Transcripts For WMAR This Week 20100725 : vimarsana.com

new jersey governor chris christie. and our roundtable, with sam donaldson, cokie roberts, stephen hayes and donna brazile. and the latest teachable moment. and, as always, the sunday funnies. there s a report that kate gosselin and sara pail reason taking their families camping together in alaska. and it must be true because sarah palin hasn t repudiated it yet. good morning. this week brought more mixed signals about the economy. the current economic climate is unusually uncertain. and with spending fatigue on capitol hill, the president is running out of options to give the recovery a boost. that s where i began my interview with treasury secretary tim geithner. thank you for joining us. good to see you. the administration has had successes after being battles. you have a big battle coming when it comes to the bush tax cuts. if they remain in place, it will cost $3 trillion over ten years. the administration has said it wants to keep the once for people that make under $200,000, individuals and $250,000 for couples. that will cost $2.5 trillion over ten years. ben bernanke said with the economic outlook unusually uncertain, extending the tax cuts would have a stimulative effect? is that right? the president is proposing to leave in place, extend tax cuts that go to more than 95% of working americans. to leave in place to businesses to hire new employees and invest. we think that s a very strong package. we think it s fair, we think it s right, we think it s responsible. we think it s responsible to let the tax cuts expire that go to just 2% to 3% of americans. we need to show the world that we re willing, as a country now, to show progress in bringing down long-term deficits. the highest earning americans in the country, let those cuts es expire, i do not believe that has a negative factor. the package you re pushing in congress. we go beyond that. we re proposing to extend the make work pay tax cut. that goes to 95% of working americans. and a set of important business tax cuts targeted for small businesses. zero capital gains rate for investment. we theng these are very helpful. when are you talking about pushing that coto congress? congress is on the verge of what we hope to be the enactment of tax hem for small businesses and ways to get credit. before the election? absolutely. sxwr a number of moderate senate democrats said they oppose repealing or allowing to expire the bush tax cuts on the wealthiest americans. they think that is harmful to growth. will you have the votes to get through the package you want? i believe we will. we re proposing is sensible. some in the administration are tuking about maybe just keeping all the bush tax cuts for a year or two. that s not going to happen? i don t believe it should. i don t believe sit. the president s pro posed to make sure we re leaving in place for the people that need them most, and can make the most difference in helping make sure the economy comes back that we heal the damage caused. job creation has not gone as well as you hoped. what more can you do? i know there s the small business lending initiative. what more can you do? the president s proposed a very strong package for help for small businesses. he would give more support to states to keep teachers in the classroom. but congress has not acted on it. they haven t yet. we re going to keep that. but, right now, the best thing the government can do, in addition to those things, is help create the conditions for the private sector to start to invest and hire again. we ve seen six months of jobs growth by the private sector. the public sector with the layoffs in the census jobs but only because of the census. the private sector is starting to add back hours, hire people. we want to see it at faster pace. most people understand this was a deep crisis. it will take time to repair the damage and take time to grow out of this. we re making progress. in 2009, when the president talked about unemployment extension, he talked about how it was paid for. this time it was not paid for. they became added to the national debt. republicans argued they wanted to pay for it and they supported it but wanted it offset by spending cuts. given that we re going have unemployment for the foreseeable future, high unemployment, isn t it the fiscally responsible thing to do is to treat this as something we know is coming down the pike so we re not laying the burden on future generations? i don t think so. in a crisis that is this bad, a recession that deep, with this amount of lasting damage, it s appropriate to treat tease things as emergencies. many of the reform that the president just signed will be determined by regulators. the bill gives more power to some regulators. some of the same ones that failed u.s. last time around. why should we be confident they ll get it right? excellent question. the theory, the basic strategy in the reform bill does not rest on the wisdom of regulators. it does two important things. it will help consumers make better choices. with better disclosure. much more clarity about the terms of the credit card contract or mortgage loan. they get better protection against the risk of being taken advantage of. it also gives authority we did not have to put in place strong constraints on risk taking on all the nation s largest institutions. that did not exist before. would these powers have allowed you, if you were treasury secretary at the time, or your predecessor to have staved off the crisis? i don t think any reform bill no law in any country that can prevent all crises. if he had this, we would have been able to limit risk taking. it would have caused much less damage, would have been much less severe. you alluded to the consumer financial protection bureau. many people say there s one person they want for that job, elizabeth warren. the woman who thought it up. do you support that? she s one of the wiggest advocates. she has huge credibility. she played a decisive role. she was earl early on this. 2007. she has enormous credibility. he would be an intent leader of that institution. that s a decision the president will make. some in the white house have said you have concerned. she s been a critic of you, and of policies. do you have concerns? i don t. she s played an important role in providing oversight to the programs we put in place to break the back of the financial crisis and put out the financial fire. ken fine berg said u.s. banks set out $1.3 billion in bonuses. 17 banks made the payoffs after getting t.a.r.p. funds, after getting bailout fouunds. it s an incredible thing. in early 09, on the basis of performance in 08, in the middle of the worst financial crisis since is great depression, fimpls that needed the government bailout still paid out substantial amounts to people that made the decisions that put news crisis. is there nothing that can be done about that? he went and used the authority he had to change behavior going forward so you didn t have taxpayers money. now, what he s also done, our spont is to make sure that the firms with never again go back to paying their executives to take risks that could imperil the stability of the country and the economy as a whole. he s done a great job. he uses authority very well. why sit, that when u.s. automakers when they received bailout funds, they had to take serious steps, what are called hair cuts, layoffs, salary cuts, and banks didn t. you have had ken feinberg supervising. great question. we had a process of bankruptcy. we did not have a similar process that could deal with the failure of large financial institutions. that was a failure for the country. when firms like aig or bear stearns could not survive without the government, we had to tools to force them to restructure and proe tkt the taxpayer from losses. this reform gives us that authority. a type of bankruptcy regime. banks should be paying for the costs of bank failures. we should be able to put them out of their misery without causing catastrophic damage to the economy as a whole. lastly, an odd week for the obama administration. given the deback wl shirley sherrod and the agriculture department. the president said this is a teaching moment for him and his administration. secretary vilsack said the same thing. did you learn anything from watching your colleagues go through this? as the president said, i think you saw a general rush to judgment. i agree, it s something we should all take caution from. and look at these things carefully. he spoke to that, i thought, well, earlier this week. thanks for joining us. thank you. and joining me now, new jersey s governor chris christie. thank you for joining me. happy to be here. your victory was seen as a blueprint for the victories. he said you won by criticizing governor corzine. do you agree? second, how do you see your victory in the context of what republicans can do in november? i think what we did last year was say specifically what direction we wanted to take the state in. we wanted to have less spending, smaller government, lower taxes. and common sense regulation that was going to help grow private sector jobs. i didn t go line item by line item through the budget. i didn t think it was the right thing to do. i think republicans across the country need to get back to our brand. that is the republican brand. it s why i became a republican. less government, lower taxes, less spending and common sense regulation that agrees private sector jobs. if my win tells anything, if we get back to basics, we speak to some of the concerns that people have in new jersey and across the country. the biggest item on your agenda is dealing with the budget. here you are on cnbc. we passed a budget that cuts $11 billion from our state s budget, balances it without any new tax increases on the people of the state of new jersey. patrick murray says that s a nice talking point. it s absolutely untrue. there are a lot of legal obligations that the state has that the governor ignored. budget analysts say the $11 billion deficit was closed la e largely by avoiding costs. continuing a decade-long pattern that christie had criticized. the billions you re not funding, are you doing this just by executive fiat? ohio does this work? there are legal obligations, right? the budget i presented on march 16th has $11 billion less spending than was projected to be done in the corzine administration. pat vick a great pol pollster. we did here, we took $1.7 less in education funds. $1 billion was federal stimulus funding. we were left with a $1 billion hole. across the board, jake, we had to reduce spending. every department of state government was cut. there are going to be cuts you make that you like and some you like less. when row have an $11 billion hole to fill, you have to fill it. i wasn t going to but $3 billion in a failing pension system. we need pension reform. we re going after health benefit reform and pension reform because we re going broke. in the clip, you said no new tax increases on people of the state of new jersey. but also, your state did not fund $1 billion in direct property tax rebates. that means that people s property taxes will go up. what we did, we did a couple of things. we changed it to a direct credit. we spent about $20 mall year in processing the checks and borrowing the money to pay people. everybody was going have to make a shared sacrifice. i wasn t going cut just programs for the vulnerable or the rich. but programs for the middle class. everything had to be cut. that program will be back as a direct tax credit fourth quarter fiscal 11. isn t that a tax increase. if you re taking away a rebate even temporarily, that s an increase, isn t it? i don t see it that way. we re giving the tools to the municipalities. with the tools that we re going to be passing this fall to cut spending eb more at the municipal level. so people don t see a huge increase at all. there s ban lot of tension between you and teachers. here s one example from a recent town hall meeting. you re not compensating me for my education or my experience. then you don t have to do it. teachers do it because they love it. that s the only reason i do it. zblnd listen, and teachers go into it knowing what the pay scale is. you said your issue is with unions and not individuals. what do you say to residents that say they like your stance on taking on the teacher s unions but a clip like that makes it seem like you don t respect the teaching profession. i care deeply about our public education. we can t have one sector of our society sheltered from the ravages of the recession at the coast of the people that are hurt by the recession the most. the building trades have unemployment at 35% to 50%. no raises, no benefits. their property taxes continue to go up to pay for 4% and 5% tax pay inkrooess for the teache teachers. we can t have one set of rules for one small sector and a different set of rules for everyone being hurt by the recession and say, we the way, you pay for this special treatment. that may be tough talk. it s direct. that s what we have to do to get budgets under control in new jersey and around the country. you ve been known in the state house and nationally for a blunt style. here s an example of that. like it or not, you guys are stuck with me for four years. i m going the say things directly. when you ask me questions, i m going answer them directly, straightly, bluntly, and nobody in new jersey is going to have to wonder where i am on an issue. that s a high bar. let s do it. should new jersey join the lawsuit that other states have field against the 5d miniadministration over the individual man date in the health care reform bill? i have my attorney general and commissioner of health studying two things. what are the chances of succeeding in the lawsuit? and what is the effect of this 2000-page bill going to be on the people of new jersey. when i get answers back, i ll make a decision. what is your impulse? i don t have one. i m waiting to get briefed on it. immigration reform. you said it s too important to demagogue. that s a two year-old quote. there were things going on that i thought was demagoguery. i called it that. i had to deal with these issues for seven years as a former u.s. attorney. the president and the congress have to step up to the plate, they have to secure the borders and put forward a common sense path to citizen ship for people. until they do that, states will struggle all over the country with this problem. and so will federal law enforcement. is the republican party in congress help or hindrance to that reform? i think it depends on which republican you re talking about. folks have been all over the map on this issue. i don t thing there s one general republican position. there are democrats offering a bill. they can t get any republicans to join them. well, listen, the fact of the matter is, they have to build consensus. the president said he wanted toot that. i think that s the challenge for those in the majority. find way to build consensus. we have a democratic legislature. i passed a budget with the democratic legislature. a property tax cap. pension reforms with a democratic legislature. if you want the lead and build consens consensus, you can. two more quick questions. the stimulus bill. net positive or negative for the state of new jersey? short term positive. we re now feeling the negative. you like to talk about springstein. the new york sometimes today has the profile of snooki. mtv s jersey shore positive or negative? negative. it takes bunch of new yorkers, drops them at the jersey shore and tries to make people think this is jersey. i welcome people to come to new jersey anytime. the jersey shore is a beautiful place. some place everybody should come on vacation. dom new jersey. thank you so much. the roundtable is next. and later, the sunday funnies. so any way, the president of british petroleum, tony hayward is leaving his job. it s not official. it just leaked out. we know why we re here. airplanes to connect the world. airplanes that fly cleaner and farther on less fuel. and make nonstop travel possible to more places. 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9 out of 10 organizations still make decisions this way every day. using out-of-date information. the organizations that are most competitive are going to be the ones that can make sense of what they learn as fast they learn it. that s what i m working on. i m an ibmer. let s build a smarter planet. coming up next, the roundtable and the sunday funnies. department of agriculture official shirley sherrod was caught on tape saying something very disturbing. she must resign immediately. i was having to hem a white person save their land. so i didn t give him the full force of what i could do. the full speech has been released by the naacp. it backs up miss sherrod s version. she s watching right how to. anything you want to say so her? oi behalf of the administration, i offer our apologies. to have people think that i was a racist. really, really hurt. the affair sherrod. one of the many topics we ll talk about today with stephen hayes, donna brazile, the democratic strategist and our dear friend, and sam donaldson, and, of course, cokie roberts. we ll get to sherrod in a second. i want to talk about the geithner interview. he said he hopes there won t be much of a fight over trying to keep the tax cuts for the lower income, under $200,000. $250,000 for family. is there going to be a fight? hope will only take you so far. think there will be a fight. think one of the main constituencies in the fight will be moderate democrats. i think you ll see them walk back from the administration s ekerness. the 2011 budget anticipates that we can close the deficit largely by allowing the bush tax cuts to expire. think the president should not get into the argument should he, should he not? but rather to present a series of a new tax package. don t call it bush tax cuts. a new tax package aimed toward the middle class, small businesses, that will close tax loopholes and ensure whatever package we put forward the prudent, paid for and helps spur economic growth. where do you think, sam? shea should continue it for 95%. as far as the wealthy, to go from 35% to 39% is not going to kill them. they ll have something to eat the next day. here s my proposal. there is a point a proposal from sam donaldson. i like that. at this moment, perhaps we should continue the extend the tax cuts across the board. put it in a trigger. when unemployment gets better, use of other indexes, then trigger raises it for the wealthy. triggers never work. congress puts it in. it s basically fig leafs. the congress doesn t follow through. that s my point. i don t think there s a chance that republicans would agree with my modest proposal. it s a political question. who gets to frame it? do the democrats get to say that the republicans claim they re against the deficit but they want to keep in the tax cuts for the rich people including the wall street bankers that got the huge bonuses? or do the republicans say, look, here are the democrats going at you again, raising the taxes. just so they can raise that spending because they want the government to take over every part of american life. i think that is a lot of what the debate and election will be framed around. sfland the debate comes as ben bernanke is calling the outlook unusually uncertain. that s chilling. the market went 200 points down. the market is starting to levitate again. maybe unwisely. europe shows better numbers. the earning season looks good for some of the big companies. not just the bangs. some of the people that make things. i think we re going come out of it zblp but the numbers are mixed. there are plenty of numbers pointing in the other direction. if you look at the big picture, the question i think facing sort of nerve washington right now, with respect to the tax cuts. one of the things that surprised me most about your interview with tim geithner said that raising the taxes on the wealthiest americans won t affect growth. i think very few economists would agree. one of them is christina romer in the white house. she s got an article in the current american economic review june, 2010, if which she says, tax increases have a large and substantial negative effect on growth. they have to be careful about the estate tax. there is none. not right now. and the heirs of george steinbrenner thank you. we have to be careful how we frame this. stephen, over the last ten years, we have seen the top 1% their incomes have grown. meanwhile, the bottom half of the country, the bottom half of the income earners, their wajs have stagnated. the president has to be wise enough to look at the entire array of tax cuts he could provide small businesses, middle income. the one number that matters is the um employment number. the president is now saying they re expecting to get to 8% or lower until maybe the end of 2012. that then becomes not only a dampening have a dampening effect on the economy. that backs problem. the pred denl commission and a private one. they re looking at the problem of our debt. and our economic situation. both of them say by the end of the year when they report, we re going to be stunned by the projections for this country if we don t start cutting unnecessary expenses and getting hold of the debt. some of them are necessary expenses. the fight that the defense department says is unnecessary. you know that doesn t save you any money. you could close down the capitol and turn it into condos. social security, medicare, interest on the national debt. and the loss of revenue. we re not collecting money. we could be on capital gains. why the most important thing the government could do is debt out of the way of private sector growth. and raising taxes on whom ever in a recession is one of the most foolish things you could do. the administration buys the argument. you have heard administration officials say it before. it s behind what they normally did. now it s a bad idea. but at some point, we re going come out of the administration. there are people in the administration talking about maybe keeping the bush tax cuts in place for everyone for a year or longer. geithner said no. but a trigger. otherwise congress will never come back have the same debate in two years. how do we pay for it? i m going to be like the republicans for 30 seconds. how do we pay for it? it s part of it. that s on statics. what it does for economic growth, you could argue you ll make up some of the revenues. how many jobs were created from 22001 to 2008. how many jobs? i don t know the number. hardly any. we lost jobs. we should have tax cuts that help spur growth. it s about jobs, jobs, jobs. i think that s right. but what cuts? not just cuts. small business is the engine for job growth. the people we re talking about, the so-called wealthy, most of them are the small business owners. put people back to work. that s who you re talking about. most of the wealthy are the top 3% are small business owners? come on. i want to move to the subject of the unemployed and the unemployed, i mean shirley sherrod who is the most notable unemployed person in america right now. the white house says that had nothing to do with it. but shirley sherrod, on cnn, after speaking to president obama said she wasn t so sure. i frmly believe that someone in the white house was telling them that the white house wanted me to resign. donna, the white house says no. it was all secretary tom vil sk vilsack s call. do you believe that? they told me the same thing. i know. miss sherrod told a story of redemption. yet, we all know from the facts, everyone, everyone, there s new crow to go around so ensure that everyone continues to eat bird until turkey season. the white house jumped the gun. fox news and others who allowed this bogus tape to hit the air waves. the naacp zblp the naacp that did not call their local champer. did not confer with miss sherrod. it s mind boggling. you grew up in the deep south, as i did, you know the history of the ploouchlt. the history of the sherrod family. row know shirley sherrod s personal story. i m ashamed so many people failed to google her name. the only people that could fire her were the administration. not fox news, not the naacp. they bear the most culpability here. i think, by a long shot. the other thing that s true. what she actually did say gets us right back to the last conversation. what she did say was that the division, she came to understand, were really not between black and white but between haves and have nots. that is what turned her around and made her fight for the white farmers. i think besides her, there s enough blame to go around here. the people that ris represented the facts with intention. i believe in the first amendment. but you wish for joseph welch to say, have row no decency, at last? from the standpoint of obama and the administration, who are these people they should pay attention to and be afraid of? i mean who is glenn beck, bill o reilly. and drew breitbart. i want to quote another president. class antagonism. they re unanimous in their hatred for me. and i welcome it. i ask you to judge me by the enemies hai have made. president obama, take them on. this is an argument you hear from a lot of liberal activists. josh marshall who writes, speaking of andrew breitbart, who posted the video originally, the unfairly edited excerpt. breitbart got a piece of video he knew nothing about and published wit a central claim. that he either made up or made no attempt to vary fip there s been not only no disciplining or retraction or discussion of the primary role in an obvious smear. this is a journalistic felony. a reality only compounded that they refused to admit they did anything wrong. are liberals unfairly using this? no way. they would never to that. seriously? of course. the timeline doesn t work. she actually resigned or was forced to retire before anybody on fox news said anything about it. they sent out a memo. it s an easy distraction. the basic point, to go back to what donna said involved the speech. it was, for most of the speech, a fantastic speech. a compelling speech. a moving speech. i mean, to hear the stories about the county, hear about her upbringing. the man who burned crosses in her front yard. compelling stories. incredibly moving. what happened then in the speech was that she slipped into what i think are easy accusations of racism that don t work. she said, in the middle of her speech. the march speech, she talked about republicans. it s always about money, she said, i haven t seen such mean spirited people as i have seen lately. some of the racism we thought was buried, it s surfaced. we endured eight years of the bushes. bill o reilly called for her to be fired. isn t he on fox? so did the usda. the vilification of john lewis at the capital. this is a conversation we just don t have. i mean, i really think eric holder was right. we re cowardly about talking about race. i had a cross burned in my front yard, too. i know what it was like to grow up in the south in those years. the truth is that the conversation is just different among whites and among blacks. it is. and we have to be able to address that if we re ever going to get past this. if we have any opportunity to perfect this union, that s what we have to do. i agree. but don t you think one of the reasons we don t have this conversation about race is because of the kind of comments branding republicans as racist for opposing health care. this has nothing to do what about calling the president of the united states a racist? is that racist, to call people racist? what she was saying, i heard the speech in its entirety pip went public when i heard it. what she was talking about was the political climate, that yes, some in the republican party have condoned because they refuse to repudiate the elements within their party that have gone too far. with the bertha notion, the illegitimacy. let s shirley sherrod, on cn rks, said something about andrew breitbart. he posted the video. here s what she had to say. i know i ve gotten past black versus white. he s probably a person who has never gotten past it and never attempted to get past it. i think he would like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery. i think that s where he would like to see all black people end up again. this woman s been offered a job as a deputy director of advocacy and outreach. she s saying andrew breitbart wants to return to the days of slavery. you can can think what he did was reprehensible. a total smear. does that just fie saying he wants us to go back to the days of slavery? i m not going to second-guess miss sherrod. i will say mr. breitbart should resign from what? not resign. i m not in the business of getting people fired. i think he should apologize to her. this is a woman who, her father was murdered. no one was brought to justice. she has anger she was talking about. but she talked about how she got how she came to struggle with this and went on to start her life anew. let me just saying going back to the conversation, can we have a conversation about race? yes. it cannot start in washington, with politicians. it must start back in georgia where miss sherrod and is spooners can help us lead the dialogue. if mr. breitbart would like to be part of the conversation, we welcome it. i disagree. i think it can start in washington. i think it can start this the white house. everybody talks about it being a teachable moment. well, let s learn and have the president be the teacher in chief. and mitch mcconnell is asked about an aspect of this and says, i don t want to get into that. that s his prerogative. but it takes all the sides to get into it, civilly, not calling names or calling people racists on either side and talk about it. that s not going to happen. civil rights used to be a nonpartisan issue. i keep telling republicans it was republicans that brought that the johnson take place when johnson was ready to sign the civil rights bill. it was dead of summer. he s saying to his aides, make sure that the republicans are here. i m not going to sign this without dirkson being in the room. the leader of the senate, the republican, made the last speech. he quoted victor hugo. nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. i think they should sit down. he would say i don t want to get into this. i know they could find a time and language to talk about the future if they would thereon one another. maureen dowd suggests that shirley sherrod should be offered a job if the white house. he quis that the first black president should expand beyond his campaign security blanket. he should give her a new job, director of black outreach. this white house needs one. does this white house need one? whether or not the job should go to shirley sherrod? i hope that the white house would bring in more people. people that understand history and can them president. hopefully they won t run to the hill tops. they can sit down and say, let s talk about this. i know after having talked to valerie jarrett, she s deeply concerned. it s not black outreach. i mean, please. it s outreach on this issue for blacks and whites and people of all color. all right, we need someone for black outreach, that s the wrong direction. i don t think creating a new position of black outreach is going to solve the nation s problems. after seeing miss sherrod s comments about andrew breitbart, she would not be the ideal person for the job. 30 seconds. i think it s a basic point there has been an ignorance in some ways of the immediate past history that some of us lived through. of the young people in the white house is true. and that there does need to be a better understanding of that in order to just try to get through this. wonderful job. the roundtable continues in the green room, on abcnews.com, and on our new ipad app. still to come, the sunday funnie funnies . has never stood still. since our beginning, we ve been there for clients through good times and bad, when our clients needs changed we changed to meet them. through the years, when some lost their way, we led the way with new ideas for the financial challenges we knew would lie ahead. this rock has never stood still. and there s one thing that will never change. we are, the rock you can rely on. prudential. and now, in memoriam. i think the process by which information is imparted, confidently, from pernt in government person in the press is a process that is vital to the preservation of our democracy. the mission of the school is to offer the best professional dance training to the largest possible group of people. this week, the pentagon released the names of 16 soldiers and marines killed in iraq and afghanistan. we ll be right back. jay leno had some fun with our swer view with vice president biden. that s just one part of the sunday funnies. let s start with a topic that is ripped from the headlines. the bikini butt war. these are gigantic packages. i think we need to choose between the two. we re in the going to lose either one of those bodies. david cameron is visiting the u.s. he and the president gave each other piece of art. that wasn t necessary. you have already given us a huge oil painting. a great day in the gulf of mexico. there are rumors that the containment cap is starting the leak. when asked if the rumors were true, the bp spokesperson said, aren t there any more mel gibson take place. jeb bush is running. i feel the same way about bush presidencies, you re better off stopping at two. we ll be right back. [ man ] if it was simply about money, every bank loan would be a guarantee of success. at ge capital, loaning money is the start of the relationship, not the end. i work with polaris every day. at ge capital, we succeed only when they do. whoo! awesome! yes! we ve got to get you out of the office more often. my turn to drive. this is my last show as interim anchor at this week. it s been an honor hosting the show for the past couple of months. i want to thank use and action bc news. my new colleague, christiane amanpour will be here next week. i wish her the best of luck. i ll see you soon.