NBC "Meet The Press" - Transcript

Interview

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Congressman, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.

REP. JOE SESTAK (D-PA): Good to be here. Thanks, David.

MR. GREGORY: Nice to have you here. You had a very important victory in Pennsylvania, taking on Senator Arlen Specter, the incumbent, and you won. And when you spoke on election night, this is what you said.

(Videotape, Tuesday)

REP. SESTAK: This is what democracy looks like, a win for the people over the establishment, over the status quo, even over Washington, D.C.!

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY: Congressman, you sound like the ultimate outsider. The only problem is you are a congressman. OK? You were running against the establishment.

REP. SESTAK: Ah.

MR. GREGORY: You voted for TARP, for the bailout. You voted for the president's stimulus plan. You voted for the president's healthcare plan. Exactly which establishment are you not part of, that you're running against?

REP. SESTAK: You know, I--31 years in the Navy, as you know, when I came to Washington, I was kind of taken aback that that type of accountability that I'd learned from my actions in the U.S. Navy seemed to be absent down here in Washington, D.C. Look, somebody had torpedoed our economy. We were sinking. We had to caulk the holes. We were hemorrhaging jobs. It's not about big government or small government, it's about effective government. Somebody took the referee off the football field up there on Wall Street, they let them play roulette with the savings of the seniors in my district. I sit there, and to what is to Wall Street a market correction now means young couples can't afford to send their children to education. I ran about accountability for one's actions, and I think that's not...

MR. GREGORY: But, Congressman...

REP. SESTAK: ...pretty absent down here.

MR. GREGORY: Congressman, the question I asked you is you have supported all the major elements of the Obama agenda.

REP. SESTAK: Yes.

MR. GREGORY: And yet you, in that sound bite, were running as an outsider. Are you not part of the establishment that you are railing against?

REP. SESTAK: Oh, I did vote for those because they were needed. But as John F. Kennedy once said, sometimes the party asks too much. And when they did something that I didn't agree with because it didn't help Pennsylvania working families, I'll stand up to the party. That's what I did. It doesn't mean whether you're part of an establishment or not. It's whether you stand up for what's right.

MR. GREGORY: Well, which, which element of the Obama agenda that was his priority did you stand up to?

REP. SESTAK: Oh, I did--I honestly think that this president has done great, good things. But I don't think we've gone far enough in terms of helping small business. My party has to recognize business is a good word when you have small in front of it. And to give a 15 percent tax credit to small businesses for every new payroll job that's created, we could, according to Economic Institute, soak up five million of the eight and a half million unemployed in two, two and a half years. In short, we need to do even better than what we've done. And as was mentioned earlier, the market's good. There's really good private markets out there. We just need fair rules. And before the rules kind of favored Wall Street, not those in state.

MR. GREGORY: Are you--would you like to see more tax cuts, is that what you're suggesting?

REP. SESTAK: For the small businesses, without a question. Look, for far too long, like the Senate did, they literally voted that large corporations that invest in a foreign factory get a tax credit. On Wall Street they said, "Forget about any rules out there, go ahead and gamble." So what I'm for is for effective government. And there should--if there are going to be tax credits, and I do believe in them, they should be where the majority of Pennsylvanians work. The majority of them work in small business.

MR. GREGORY: But...

REP. SESTAK: That's the real engine of the economy.

MR. GREGORY: All right. But, Congressman, you're a Democrat, and I fully expect that you will campaign for the Obama agenda come the fall. Is that your plan?

REP. SESTAK: I'm campaigning for whatever is needed to take care of the working families of Pennsylvania. I would like President Obama's support, and he said in his phone call to me, yes. But at the end of the day, I ran because I didn't agree with a deal that was made that I didn't think would help Pennsylvania over the next six years. I respect the establishment, but when they're wrong I think you have to stand up and say...

MR. GREGORY: Right. But what you stood up to was your opponent, which is not terribly courageous given that that's what you do in politics. What I'm asking is whether you are an Obama Democrat who supported stimulus, who supported health care, who's with him on all the major elements of his agenda. Are you or are you not an Obama Democrat?

REP. SESTAK: I've always described--I've always described myself as an independent-thinking person who believes in Democratic principles. Those are the same principles this president believes in. But if I think they're doing something that isn't right in accordance with the principles that help, help families in Pennsylvania, I'll stand up just like I did then. I'm a pretty pragmatic guy, you know. I come from the military, everybody has health care. And the dividends that accrue to our nation are immense. We don't even, we don't even promote you above a certain rating or rank unless you have an education, an associates college degree. I'd say pretty much those are kind of principles that give dividends to our nation. Imagine a work force that's healthy and educated, that can compete with China and India. That's the kind of focus and Democrat I am.

MR. GREGORY: What, what job were you offered to stay out of a primary race by the administration?

REP. SESTAK: It's interesting. I was asked a question about something that happened months earlier, and I felt I should answer it honestly. And that's all I had to say about it because anything beyond that gets away from what we just spoke about.

MR. GREGORY: Right.

REP. SESTAK: What are the policies that are really going to help people who've been slammed by economy...

MR. GREGORY: All right, but you've campaigned on transparency. It's part of the politics. You talked about standing up to the White House when they'd fielded a candidate--made a deal with Arlen Specter. So isn't it in the--in the spirit of transparency, were you offered a job by the administration? And what was it?

REP. SESTAK: I learned, as I mentioned, about that personal accountability in the Navy.

MR. GREGORY: Yeah.

REP. SESTAK: I felt I needed to answer that question honestly because I was personally accountable for my role in the matter.

MR. GREGORY: What's the answer? What's the job you were offered?

REP. SESTAK: And--but anybody else has to decide for themselves what to say upon their role, and that's their responsibility.

MR. GREGORY: Yes or no, straightforward question. Were you, were you offered a job, and what was the job?

REP. SESTAK: I was offered a job, and I answered that.

MR. GREGORY: You said no, you wouldn't take the job. Was it the secretary of the Navy?

REP. SESTAK: Right. And I also said, "Look, I'm getting into this...

MR. GREGORY: Was it the secretary of the Navy job?

REP. SESTAK: Anything that go--goes beyond that is others--for others to talk about.

MR. GREGORY: Let me just take the last couple minutes to talk about some elements of how you'll campaign. What specifically would you advise the president to do with regard to tackling the debt? What painful choice would you advocate as a United States senator, either on the spending side or the tax side?

REP. SESTAK: There's three major areas. First, pay as you go, which we know President Clinton used to give us three budget deficits, was throw one out--and you need to look at your weight to see where you got through, where, if you want a new program, you got to cut another program. We have that, but there's too many caveats to that. And we need to do that on the mandatory discretionary side. Right now we're only looking at the mandatory spending side. Second, health care. The largest increase over the next 50 years in our budget is Medicare, Medicaid. Can we do it? Sure. And as we have two programs that are in this new healthcare bill that begins to reward and incentivize for quality of care, not quantity of care--that is that if somebody is, after a heart operation like my father, left after three days and they missed that he had a staph infection, just another fee, they weren't penalized for it.

MR. GREGORY: Can I just get a very specific answer to the question...

REP. SESTAK: Third, revenues.

MR. GREGORY: ...which is what specific, painful choice would you advocate as United States senator to deal with the debt?

REP. SESTAK: Close those tax loopholes. All right? Carried interest for Wall Street upwards of $80 billion to $100 billion a year, they get taxed at 15 percent. Eighty billion dollars for tax loopholes for oil companies that literally have record profits, $352 billion a year that's not collected in taxes from small businesses and individuals...(unintelligible)...corporations. But also, as Secretary Gates, I stood up and said he was right when he said, "Wait a minute, we don't need the F-22." And I have two plants in my district that provided parts for that plane. But what he's trying to do to transform the military is also absolutely needed.

MR. GREGORY: All right. We're going to leave it there. Congressman Sestak, good luck in the fall campaign.

REP. SESTAK: Thank you very much.

MR. GREGORY: Thank you very much for being here.

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