MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: The Republican Party

Interview

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MATTHEWS: So why are both parties now talking populism, and of
course, talking about the 47 percent, an infamous term from the last
campaign?

Joining me right now is South Carolina congressman Mick Mulvaney and
Missouri congressman Emanuel Cleaver.

Congressman Mulvaney, it is true, and Mitt Romney has honestly
portrayed it in his confessional, basically, since the election of 2012,
that his being caught, recorded -- and in fact, recorded, talking about how
the Republicans shouldn`t bother with that bottom 47 percent because
they`re already takers. They live off the government. They`ll never
listen to us.

Is this an attempt to repair that damage by talking, as Mitt Romney is
doing, about the need to talk about income inequality?

REP. MICK MULVANEY (R), SOUTH CAROLINA: Yes, Chris, I was surprised
by that clip you just played by Senator Schumer who says that we`re now
playing on his grounds because we`re talking about things like fairness and
opportunity and job creation. We`ve been having that conversation as
Republicans for a long time, so I`m not really sure if this is new. It may
be new for Mr. Romney in particular, but Republicans have been talking
about exactly those things in the four years I`ve been in Congress.

MATTHEWS: But have you ever talked as a party about the problem of
the gap between rich and the people less well-off...

MULVANEY: Sure.

MATTHEWS: ... the gap itself as being -- I have never heard
Republicans talk about, there is something wrong with the gap.
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Maybe they have -- certainly, they have been for tax cuts to stimulate
the economy. We know all that. But they never seemed to be bothered, your
party, as a party, by the problem that some people are zooming into super
wealth right now, while most people are stuck with wages that haven`t
really grown.

MULVANEY: Yes, I think you`re -- I think you`re misconstruing a
discusses about that gap with a discussion about redistribution, which we
don`t talk about which -- because we don`t believe in, and if we do talk
about it, it`s in a negative sense.

We don`t believe in redistribution of wealth. But if you have
followed Republican politics, as you have, you know we have talked for
many, many years about trying to raise hardworking Americans, raising
ordinary folks, raising the middle class through various policies. So, no,
it`s not new for us by any stretch of the imagination.

MATTHEWS: Well, let me go back to Congressman Cleaver.

Thank you, sir, for coming on as well.

And it seems like the Democratic Party is very much supportive of a
progressive tax system, where you tax the people with the most ability to
pay taxes. And that has been a part of the tradition of the progressives.
It`s also consistent with the word progressive tax.

The president is pushing that now, $3,000 child tax care credits for
people who need them and then, of course, being paid for by hitting the 1
percent at the top. He`s being very clear about it. It seems to me that
is a prescription for dealing with income inequality. That`s a real one.

REP. EMANUEL CLEAVER (D), MISSOURI: Well, two things.
First of all, I don`t know any Democrats who are talking about income
redistribution. But if I can just go back just a second -- and I will do
it quickly, Chris -- you mentioned earlier the president going into Idaho
and then into Kansas, red states.

MATTHEWS: Sure.

CLEAVER: As is his faith tradition, you want to concentrate on people
who you want to convert.

And so I think that`s why he goes into those areas. But he has also
been magnificent in converting people because now Mitt Romney, who I think has been converted, is doing the same thing that the president did in the campaign.

Look, people who are wealthy ought to thank God that they have gained
that wealth in this fabulous nation of ours. And because they have been so
blessed, they believe that they ought to share more with the well-being of
the country.

That`s not wealth distribution. It`s called, you know, paying your
taxes equally. So I hope that we look at the -- at what`s going on now as
a conversion. People are -- have been converted to the populism that we
have been presenting, I think, now for decades.

MATTHEWS: Do you think the president was successful last night in
moving the Republicans to compromise, or was he too sarcastic toward them in that little joke back and forth about winning two elections? Do you
think he primed them for a deal or ticked them off?

CLEAVER: Well, I don`t think what he said last night is going to have
any impact at all.

But what I think is important, though -- and I wish he hadn`t said it,
but it`s irrelevant now -- Ronald Reagan, people need to remember, in 1985
talked about all the bills he was going to veto, and then said to the
Democrats, make my day.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

CLEAVER: Now, if that`s if -- if what the president did last night
was taunting, so was what Reagan said.

And if I had a name for this place where we work, it would be, in a
religious term, the taunting tabernacle.

(LAUGHTER)

MATTHEWS: Well, let me go over to Congressman Mulvaney about that.

The taunting went on last night. I saw the president had a piece of
the action there, too, taunting back to the people who were doing their
sarcastic clap at him. He went back and whacked them by saying, I don`t
have to run again because I have won twice.

MULVANEY: Correct.

MATTHEWS: And then he put that beautiful little smile he knows how to
do it back on it to try make up for it.

But what kind of mood is your caucus in right now? Are you a little
ticked off that he sort of won the night, that he was doing a victory lap
in the end zone? Or what was your mood? I don`t want to tell you what it
is. You tell me.

MULVANEY: Well, the funny part about the clapping yesterday when he
said he wasn`t going to run again is it actually came from the audience in
the balcony and not from the members on the floor.

MATTHEWS: Really?

MULVANEY: I don`t think that was really widely reported.

Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: No, I didn`t know it. That`s why I didn`t report it. I
thought it was coming from your caucus.

MULVANEY: No.

Our attitude is probably more disappointment than anything else. The
president could have done two things last night. He could have said, look,
I just got waxed in a midterm election. Maybe it`s time for me to start
working with these folks. Or he could have said, I have only got two years
and I don`t care about you folks and here`s what I would like to do in a
perfect world.

And he did the latter. I just don`t think it set the tone. We will
ignore it. I enjoy working with gentlemen like Mr. Cleaver. We will
continue to work through that in the House.

MATTHEWS: Yes.

MULVANEY: But if the president was trying to set the tone last night,
it wasn`t very productive.

MATTHEWS: You know, I think Joni Ernst, the new senator from Iowa,
had a -- made a good appearance last night. I don`t think she hurt herself
at all at home in Iowa.

But I did wonder why it was such a narrow prescription she offered.
She said, the Keystone pipeline, we`re going to -- Keystone pipeline,
that`s probably going to become law at some point.

But why is that the main and really only thing she really pushed as
party spokesperson?

MULVANEY: No, I actually -- I agree with that.

MATTHEWS: Give me some other things she was for.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, give me something else that you were willing to say
you were for last night.

MULVANEY: Oh, sure.

Well, we have already passed a 40-hour workweek. We`re going to pass
a repeal of the IPAB in the next couple of weeks. We`re going to pass
things that deal with tax fairness. We haven`t talked about tax fairness.
Mr. Cleaver mentioned the rich paying more. The top 1 percent already earn
-- only earn 20 percent of the income. That`s a lot. But they pay 40
percent of the tax.

We want to talk about tax fairness. But back to Joni`s speech last
night, I think the message was, we`re willing to focus on things that are
actually accomplishable in this Congress. And we sort of opened the door
to the president, look, why don`t you work with us on Keystone?

If he wants to go and solve the larger problems, how do you solve the
larger problems if we can`t agree on Keystone? So I think Joni`s speech
last night was as much an invitation to work as anything else. And I`m
again disappointed that that hasn`t been accepted by that -- as that by the
president.

MATTHEWS: Let me go back to Congressman Cleaver for a listen point.

Do you see compromise here? I don`t believe there`s a lot of common
ground between the two parties. But you have got Keystone, which the
Republicans want and some Democrats. You have got infrastructure spending which creates jobs in all the big cities around the country. And it seems Democrats -- is there a compromise there? Is there a compromise on infrastructure with Keystone? Is there a compromise about tax reform that somehow gives a break to the middle?

CLEAVER: I think so.

You know, one of the best parts of the speech last night was when the
president talked about working together and about all of the chaos and, you
know, partisanship that we see today. But I do think we can work together.
You know, I would compromise on some things that I don`t feel really
strongly about seeing approved, such as Keystone, if we could get something like the transportation bill, where we can catch up with China on
infrastructure.

MATTHEWS: Yes. Well said.

CLEAVER: I would do that in a heartbeat.

MULVANEY: Hard to do when the president...

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Boy, that sounds like -- that sounds like what I would love
to see.

You know, I think of this country and having been to China recently,
gentlemen, and to see how those trains go 300 miles an hour, you don`t hear a sound, and that country knows how to get around, and we`re still running Amtrak here, which is OK, but it`s not state-of-the-art.

Anyway, thank you, U.S. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver and Congressman
Mick Mulvaney.

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