MTP Transcript for April 29, 2007

“Health care” “expand health insurance for children” “relieve” the “families and” business “of the burden of expensive catastrophic cases.

“Education” “expand help for families by increasing” “tax” deductions “for tuition payments.” “Expand Pell grants to cover the average tuition” to “public colleges for low income families.” “Expand national service programs” to help “high school students so” “they can earn money for college.

“Homeland Security” “take back one year of the tax cuts for Americans who make over a million dollars” “and put this money in a dedicated Homeland Security and Public Safety Trust Fund.

“Crime:  Biden’s priority is restoring the nearly $2 billion” that’s “been cut from state and local law enforcement.”

All noble goals for Democrats, but it’s more money, more money, more money.

SEN. BIDEN:  Yeah, but it’s...

MR. RUSSERT:  Where you going to get it?

SEN. BIDEN:  I’ll tell you where you get it.  First of all, we’re going to end this war.  It’s 100--$100 billion a year we’re spending.  Number one, it’s 100 billion.  Eliminate the tax cuts for people making over a million bucks, and they’ll go for it.  They, they didn’t ask for it; they know they don’t need it.  That’s 85 billion bucks a year.

MR. RUSSERT:  But that goes to the trust fund.  You still have...

SEN. BIDEN:  No, you have—you have...

MR. RUSSERT:  ...energy, health care, education.

SEN. BIDEN:  No, I got it.  I got it.  Let’s go through them, because I think you’re asking, obviously, a fair question.

Eliminate the, the, the tax break for investment on dividends and—which is $195 billion is, is, is the cost of that.  And begin to do, for example, on the crime side, it’s pointed out in my crime bill for every single dollar we spent we saved the public $6, $6 dollars.  We have to have—there’s a fancy word down here—a little new paradigm down here in Washington, as my Republican friends like to say.  Investment in these areas saves money.  For example, for $26 billion a year, I can insure every single solitary child under the age of 18 in the United States.  America doesn’t have health insurance.  For $3 billion a year, I can double the investment we have on alternative energy sources and research.  For a billion dollars a year I can put 50,000 more cops back on the street.  And so this is where—we’re, we’re talking manageable numbers.  But the larger point here, in my view, the larger point here, and I think distinguishes me from Democrats, I think we got to start looking at the direct savings that come from the investments we make. If we make an investment in wellness, we save hundreds of billions of dollars here.  And so we got to look at it differently, Tim.  But you need start-up dollars.  The place I’d start off with is somewhere over $220 billion a year by the tax cuts and ending the war.  And, by the way, all you need is $10 billion a year for the next five years to fund every single solitary aspect of the 9/11 Commission report, and I would only use 10 of the 85 billion from the top 1 percent for that purpose.

MR. RUSSERT:  But, senator, we have a deficit.  We have Social Security and Medicare looming.  The number of people on Social Security and Medicare is now 40 million people.  It’s going to be 80 million in 15 years.  Would you consider looking at those programs, age of eligibility...

SEN. BIDEN:  Absolutely.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...cost of living, put it all on the table.

SEN. BIDEN:  The answer is absolutely.  You have to.  You know, it’s—one of the things that my, you know, the political advisers say to me is, “Whoa, don’t touch that third”—look, the American people aren’t stupid.  It’s a real simple proposition.  We have to do—you and I were talking about Bob Dole earlier.  I was one of five people—I was the junior guy in the meeting with Bob Dole and George Mitchell when we put Social Security on the right path for 60 years.  I’ll never forget what Bob Dole said.  After we reached an agreement about gradually raising the retirement age, etc., he said, “Look, here’s the deal, we all put our foot in the boat one at a time.” And he kicked—he stepped like he was stepping into a boat.  “And we all make the following deal.  If any one of the challengers running against the incumbent Democrat or Republicans attack us on this point, we’ll all stay together.” That’s the kind of leadership that is needed.  Social Security’s not the hard one to solve.  Medicare, that is the gorilla in the room, and you’ve got to put all of it on the table.

MR. RUSSERT:  Everything.

SEN. BIDEN:  Everything.  You’ve got to.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me talk—turn to abortion.  The ban on partial-birth abortions or late-term abortions, you supported that ban.

SEN. BIDEN:  I did and I do.

MR. RUSSERT:  And the Supreme Court came and basically upheld that ban...

SEN. BIDEN:  That’s right.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...and you criticized the Supreme Court.

SEN. BIDEN:  I’ll tell you why I criticized the Supreme Court.  They upheld the ban, and then they engaged in what we lawyers call dicta that is frightening.  You had an intellectually dishonest rationale for an honest justification for upholding the ban, and that was this:  They went further, and then they, in the language associated with the decision said, by the way, they blurred whether there is the first trimester and third trimester in how much—I know this is going to sound arcane to the listeners—but whether or not they blurred the distinction between the government’s role in being involved in the first day and the ninth month.  They blurred the role in terms of whether or not there is—they became paternalistic, talking about the court could consider the impact on the mother and keeping her from making a mistake. This is all code for saying, “Here we come to undo Roe v. Wade.” And it went on to say, by the way, that the life of the mother was, in fact, permissible exception, and it went on to say that even—that any woman could challenge, even if her health is at risk, could come back to the court to challenge that. So the bottom line here is, what they did is not so much the decision, the actual outcome of the decision, it’s what attended the decision that portends for a real hard move on the court to undo the right of privacy.  That’s what I’m criticizing about the court’s decision.

MR. RUSSERT:  You have changed your position on abortion.  When you came to the Senate, you believed that Roe v. Wade was not correctly decided and that you also believed a the right of abortion was not secured by the Constitution. Why did you change your mind?

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, I was 29 years old when I came to the United States Senate, and I have learned a lot.  Look, Tim, I’m a practicing Catholic, and it is the biggest dilemma for me in terms of comporting my, my religious and cultural views with my political responsibility.  And the decision that I have come to is Roe v. Wade is as close to we’re going to be able to get as a society that incorporates the general lines of debate within Christendom, Judaism and other faiths, where it basically says there is a sliding scale relating to viability of a fetus.  We can argue about whether or not it’s precisely set, whether it’s right or wrong in terms of its three months as opposed to two months, but it does encompass, I’ve come to conclude, the only means by which, in this heterogeneous society of ours, we can read some general accommodation on what is a religiously charged and a publicly-charged debate.  That’s the, that’s the decision I’ve come to.

Even within our own church, there’s been debates about life, you know, from, from “Summa Theologica,” Aquinas, and 40 days to quickening and right to, you know, you know, Pious IX, animated fetus doctrine and so on.  So this—the, the, the decision’s the closest thing politically to what has been the philosophic divisions existent among the major confessional faiths in our country.  And that’s why, I think, that’s why I’ve come to the conclusion some long time ago, over 25 years ago, that is the—it is the template which makes the most sense.

MR. RUSSERT:  Are you still opposed to public funding for abortion?

SEN. BIDEN:  I still am opposed to public funding for abortion, and the reason I am is, again, it goes to the question of whether or not you’re going to impose a view to support something that is not a guaranteed right but an affirmative action to promote.

MR. RUSSERT:  Were you yourself—do you believe that life begins at conception?

SEN. BIDEN:  I am prepared to accept my church’s view.  I think it’s a tough one.  I have to accept that on faith.  That is a tough, tough decision to me. But there is a point relatively soon where viability—it’s clear to me when there’s viability, meaning the ability to survive outside the womb, that I don’t have any doubt.  That’s why the late-term abortion, and that’s why I continue, like your old boss Pat Moynihan, shared the same view, he was very pro-choice is—to use the jargon.  But he, like me, believed that you have this notion of abortion in the last month, where there’s clearly viability. And if you make that judgment based upon the nature of the child’s health, that is not a good basis for a societal decision.  Only the mother’s health should be—dictate the outcome then.  Otherwise, you, you yield to the side of the—of, of, of the fetus, which is almost full term.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me bring you back to November of ‘03.  You were asked this question.  “Do you believe gay marriage is inevitable?” Biden:  “I’m not sure. I think probably it is.”

SEN. BIDEN:  Well, I think it probably is because social mores change.  But look, Tim, I don’t think the government can dictate the definition of marriage to religious institutions.  But government does have an obligation to guarantee that everybody has, every individual is free of discrimination.  And there’s a distinction.  You and I talk—I shouldn’t say this—I think we did—talked about Meacham’s book, the “American Gospel.” And I, anticipating you asking me this, I wrote a quote from his, from his book that I think sums it up.  He says, “The American gospel is that religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it.” That’s where I think—that’s how we have to view these very difficult decisions.  I think government should not be able to dictate to religions the definition of marriage, but I think, on a civil side, government has the obligation to strip away every vestige of discrimination as to what individuals are able to do in terms of their personal conduct.

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