MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Minimum Wages and Low Income Assistance

Interview

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

MATTHEWS: OK. Rubio also said the federal government should hand over its anti-poverty programs and the money that goes with them to individual states and let them decide what to do with the money.

When Rubio and other conservatives declare the war on poverty a 50- year failure, they miss one very important point. We have not been fighting the war on poverty for almost 50 years. After some initial successes, conservatives went about trying to dismantle President Obama -- President Johnson`s programs back then and to a large extent, as we all know, succeeded.

But how much more of the safety net do they want to dismantle? In `64 -- in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was giving his address, U.S. Congressman John Lewis was fighting for the economic and political rights of African- Americans as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.He joins me now to give us historic perspective.

Congressman, what do you make of this Rubio proposal? I think it`s a Rube Goldberg thing. I don`t know what it is. Oh, we will just turn everything over to the states or we will get rid of them and somehow the free enterprise system is going to take people out of poverty? In other words, do nothing in Washington and everything good is going to happen.

What do you think?

REP. JOHN LEWIS (D), GEORGIA: Well, I must say, Chris, that the proposal by the senator is wrongheaded.

I think he`s dead wrong. I lived through the `40s, through the `50s, through the `60s. I saw poverty with my own eyes. I grew up very, very poor in rural Alabama. And during the `60s, I traveled all across America, rural areas, urban centers.

And what Lyndon Johnson did with the war on poverty, he made great strides in cutting poverty in half. To go back and say give everything to the state government, you going to give it to the state of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, or to some other state outside of the South?

We don`t want to go back. We want to go forward and continue to build. Lyndon Johnson was right. It is a war that we cannot afford to lose. If we go back, we will have people receiving starvation wages. And hundreds and thousands and millions of people today in America are better off today because of the commitment of Lyndon Johnson.

When Robert Kennedy and Senator George McGovern and others traveled and Dr. King traveled into parts of the South, the Midwest, Appalachia, they saw people living in unbelievable condition, receiving starvation wages. As a nation, we can continue to do better. We need to build off what Lyndon Johnson started 50 years ago.

MATTHEWS: Do you think people have just terrible memories, and people like Rubio, who is a young guy, who may not even know the history of this country in the period you talk, about are being taken?

Because it seems to me that everybody knows Richard Nixon went into office in 1969. He put Howard Phillips head of the OEO, he brought in Donald Rumsfeld to destroy those problems. Ronald Reagan ran against the welfare queens and all the other iconic messages he was sending, the dog whistles. He trashed those programs.

The Bushes, the father and son -- how can they -- how do these people get away with saying we have had a 50-year war on poverty, when we had about a six-year war?

LEWIS: You`re so right. We had about six years and later systematic deliberate effort to destroy what Lyndon Johnson set in motion, and we need a greater commitment. I don`t quite understand it in our country. As we think about what Lyndon Johnson did and what he said, the richest nation on the planet.

We don`t need more bombs and missiles and guns. We need to take care of our people. You don`t tell me that Head Start and (INAUDIBLE) didn`t help create better conditions, help lift people, help resources to buy a refrigerator, to buy books for their kids, to put food on their table?

MATTHEWS: Well, it`s a different mindset, Congressman. It`s a new one and a bad one. Thank you so much for joining us. Congressman John Lewis who was at the heart of this storm 50 years ago.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source