Coleen Rowley asks Rep. John Kline about cutting ... — Transcript

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1. 0:02the 911 Commission found that there was
2. 0:04no connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda
3. 0:07that was actually at the tail end of
4. 0:08their report they they found that all of
5. 0:11those uh deceptions about weapons of
6. 0:13mass destruction so basically that
7. 0:16report does not uh justify the Iraq War
8. 0:19you know if you want to say it justifies
9. 0:21Afghanistan maybe but it doesn't justify
10. 0:24Iraq um and I just wanted to add on the
11. 0:27uh the part about the budget we're at 14
12. 0:30the debt ceiling was raised to $14.3
13. 0:33trillion and uh you know you you you and
14. 0:38others claim to be
15. 0:39conservative I hear Rush limbo every two
16. 0:42seconds saying we conservatives you
17. 0:44listen to him a lot more than I do you
18. 0:46know what what's conservative about your
19. 0:50uh terms of taking 5.6 trillion which is
20. 0:53what bush had coming in to 10 trillion
21. 0:57and then voting for The the bailout at
22. 0:59the end of of Bush's term and I'm
23. 1:02wondering if this 14 trillion now which
24. 1:04is causing great concern certainly to to
25. 1:07lots of people bipartisan sure and and I
26. 1:10think it is very fiscally conservative
27. 1:12there's a debt commission that's just
28. 1:14formed to look at things including
29. 1:17entitlements and I know that you used to
30. 1:19favor uh privatizing Social Security so
31. 1:22would you now favor cutting some of
32. 1:25those entitlements in order and possibly
33. 1:28privatizing Social Security in order to
34. 1:30try to get that debt to come
35. 1:34down
36. 1:35wow I'm I'm worried about that because I
37. 1:38know that you stumped for privatizing
38. 1:40Bush's plan back in 2005 and and it is
39. 1:44you just mentioned it's one of the
40. 1:45biggest sources of the debt Social
41. 1:48Security is as you know very well
42. 1:50Colleen it is a huge unfunded liability
43. 1:53it's nowhere near as big as Medicare in
44. 1:55terms of unfunded liability there is no
45. 1:57question that both of those entitled
46. 1:59ments have to be addressed you know very
47. 2:02well they have to be addressed in a
48. 2:03bipartisan way no party can step in
49. 2:05there and fix it you know very well that
50. 2:08President Bush expended his so-called
51. 2:10political Capital by saying that the
52. 2:11system's in trouble and we have to fix
53. 2:13it it's not entirely clear what the bush
54. 2:16plan was that was part of the problem I
55. 2:18would argue he never really had a bill
56. 2:20he just had an idea at one point I went
57. 2:23over to the White House to talk to them
58. 2:25about this and at that one point there
59. 2:27were 14 different bills in the house to
60. 2:30address social security every one of
61. 2:32them was was different uh I have said
62. 2:35for a long time that I believe that we
63. 2:38need to guarantee that the people who
64. 2:39are on Social Security get every single
65. 2:41dime that they're supposed to get we
66. 2:43have to look at what we're going to do
67. 2:45what that system is going to be and I
68. 2:46don't know what it is what it's going to
69. 2:48be for younger people I have believed
70. 2:51that it would be better if they owned it
71. 2:54if they owned it themselves but whatever
72. 2:56we do we're going to have to sit down in
73. 2:59a address and there aren't many choices
74. 3:01about what you can
75. 3:02do you can lower uh the entitlements and
76. 3:07the most likely way to do that is the
77. 3:09way they did it back in the mid 80s and
78. 3:11that's raise the retirement age that's
79. 3:13not very popular but so we're going to
80. 3:15have to look at something like that at
81. 3:18some time more
82. 3:20unemployment I'm sorry you raise the
83. 3:23retirement age you're going to get more
84. 3:24unemployment because those people
85. 3:27they're dying to work longer and we
86. 3:28don't have to job for
87. 3:30well I think you know well I don't know
88. 3:33if you know but the the issue with
89. 3:36Social Security is we have an Ever
90. 3:38smaller number of people who are working
91. 3:41and an Ever growing number of people who
92. 3:43are retired that's just a fact it's not
93. 3:46a republican fact it's not a Democrat
94. 3:48fact it's just a fact you know we we
95. 3:51went from over 30 to workers for retiree
96. 3:56to 16 and now we're just over two
97. 3:58workers per retiree and it's getting
98. 4:00worse because my age is starting to
99. 4:04retire but and so we going to have to
100. 4:08address it there is no question about it
101. 4:10and my my point is is that when we
102. 4:13address it everything that we do we've
103. 4:16got to absolutely guarantee that people
104. 4:18who are drawing Social Security and been
105. 4:21counting on Social Security are going to
106. 4:22be able to get everything they were
107. 4:23expecting and Republicans and Democrats
108. 4:26it's a it's a going to be a tough
109. 4:29position to take politically you're
110. 4:31going to have to come together we have
111. 4:32to decide what we're going to do to
112. 4:33address it oh yes sir right here again
113. 4:35we're going to pay for it with inflation
114. 4:37that's what we're going to pay for it
115. 4:38we've got we we're spending creating
116. 4:41more money and we're manufacturing those
117. 4:44goods we're going to have a lot of
118. 4:45inflation you you absolutely right and
119. 4:48we're going to have by the way there's
120. 4:50no question that interest rates are
121. 4:52going to go up here shortly I think you
122. 4:53would agree with that even the Chinese
123. 4:55and the Japanese won't continue to loan
124. 4:57US money at these interest rates so we
125. 4:59have got a a giant problem and I wish I
126. 5:03had a magic wand coling but you know
127. 5:04that I don't yes
128. 5:10sir