MSNBC "The Ed Show" - Transcript

Interview

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REP. DENNIS KUCINICH (D), OHIO: Well, you know, what he says is right. If you cut spending, that doesn"t help our economy. It creates a drag on the economy. If we don"t do anything about the 14 million people out of work, that is a continued drag on the economy. And it is one of the reasons why so many Main Street businesses are having trouble, because people don"t have money to buy things.

So we should be focusing on creating jobs. And that means spending money, investing in our people and help to prime the pump of economy. This is not rocket science.

Unfortunately, the ideological horn locking which is going on right now is not serving the interests of the American people.

SCHULTZ: At all. And--but that sound clip pretty much sums up what the Democrats need to get across to the American people, as opposed to the short version, the Republicans saying, you can"t raise taxes on the job creators.

KUCINICH: Let"s look at that, Ed. The Bush tax cuts gave over a trillion dollars in tax cuts, most of it went to the people at the top. How did it happen that we have massive unemployment following that?
We have to understand that in order for government to be able to respond to the needs of the people, the private sector isn"t creating the jobs--then the public sector has a moral responsibility to create the jobs.

FDR understood that. And we have to go back to that old time religion and get America back to work. And then people like Dennis in Kansas City, who spoke eloquently about the economic dynamics that are affecting small businesses--then people like him will find that they"ll have more customers. They"ll be able to sell more products and maybe hire people when that happens.

This is where the focus should be, not on shredding the social safety net. My God, they"re attacking the very people that have been suffering.

SCHULTZ: Are you concerned that the social safety net is going to be on the table with this commission that might come out of the Reid bill?

KUCINICH: You bet.

SCHULTZ: How confident are you that the big three are going to be protected?

KUCINICH: You know what, Ed, I"ll fight that all the way, because you cannot tell seniors that their golden years are no longer protected, Especially when Social Security is rock solid through 2036 without any changes whatsoever.
You cannot tell seniors that they have to worry about their Medicare and Medicaid benefits.

SCHULTZ: Would you vote for the Reid plan in the House?

KUCINICH: Not a chance. I"m not going to vote for any plan which shreds America"s social safety net, and which really puts the burden of America"s economic problems on the people that didn"t cause the problem.

SCHULTZ: So there"s no plan out there right now that you could support, it sounds like?

KUCINICH: Ed, we don"t need to have raising the debt ceiling contingent on any plan. We should have a clean vote on the debt ceiling. This is why this is so exasperating. If we have a clean vote on the debt ceiling, then we can deal with these other issues.

There"s no reason the great United States of America should be subject to the implications of these crummy ratings agencies that sold themselves to their issuers and created serious ethical conflicts that led to investors putting their money into products that were not worth the paper they were written on.

This is wrong that the United States should be held hostage to another gang of banksters and their representatives on Wall Street. You have to remember what this country is about, and take care of the people here.

SCHULTZ: There"s no question, I totally agree with you. But the 14th Amendment, is this the best avenue for the president to take right now? To put all this bickering aside, and just constitutionally make the move and fight it in the courts, if it comes to that?

KUCINICH: You know, Ed, I carry the Constitution with me. I want to tell you something. We shouldn"t have to get to that. But Congress ought to familiarize itself with Article One, Section Eight, which says the Congress has the power to borrow money, sure, but it also has the power to coin money, to make money.

We gave that power over to the Federal Reserve back in 1913. It"s time that we understood we don"t have to go to banks to get money. The United States is a sovereign government. According to our Constitution, we should be able to invest in our own people, create the jobs.

We shouldn"t have to rely on banks. We cannot be at the mercy of banks in this country. That"s not a democracy. I think that it"s time the Congress studied that provision of the Constitution as well.

SCHULTZ: What would be a good deal in your opinion here? What is feasible at this point after all this rancor that"s taking place?

KUCINICH: What"s feasible is this: raise the debt ceiling without any contingencies. Just get that out of the way. It should have been perfunctory from the beginning without any strings attached, number one.

Number two, end the wars. There"s over a trillion dollars in savings in ten years.

Next, Medicare for all. That would solve many of our budget problems to begin with, because the insurance companies are still taking hundreds of billions of dollars every year in terms of their pound the flesh for a privatized health care system.

Save Social Security, strengthen it by taking the caps off, so that people who make over 106,800 dollars a year would be subject to the FICA tax. These are things that could be done and straighten things out.

We don"t have to pretend that the sky is falling. It"s not. This is a political, manufactured crisis. And it shouldn"t be anything that"s causing anxiety among the American people. We shouldn"t be creating this debt psychology and having--

SCHULTZ: So this is a Republican made crisis. And it"s all, in my opinion, an effort to defeat President Obama. And they"re going to take this to the firewall, to the very last second before anything happens. That"s how I see it"s going to happen.

KUCINICH: We don"t need to go into default, Ed. It would be a disgrace for America to go into default.

SCHULTZ: Congressman Dennis Kucinich, always a pleasure. Great to have you with us tonight.

Georgia Congressman Paul Brown thinks average Americans can solve their problems by just dropping out of the country club? I"ll tell Mr. Brown how things work in the real world in Psycho Talk.

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