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April 08, 2009

Speaker Pelosi on the Budget, Obama

Countdown

OLBERMANN: As promised I‘m joined now by the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Her book, “Know Your Power: A Message to America‘s Daughters,” is now out in paperback.

It‘s a great pleasure to have you here, Madam Speaker.

REP. NANCY PELOSI, (D) SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: My pleasure to be here.

OLBERMANN: The Pentagon first.

PELOSI: Yes.

OLBERMANN: If Secretary Gates‘ budget has less hardware in it, less stuff, are the Republicans in any sense right that this constitutes a defense cut of some sort?

PELOSI: No. What this is, it‘s a recognition of the threat. When you look at a budget and you look at the priorities in it, the defense budget, you‘d say, what is the mission?

And Secretary Gates, I think, is accurately reflecting the mission, what the threats are to us. We‘re no longer in a bipolar world and some of the weapons systems are geared toward that. Now they won‘t be.

I salute him for his courage in putting this forward. And isn‘t it interesting that Secretary Gates was secretary of defense under President Bush?

OLBERMANN: And now he‘s an evil person from the GOP spin point of view. Do you think—we‘ve heard pretty much all year things like this from the GOP. Has it finally found its voice, I mean, sort of hysterical, factually inaccurate umbrage, or in this case, mathematically inaccurate umbrage?

PELOSI: I think it‘s desperation. I really do think it‘s desperation to a certain extent that a senator would criticize the president while he is—while he, the senator, is on foreign soil, looking—appears to be he was at a military base, and saying the president is gutting the military budget; and that others here were criticizing the president when he was overseas on a foreign policy issues.

The budget, that‘s fair game. That‘s domestic, we can criticize at home on that. But resorting to levels of desperation that I think show the bankruptcy of their ideas, but if these weapons systems are so great, they should be able to defend them on their merit.

OLBERMANN: Right. I mean, in factually speaking, just in terms of real easy to understand math, we‘re going to spend more in 2010 than we did under George Bush in 2009 -- fiscal 2009 on the Pentagon, correct?

PELOSI: Correct. And I will always recall President Eisenhower warning of the military industrial complex, the power of the weapons manufacturers, it‘s powerful in Washington. And as I say, this took great courage. But our first responsibility is to protect the American people. That‘s the oath we take, to protect the Constitution and the American people.

And it is the responsibility of the president to take the lead on that, and the secretary of defense is more accurately reflecting the current state of play of what the threat is, what the mission is, and what the priority should be in the budget.

OLBERMANN: If I may switch over to the subject of this oversight panel‘s report card on the bailout, on the bank bailout, there seems to be the implication here that we‘re putting all of our proverbial eggs in a proverbial basket. Is there, in fact, a better way? Do you like the idea that perhaps we have to weed out the more troubled banks rather than continue to throw money at them?

PELOSI: Well, I think that is so. I don‘t think anybody wants to continue to give life support to institutions that really are not viable, whether it‘s banks or auto industry or whatever the subject is. But it‘s unfortunate that President Bush‘s TARP proposal, and this is a Bush administration proposal, really did not go down the path that it even said it was going down.

It was going to buy these assets, then and there. They didn‘t really have a plan to do it. Then they went to capitalization, which may or may not have been a good idea. Now, we‘re back to buying troubled assets, toxic assets. If there ever were an oxymoron, that is.

(LAUGHTER)

PELOSI: But I that whatever the plan is, we have to have a plan and we have to do it. And whether or not the report that says that the administration is underestimating the depth of the problem is so or not, the point is, we have to address the issue. And there maybe some institutions that will benefit from this, even though we‘d like them not to, but we have to do what‘s right for the economy.

OLBERMANN: When blowback occurs again from the—from the other side, and we‘ve heard when changes were made at the head of G.M., that how dare the government interfere with who‘s running these company that we basically have kept alive.

PELOSI: Right.

OLBERMANN: There seems to be a knee-jerk response to almost everything from the GOP now.

PELOSI: Right.

OLBERMANN: It‘s just gainsaying, just contrariness. Seventy-eight days into this administration, and the nickname “the party of no” has really sort of stuck to Republicans with good merit. Is there—is there any indication that this isn‘t what the next four years are going to look like?

PELOSI: I don‘t think that it will. I do think that—because of the bankruptcy of their ideas, that they have nothing that appeals to the American people. In fact, the American people rejected their policies of the last eight years or longer, in terms of Congress.

But I do think, when it comes to education, health care and energy—

which are the three priorities that the president has in his budget that we

passed in the House and in the Senate, that there will be some level of

cooperation. We certainly hope so, because we want—these are big issues

we want as much bipartisanship as possible. But at the end of the day, we‘re going to pass a bill.

And we‘re not just going to wait around for bipartisanship. But, hopefully, they will be there with their ideas that we can incorporate. But we won‘t water down our initiatives, for example, health care, to a point of the lowest common denominator.

We want the best possible, boldest initiative with can with strong bipartisanship. And we just have to go forward. The American people don‘t want to hear about process, they want health care.

OLBERMANN: All right. Now, to a subject of—where process has come into our rights and our securities, and what‘s left over of the erosion of them from the previous administration, the attorney general‘s pronouncements on the state secrets cases, which not only defended Mr. Bush‘s wiretaps but says now that the Patriot Act provides sovereign immunity. If I have been spied upon illegally, our attorney general‘s office, our Justice Department is saying, I can‘t sue because of what the Patriot Act says.

How can this president possibly stand behind that point of view?

PELOSI: Well, the Patriot Act, the amendments to the Patriot Act, the sunset part of it will expire by December of this year. So, we will have an opportunity to address this in the consideration of the Patriot Act, because sovereign immunity—you went into it so well last night, I won‘t dare try to present the clarity that you did, but it shouldn‘t be that way.

And my credentials going into the speaker‘s office, in the leadership had been one of long time on intelligence and trying to protect the civil liberties of the American people. So whatever the cause, I know that the White House wants to protect the prerogatives of the presidency, the executive branch, we want to—the legislative branch, we all have a responsibility to the Constitution.

So, I‘m sure we will come to some good place on this, because I trust Barack Obama, and because I think that the situation—the position of the Bush administration was so egregious that it just doesn‘t hold up in the light of day.

OLBERMANN: But, of course, he campaigned on the premise that the domestic spying done during the Bush administration, to whatever degree it was done, was wrong. If we don‘t come to a better place, or if you and he and the other branches of the party and the administration don‘t come to a better place, isn‘t he now just flatly wrong on this?

PELOSI: Well, you know, we can—this can go to court.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

PELOSI: And the courts can decide. But you cannot say that you‘re not—your rights have not been violated if we don‘t disclose the information, but it‘s OK for us to find it out, as you so clearly presented. The—we‘ll have hearings and the Congress will review the Patriot Act, the administration, in terms of state secrets privilege and other concern that we have, is—the Justice Department is reviewing that there, what has been said already is not necessarily the last word from the administration.

And so, we have a number—and we‘ve had our content of Congress initiatives that the administration, I think, did the right thing. So, I have confidence in them. And the fact is, is that we have the inspector general‘s reports, which I think are due in June, I don‘t know early or late June, one which—I say inspectors general for not only the NSA but other agencies of government which will show us, reveal to us a great deal more than we might find out in court about what went wrong.

And I—we can never have a repetition of what was done under the Bush administration or a continuation of that.

OLBERMANN: And widening that out to other aspects of that administration, where do you stand and where do you think we‘re going to wind up in terms of investigating the entire process of Guantanamo Bay rendition, all of the, if you will, horrors of that administration?

PELOSI: Well, the administration has said we are closing Guantanamo, we know that, and they‘re in the process of doing that. They had said that we won‘t—the United States does not torture. And so—you know, it‘s such a silly—it‘s such a silly discussion, in my view, because torture has never really produced the results that we want.

OLBERMANN: Right.

PELOSI: So, the argument that people use, would you torture somebody if you knew they had the answer to this or that, it‘s a hard question because people would ordinarily say, “Well, I‘d do anything to protect the American people.” But the fact is that, unsubstantiated information coming from torture can make matters worse.

OLBERMANN: As we saw with Zubaida apparently.

PELOSI: Exactly.

OLBERMANN: Yes.

PELOSI: And so, we have to—we have to protect the American people and it always has been the case from the beginning of our country, from our origins, liberty and security. We must have both, freedom and security.

OLBERMANN: Well, clearly, they have done what has needed to be done in terms of going forward in the Obama administration.

PELOSI: Yes.

OLBERMANN: But does—I‘ve made the point a couple times that it seems to me, every time something has gone wrong in the country, stopping it is the first priority. But to truly eradicate it, you have to go back and, you know, clean out the stables. Isn‘t it necessary to correct—to what degree we can—the past, rather than just saying we‘re not going to do this again?

PELOSI: Well, we have a little bit—a little bit of difference of opinion between the White House and the Congress.

(LAUGHTER)

PELOSI: The White House wants to go forward, and that‘s appropriate for them. We believe that we have to take a look at what happened. There may be criminal activity. We end up going to court on the contempt of—the administration would not prosecute a criminal case, so we had to go with a civil case. But there has to be a way for the truth to be known, A, and B, acted upon .

OLBERMANN: Right.

PELOSI: . people engaged in illegal activity. And, hopefully we‘ll learn a great deal more from the inspectors general when they have their reports in June on this subject—because it‘s very, very important. But I have confidence in Barack Obama, constitutional—he taught it, he practiced it, he‘s passed laws, and now, he‘s a—the executive, the president of the United States.

What do we call that, the enforcer? The enforcer of the .

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

OLBERMANN: The constitutionalist-in-chief, I suppose.

PELOSI: Yes.

OLBERMANN: Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, whose book “Know Your Power,” is now available in paperback.

Madame Speaker, a great pleasure to have you here. Thank you so much for your time.

PELOSI: I appreciate that. And I want young women to be involved in politics, so I want them to read my book, and my condolences to you in the loss of your mother. It sounds like a woman who truly knew her power.

OLBERMANN: I believe she did. Again, thank you for coming in.

PELOSI: All right.

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