Hotmail'Meet the Press' transcript for Dec. 7, 2008
President-elect Barack Obama
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 Netcast Dec. 7: In his first Sunday morning television interview since winning the election, President-elect Barack Obama joins Tom Brokaw to discuss the economy, foreign policy and the upcoming transition of power. |
Exclusively on msnbc.com |
MR. TOM BROKAW: Our issues this Sunday: In 44 days, Barack Obama will become the 44th president of the United States. His new team is almost complete. But since Election Day 2008, the list of challenges facing the incoming president has only grown: that terrorist attack in Mumbai, growing turmoil in the financial markets, the worst unemployment in 15 years, and the auto industry on the verge of bankruptcy. Tough problems all waiting on the desk of our exclusive guest, the president-elect of the United States, Barack Obama.
And yesterday in Chicago I did sit down with the president-elect, Barack Obama, to talk about those topics and much more.
President-elect Obama, welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.
PRES.-ELECT BARACK OBAMA: Great to be here. Thank you.
MR. BROKAW: Very nice to have you with us. As we saw in the opening, the world has gotten considerably worse since your election. There is no evidence that it's cause and effect, you should be happy to know. But, nonetheless, we now are officially in a recession. It's around the world, and most analysts think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Sixty-seven years ago this day, one of your predecessors, Franklin Roosevelt, faced Pearl Harbor.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Right.
MR. BROKAW: What are the differences between his challenges and the ones that you face?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, first of all, I think it's important for us to remember that as tough as times are right now, they're nothing compared to what my grandparents went through, what the "greatest generation" went through. You know, at this point you already had 25, 30 percent unemployment across the country, and we didn't have many of the social safety nets that emerged out of the New Deal. So there's no doubt that Franklin Roosevelt had to re-create an entire economic structure that had entirely collapsed, and we've got some strengths that he didn't, he didn't have.
But, look, if you look at the unemployment numbers that came out yesterday, if you think about almost two million jobs lost so far, if you think about the fragility of the financial system and the fact that it is now a global financial system, so that what happens in Thailand or Russia can have an impact here, and obviously, what happens on Wall Street has an impact worldwide, when you think about the structural problems that we already had in the economy before the financial crisis, this is a big problem and it's going to get worse. And, and one of the things that I'm constantly mindful of are all the people I met during the campaign who were already struggling before things got worse. You know, mothers and fathers who were working hard every day but didn't have health care, couldn't figure out how to send their kids to college. Now they're looking at pink slips, jobs being shipped overseas that devastate entire towns. And that's why my number one priority coming in is making sure that we've got an economic recovery plan that is equal to the task.
MR. BROKAW: Here's what you had to say a short time ago to the national conference of governors. It was kind of a reality check for them to put it in some kind of a context. Let's share that with our audience now, if we can.
(Videotape, Tuesday)
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: We're going to have to make hard choices. Like the ones that you're making right now in your state capitals, we're going to have to make in Washington. And we are not, as a nation, going to be able to just keep on printing money; so, at some point, we're also going to have to make some long-term decisions in terms of fiscal responsibility and not all of those choices are going to be popular.
(End videotape)
MR. BROKAW: On this program about a year ago, you said that being a president is 90 percent circumstances and about 10 percent agenda. The circumstances now are, as you say, very unpopular in terms of the decisions that have to be made. Which are the most unpopular ones that the country's going to have to deal with?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, fortunately, as tough as times are right now--and things are going to get worse before they get better--there is a convergence between circumstances and agenda. The key for us is making sure that we jump-start that economy in a way that doesn't just deal with the short term, doesn't just create jobs immediately, but also puts us on a glide path for long-term, sustainable economic growth. And that's why I spoke in my radio address on Saturday about the importance of investing in the largest infrastructure program--in roads and bridges and, and other traditional infrastructure--since the building of the federal highway system in the 1950s; rebuilding our schools and making sure that they're energy efficient; making sure that we're investing in electronic medical records and other technologies that can drive down health care costs. All those things are not only immediate--part of an immediate stimulus package to the economy, but they're also down payments on the kind of long-term, sustainable growth that we need.
MR. BROKAW: To give an indication of how quickly things change now, at warp speed, when you and I last saw each other, six weeks ago, I think it was, in Nashville, when I asked you your priorities, you said health care, energy and education would be your top three priorities.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Right.
MR. BROKAW: You didn't anticipate at that time that you would have to outline this kind of a stimulus program. The real question in the stimulus program that you have just described and as you shared with, with the American audience in your radio address is how quickly will it mean jobs out there across America and how much is it going to cost and who's going to pay for it?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, I think we can get a lot of work done fast. When I met with the governors, all of them have projects that are shovel ready, that are going to require us to get the money out the door, but they've already lined up the projects and they can make them work. And now, we're going to have to prioritize it and do it not in the old traditional politics first wave. What we need to do is examine what are the projects where we're going to get the most bang for the buck, how are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected. You know, the days of just pork coming out of Congress as a strategy, those days are over.
How much it's going to cost? My economic team is examining that right now. And one of the things I'm very pleased with is how fast we've gotten a first-rate economic team in place, the fastest in modern history. They are busy working, crunching the numbers, looking at the macro-economic data to make a determination as to what the size and the scope of the economic recovery plan needs to be. But it is going to be substantial. One last point I want to make on this is that we are inheriting an enormous budget deficit. You know, some estimates over a trillion dollars. That's before we do anything. And so we understand that we've got to provide a, a, a blood infusion into the patient right now to make sure that the patient is stabilized, and, and that means that we, we can't worry short term about the deficit. We've got to make sure that the economic stimulus plan is large enough to get the economy moving.
MR. BROKAW: One of the great concerns in this country, of course, is additional job loss, which would be considerable if the Big Three in the auto industry in this country--GM, Ford and Chrysler--were to go down. That drama has been playing out in Washington and across America. Do you think the Big Three deserve to survive?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, I, I think that the Big Three U.S. automakers have made repeated strategic mistakes. They have not managed that industry the way they should have, and I've been a strong critic of the auto industry's failure to adapt to changing times--building small cars and energy efficient cars that are going to adapt to a new market. But what I've also said is, is that the auto industry is the backbone of American manufacturing. It is a huge employer across many states. Millions of people, directly or indirectly, are reliant on that industry, and so I don't think it's an option to simply allow it to collapse. What we have to do is to provide them with assistance, but that assistance is conditioned on them making significant adjustments. They're going to have to restructure, and all their stakeholders are going to have to restructure. Labor, management, shareholders, creditors--everybody's going to recognize that they have--they do not have a sustainable business model right now. And if they expect taxpayers to help in that adjustment process, then they can't keep on putting off the kinds of changes that they, frankly, should have made 20 or 30 years ago. If, if they want to survive, then they better start building a fuel-efficient car. And if they want to survive, they, they've got to recognize that the auto market is not going to be as large as some of their rosy scenarios that they've put forward over the last several years.
MR. BROKAW: It's pretty clear that the Democrats are going to try to get them a bridge loan to get through the short term, but it's the long term that is the larger question here.
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Right.
MR. BROKAW: A number of people--Paul Ingrassia, as a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter from The Wall Street Journal has said we ought to have a government-structured bankruptcy and maybe even an automobile czar of some kind. One name that has come up is Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, the parent company of NBC. Does that kind of plan have any appeal for you?
PRES.-ELECT OBAMA: Well, there are a lot of discussions taking place right now between members of Congress, the Bush administration. I've had my team have conversations with these folks to see how can you keep the automakers' feet to the fire in making the changes that are necessary. But understand, these aren't ordinary times. You know, some people have said let's just send them through a bankruptcy process. Well, even as large a company as GM, in ordinary times, might be able to go through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy, restructure, and still keep their business operations going. When you are seeing this kind of collapse at the same time as you've got the financial system as shaky as, as it is, that means that we're going to have to figure out ways to put the pressure on the way a bankruptcy court would, demand accountability, demand serious changes. But do so in a way that it allows them to keep the factory doors open. And, you know, right now there's a number of discussions about how to do that, and I hope that we're going to see some short-term progress in the next few days. My economic team is focused on what we expect to inherit on January 20th, and we'll have some very specific plans in terms of how to move that forward.
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