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United States News Title: Senator Paul and Rep. Weiner on "State of the Union" CROWLEY: I'm Candy Crowley and this is State of the Union. When congress returns from its Easter recess it faces must-do legislation to raise the debt ceiling so the U.S. can pay its loan obligations. Here to talk about that and what Americans can expect for the rest of the session is conservative freshman Senator Rand Paul, a member of the Tea Party. Senator, thank you so much for joining us. Let's talk about that debt ceiling bill. As you know, the U.S. will not be able to pay its bills unless you all agree to raise the debt ceiling. Are you willing to send the president a clean bill that just doesn't attach anything you want to it, just says, OK, raise the debt ceiling? PAUL: Well, I don't think it should be an either/or situation, you know. There is another alternative, and that is that we send the message to the president through legislation that says, you know what, Mr President? Don't default, but pay the interest out of the revenue. We bring in about $200 billion a month. There's no reason to default ever. I don't want default. But I also don't want to just keep giving an irresponsible government more money. You know, if we give them a trillion dollar increase in the debt limit, it will be gone by November. It's out of control and someone needs to stand up and say, the emperor has no clothes. We have no money. We are borrowing to the tune of trillions of dollars and I don't think we can sustain this. CROWLEY: Well, if you use existing money and revenues that are in the U.S. Treasury, then you're not going to be paying for something else. So, in effect, you are saying, let's cut something. PAUL: Yeah. And interestingly, if you didn't raise the debt ceiling, you'd be passing a balanced budget. And really what we need to do is balance our budget. The problem is, see, the president came out with a plan, his budget, about a month ago and it's supposed to add $11 trillion to the debt over 10 years. Well, he decided that was a nonstarter himself and he's now coming out -- but what's tricky about all these numbers, he's saying he's going to cut $4 trillion from the debt. No, he's going to cut $4 trillion from his proposed increase of $11 trillion in debt. So really the numbers get a bit confusing. But the bottom line is this year, we will spend more money than last year and this year our deficit will be greater than last year. We aren't reforming the system. We're still heading headlong towards a debt crisis. CROWLEY: Are you willing to filibuster a bill that would raise the debt ceiling without any of the things that you're asking for? PAUL: I think that's yet to be determined. What I've said is there is a circumstance where I will vote for it, but I do harken back to the president's words. The president's changed a lot of his words since he was a senator. He said that to raise the debt ceiling was irresponsible at that time and only gave credence to bad policy, only gave credibility to people who were doing a bad job with controlling the deficit. So I harken back to those same words. And I would say I would vote to raise the debt ceiling if we passed a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and say from here on out, this is the last time we're doing it, we are going to act responsibly. But I see nothing going on in Washington that leads me to believe that they are spending our money wisely. They can't even balance the budget in the Pentagon. The Pentagon tells us they are too big to be audited. I think that's really a sad state of affairs. CROWLEY: I want to just add that the president has said in recent interviews that his vote against raising the debt ceiling was a political vote by a novice senator and he regrets it. But moving you along here, if -- it just seems completely unlikely to me that there will be a vote for a constitutional balanced budget amendment. It seems unlikely to me that the president would agree to just use existing funds to pay off the interest on the debt. Seems to me that the only way this is going to go is that there will be the prediction (ph) of a bill to raise the debt ceiling. So if there is that, could you see yourself just voting no and letting it go at that, or would you stop at any means? PAUL: I think we haven't yet determined what our strategy will be, but I can tell you that the people of Kentucky elected me to shake things up. They didn't elect me to raise the debt ceiling. They didn't elect me to pass budgets that add -- you know, the president's budget will add $7 trillion to the debt if you believe his numbers. But whatever the numbers are, our government and our leaders are still adding enormous amounts of debt, heaping this burden on our kids and our grandkids. It is precisely why I was elected, to oppose this type of behavior. CROWLEY: As you know, there is a so-called gang of six on the Senate side, three Republicans, three Democrats, trying to come together to come up with a bill that could pass, that would deal with the debt that you're talking about here. Because the president has a plan, House Republicans have a plan, there's not a lot of middle ground there other than everybody thinks -- everybody says we've got to cut the deficit. I want to read you something that Senator Tom Coburn, a fellow Republican from Oklahoma said about these negotiations and about how to bring down the deficit -- the debt. And he said. "I agree that we ought to cut spending. But will we ever get the spending cut to the level that we need without some type of compromise?" He's talking tax increases here. Can you see yourself agreeing to a tax increase to help with this debt that you're so concerned about? PAUL: Yeah. I think there is a compromise. But the compromise is not to raise taxes, the compromise is for conservatives to admit that the military budget's going to have to be cut. We've doubled military spending. I believe in a strong national defense, but conservatives will have to compromise and we will have to cut military spending. Liberals will have to compromise and we will have to cut domestic welfare. The compromise is where we cut, not where we raise taxes. The problem is, if you give them more money in Washington, they're not to be trusted. I mean, there was $100 billion in last year's budget that is unaccounted for. They don't even know where the money was spent. Recently when we bailed out the banks in our country, guess who got bailed out? The Libyan National Bank. It was a pass-through. AIG became a pass-through for foreign banks. We don't know where all of our money is going to be spent. When I want to turn in money for my office, I want to turn a couple hundred thousand dollars back in that I'm not going to spend? It is unclear where that money goes. We cannot even be confident that the couple hundred thousand I want to give back goes towards the debt. Our government is out of control. They don't need more money, we need to give them less money. CROWLEY: Senator Rand Paul, thank you so much for joining us this morning. We appreciate the time. PAUL: Thank you. CROWLEY: Joining me now from New York is Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner. Congressman, thank you as well for joining us. Let me just pick up on this debt question, because it does sound to me as though there will be some Republicans who are going to say we want either more spending cuts or a balanced budget amendment in order to agree to raising the debt ceiling. Let me turn this around to you and say, are there spending cuts? Would you agree to some number of spending cuts in order to get this debt ceiling raised? WEINER: Of course. I think that we need to have conversations about how we reduce spending. We also need to have a conversation about how we get some equality into our tax code again. You know, Warren Buffett pays only 16 percent in taxes when the top 1 percent makes as much now as the bottom 50 percent. We have a huge sense of income inequality that has been reinforced by the tax code. But I think everything should be on the table. The difference is that when the president and I say let's put everything on the table, we really mean it. When people like Senator Paul say it, they just mean the narrow slice of our budget which is nondefense and some defense discretionary funding. CROWLEY: Well, he just said he thinks there ought to be big cuts in the Defense Department. That's something you could agree with, I would assume. WEINER: Yeah. But I think we need to look at the entire totality of the money coming in, the money going out. If we really care about debt, we have to be concerned about the idea that frankly over the last 10 years or so, we've given enormous tax cuts that have cost the Treasury a lot of money, close to $1 trillion. And I think that that's cause for concern. CROWLEY: The truth is when the president had two houses of Congress that he controlled -- Democrats controlled -- which was last year, he couldn't get those tax rollbacks on the rich. He had to go ahead and continue those tax cuts on the rich. CROWLEY: So the chances, it seems to me, that you're going to get any kind of tax roll-back on the wealthy, $250,000 or above, are pretty slim. Would you agree with that? WEINER: No. The president said in his speech this week that he's not going to continue them any further. I frankly... CROWLEY: But he said that before. WEINER: I frankly think it was a mistake, and I've said on your show that I think it was a mistake that we extended them. But now going forward he said very clearly in a speech that I think laid out for the first time the two sides in this debate here that he's not going to continue with those. And I don't think we should. I don't think very many Americans can justify at this point a situation where people who average $340 million wind up only paying 15 or 16 percent in taxes. That has to be changed. CROWLEY: I want to play you something that David Plouffe, as you know, senior White House adviser, he used to be campaign manager for President Obama, I had read to him one of your tweets last week in which you worried that the 2011 budget felt a lot like the tax deal that you're talking about and that you just -- you worried about it. And I asked him to say something reassuring to you about the 2011 budget. And here's what he had to say. DAVID PLOUFFE, WHITE HOUSE ADVISER: I don't really have any interesting in reassuring Anthony Weiner. I think what I want to do is reassure the American people. I think the American people think that tax agreement was the absolute right thing to do and it has been a huge contributor to the economic growth we've had. CROWLEY: Does that sound like a White House to you that regrets keeping those tax cuts in place for the rich? WEINER: Listen, I like David Plouffe and I hope that he's successful. He and I are going to work together to make sure that President Obama has a second term. This isn't about me or about him. The president of the United States today said that -- or this week said it was wrong and unconscionable to continue those tax cuts. I take him at his word. I think the speech he gave this week laid out a pretty good foundation for us getting our economy back on track. Look, I would like there to be no taxes. I would like none of my constituents to have to pay taxes either. But for the middle class and those struggling to make it, their incomes have been flat, their burden has been going up by the very well-to-do who, frankly, had a very good run here. In all, it is a matter of fairness. But as far as what David Plouffe thinks or what I think, the most important thing is what the president said this week, which is those tax cuts won't be continued. CROWLEY: You sound to me -- you know, one of the things that was said about the president's speech this week, which was very, very tough on the Republican budget proposal and long-term debt reduction plan, that so much of that speech was aimed precisely as lawmakers like you, constituents like you considered left of center, because the president believes that -- and the White House political operation knows that the left has been very unhappy with some of the things the president has done. You sound to me reassured. Are you now feeling that the president -- the criticism has been that he gives up too much, too soon, and you think that president is gone now, that he's a tough dealer? WEINER: So in the last question you said David Plouffe doesn't want to reassure me and now the president was trying to reassure me? Look, this wasn't about me. And I've got to tell you something, I can test the idea the president's speech was that tough. You know, there used to be an expression that Harry Truman -- "give 'em hell, Harry." And he used to say, I'm not giving them hell, I'm just telling the truth and it sounds like hell. The president laid out a real good critique about the Ryan plan and what we Democrats believe. We believe in Medicare. We believe in Social Security. We believe in equality and standing up for the middle class. The president gave a spot-on speech not just to me or to any element of our party, but to the nation. He showed that he's going to be a national leader in this discussion. And if they want to have a contest of ideas, they can't expect that the president's going to roll over to their bad ones. CROWLEY: Let me read you something that President Obama told the Associated Press on Friday, talking about the debt ceiling in the upcoming battle for that. "I think he," meaning Speaker Boehner, "is absolutely right that increasing the debt ceiling is not going to happen without some spending cuts." Now the White House kind of walked that back a little and seemed to suggest that he didn't mean exactly that there would be spending cuts attached to the debt ceiling. How do you see this playing out? What are you willing to give up? What is your understanding what the White House is willing to do to get this thing passed? WEINER: Well, I think the debt ceiling should be passed as clean as possible. Let's remember when we talk about the debt that the government holds, a lot of it is to United States citizens, most of it. Frankly, we borrow from the Social Security trust fund. They get T-bills. If we're going to say to people that own bonds we're not going to pay interest on them, that would be devastating, and frankly the whole notion of full faith and credit. So it would be very bad. The Republicans really have to stop playing politics with this. All that being said, is we have to have a reasonable conversation. I know debt limits frequently have things attached. I understand that. But I have to tell you, if they wind up holding up things like Medicare, Social Security, these bedrock programs that help people in need, help form the safety net in our country, it is a non-starter, Democrats won't vote for it. CROWLEY: Congressman Anthony Weiner, thank you so much for joining us today. WEINER: Thank you, Candy.
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