, respectfully, the American people know all that. But they also know that the credit markets are unusually tight. And the lending is extremely tight. And the business startup numbers, nobody is even talking about that. Those are horrible.

And we‘re going to be sitting at 10-plus percent unemployment for a long time unless lending gets kicked into gear and the same kind of help is given to the small businesses, the under 100 employee crowd of this country, or this isn‘t going to turn around.

MALONEY: You‘re absolutely right. We need more programs to get more credit out to Main Street and to take steps to help the working men and women. And we‘ve done that.

We past the Credit Card Bill of Rights. It happened to have been my bill and Senator Dodd‘s. And that restricted the most abusive, deceptive anti-competitive practices, according to the Federal Reserve. This was the first credit card reform bill, and that helped Main Street.

SCHULTZ: Which hasn‘t kicked in yet, but it will. And we talked about that earlier.

MALONEY: But we just passed legislation in the House that would have the enactment date moved up immediately. We‘re waiting to get that passed in the Senate.

SCHULTZ: Yes. Well, I hope that helps the economy, but I don‘t know if that‘s going to get anybody a job, and I‘m talking about jobs.

MALONEY: It‘s going to certainly help consumers and American taxpayers and working men and women have better control over their own finances. We‘re moving forward with an overdraft bill, again, to protect the consumers, let them decide whether or not they want these overdraft fees and charges.

SCHULTZ: OK.

MALONEY: And we‘re having a job summit next month, and we‘re--the Speaker has said she‘s...

SCHULTZ: Got to run, Congresswoman.

MALONEY: ... going to have a job creation bill on the floor next month.

SCHULTZ: All right. You‘re sold. You think Geithner should stick around.

I appreciate your time.

Congresswoman and Chairwoman Maloney with us tonight from New York.

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