MSNBC "The Rachel Maddow Show" - Transcript

Interview

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Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Loretta Sanchez of California. She is the vice chair of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Congresswoman Sanchez, thanks very much for joining us. I really appreciate it.

REP. LORETTA SANCHEZ (D-CA), HOMELADN SECURITY CMTE.: Thank you, Rachel. Good evening.

MADDOW: Since the Christmas bombing attempt on that Northwest flight, politicians have been talking about the vacancy at the head of the TSA. How important do you think it is--as vice chair of Homeland security in the House--how important is it that the TSA get a chief?

SANCHEZ: It"s incredibly important since I"ve been sitting on the committee of homeland security since its inception after Congress and the president put it in, after September 11th. And every time that we have an audit on what"s going on in the department, there are two things that stand out, one that the moral is the lowest in the Department of Homeland Security, and secondly, that there"s great vision. In other words, there"s a good mission for that department but that the leadership is very lacking, the management is very lacking.

And one of the problems that we"ve had--we haven"t yet had a report on that under the Obama administration--but that"s because it takes a while to fill those positions. Those top positions in a department. And the problem we"ve had is trying to fill those, getting those nominations through the Senate. And I think it"s incredibly important that we fill that position.

And, of course, I know the chief personally because he"s from the Los Angeles area. He"s at LAX and I"ve seen his work. I"ve his work under Governor Schwarzenegger. I"ve seen his work over at this the threat institute there at USC.

I"ve seen--you know, so he would be a great addition to the leadership team in TSA and in the Homeland Security Department.

MADDOW: Well, in the other chamber, in the Senate, it is Senator DeMint who is blocking Mr. Southers, and he says his main concern is questions about whether or not Mr. Southers would allow bag screeners to unionize. What do you make of that as a reason to hold up this nomination?

SANCHEZ: Well, I have never heard the chief say that his main mission is to unionize, nor have I heard the Obama administration say that its their main mission within the Homeland Department. What I know about the chief would be that he knows LAX, he knows California, he knows local law enforcement. He knows the different layers working together at the state and the federal--and as an FBI agent, et cetera.

I think he would be great, because one of the problems we have, there"s information coming from different places, we never put it together. I think he would have that overall view to understand that he needs to do that. I"ve never heard him say, "Oh, we need to unionize the workers."

I think that he would go and take a look at all the issues that are involved with these workers to ensure that their morale increases, that they"re doing a good job, that they"re alert, that there"s a career pattern for them. That it"s an important job--not just to the worker--it"s an important job to us.

MADDOW: The senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee is Congressman Pete Hoekstra. As you know, he"s running for governor in Michigan right now. And right after the news broke about this attempted bombing in Christmas Day, Congressman Hoekstra sent out a fundraising letter keyed to the attempted murder of 300 Americans.

You could probably tell from my introduction that that strikes me as un-cool. It strikes me as crossing a line of crassness and exploitation of terrorism in a way that seems to be inappropriate, just in terms of my personal opinion.

Do you share that opinion? Do you think it was appropriate for Congressman Hoekstra to go there with his fundraising appeal?

SANCHEZ: I believe it"s completely inappropriate to do that. Look, we cannot afford to politicize the security of our people. We have limited resources in our government to secure our homeland, our people, our interests.

And what we"ve been trying to do--and it started under the Bush administration, and the Obama administration is trying to do that, is to have a layered impact, so that we can stop these things from happening. There"s never a 100 percent guarantee.

Nor is there the desire--none of us want to spend all our money just on security. We have other issues, health care, education, et cetera. So, we need to be very smart about how we do this. The last thing we need to do is be Republicans or Democrats or--we just don"t need to be doing that and I"m really--I"m really saddened that Pete Hoekstra would do that.

MADDOW: Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, Democrat of California, vice chair of the House Homeland Security Committee--thanks very much for coming on the show. I appreciate your time.

SANCHEZ: Thank you. Thank you.

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