Matt Lauer Fawns Over Clinton: ‘Are You Surprised at How Good You Are?’; Allows Him to Bash GOP
In a softball interview with Bill Clinton on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Matt Lauer gushed over the former president's Global Initiative: “One of the things that's always impressed me….you're really good in a closed room. I mean you get people to commit to things, to invest money…. Are you surprised at how good you are at that?” At the same time, Lauer allowed Clinton to slam Republicans as stubborn ideologues when he asked: “Mitch McConnell came out on that and basically said, 'We've thrown a big wet blanket over the private sector economy and now we're threatening to raise taxes on top of it'….What's your reaction to that?” Clinton replied: “…the Republicans in Washington always say the same thing, any tax on any upper income person is bad because they're job creators. It's an insult to those people. They don't mind being asked to pay their fair share.” Lauer lamented the current state of politics and became nostalgic for the Clinton era, giving the former president sole credit for accomplishing goals pushed by Republicans: “You got things done. You know, you reformed Social Security. You balanced the budget. What's different today? What's changed the dynamic?” Clinton used the opportunity to again bash the GOP: “In 1995, we didn't get much done because they shut the government down twice trying to force me to agree to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency and eliminate the Department of Education-” Lauer interjected: “And then they decided they had to work with you.” Clinton replied: “That's right, because the American people made their preferences clear. ” Lauer followed up: “But clearly there is a changed dynamic, it's more politics now it seems, they put politics ahead of the good of the country. When you travel around the world as part of your role for the global initiative, do you find a similar dynamic in other countries all around the world?” Clinton argued: “They're much more interested in what works. This is the only major country that I go to where people just take a position and it doesn't matter if there's no facts to support it.” Almost as an afterthought, Lauer wondered: “Is it true of Democrats and Republicans by the way? Do both play politics equally?” Predictably, Clinton claimed: “…mostly this is the anti-government extreme position that you see on this tax thing….It scares people around the world. They think Americans have basically voted for a government that's ideological and too uprooted from facts and that bothers them.” In response to Lauer's question about how good he was “in a closed room” raising money, Clinton proclaimed: “What works in bringing the economy back is cooperation. What works in getting on the news programs and in politics is conflict. Conflict is great for politics, great for news coverage, lousy for economic policy. That's what the problem is. We got to go back to a cooperative environment where everybody kicks in a little.” Here is a full transcript of the September 19 interview: 7:00AM ET TEASE: MATT LAUER: The next big showdown. President Obama set to unveil his long-term plan to bring down the national debt this morning. But Republicans are already saying some of his ideas are dead on arrival. What does Bill Clinton think? The former president speaks out in an exclusive live in-studio interview. 7:01AM ET TEASE: LAUER: Also, as we mentioned, former President Bill Clinton is here in our studio this morning. He's bringing together some of the world's top minds this week to try to figure out how to jump-start the global economy and the struggling jobs market. We're going to talk to him about that and also get his take on the 2012 presidential race, as well as some other topics as we discuss the Clinton Global Initiative. 7:09AM ET SEGMENT: LAUER: Now back to politics and a morning exclusive. What will it take to turn the nation's struggling economy around? We're joined now by the former President of the United States Bill Clinton. Mr. President, it's good to see you. BILL CLINTON: Thank you, Matt. LAUER: Sixth Global Initiative, you're getting that underway here in New York this week and you're going to bring together the top minds in the world, in the world of business. I guess we would all want to be a fly on the wall and we would want to pull up a chair because one of the things you're going to be discussing is jobs, jobs, jobs. Are you going to come up with or are you going to hear ideas this week that you think can dramatically help the problem? CLINTON: I tell you yes and no, that is, keep in mind, we work all over the world. LAUER: Uh-huh. CLINTON: And there are literally hundreds of millions of people looking for jobs all over the world. This is a global meltdown. And the crash occurred in 2008, about four months before the President took office, and if you go back several hundred years, on average, when the financial system collapses, it takes longer for countries to get out of it, at least five years. So we'll be talking about how to speed it up in areas where that's occurred and in areas where you didn't have it, how to speed it up. Yes, I think there'll be a lot of good ideas. LAUER: Cynics are going to – listen to what you're saying right there, Mr. Clinton, and they're going to say, 'Five years, he's saying it's going to take four or five years. Conveniently that takes us right through this election and we should have patience.' And I know you're looking at history. CLINTON: Well, conveniently that's the truth. When the Japanese did it and they had a lot more stimulus spending than we did because they had more money, because they hadn't gone back – they didn't double the debt before it happened, as the previous administration in Congress did – it still took them ten years to get out of it because they didn't reform their banking system. I think the quickest thing we could do to move out of this would be to clear this mortgage debt more quickly. That is, the – everybody that's got an underwater mortgage where the mortgage is worth more than the house, either write the mortgage down or lengthening it out, if they still couldn't make the payment, give the people the option to convert it into rent and that to cover the taxes and utilities and the maintenance instead of dumping more houses on the market. There are lots of variations on that. If you did that and you cleaned up the banks' balance sheets, then I think there's enough money in the banks and in corporate treasuries to get this economy going again. We could beat the five-year period but would have to do something on the houses. LAUER: You talk about corporate treasuries. You sit down in your role these days and you meet with some of the biggest business leaders in the world and particularly in this country. By all accounts, businesses, corporations in this country are sitting on about $2 trillion in cash. CLINTON: That's correct. LAUER: And they're not spending it. They're not hiring people. When you talk to those leaders, what is the one reason they give you that they're afraid to spend that money and hire people? CLINTON: Well, first, they don't give me just one reason. They say demand is weak, they're not sure that if they do hire more people, the products they make will be sold. Most of them believe that we should have a more competitive tax system in America. No one complains about the price of labor. No one complains about the quality of labor. All the corporations that I talked to said the American workers are highly productive, they work like crazy, they're more flexible. They're – they like that. So what I think what we have to do is to find ways, sector by sector, to increase sales for them and to make our business taxes more competitive. There's some businesses that pay as little as 15% on their income and others that pay the full 35% and we need to level it out so everybody pays about the same. LAUER: You talk about increasing the markets and getting people to buy things, so let's talk about the average consumer, okay? You've got people out there hearing terms like 'double-dip recession,' that we're back in the dumps in the economy and the average consumer says this is a time to hunker down, 'I am going to cut to the bone. I'm not going to spend.' If you were still president, how would you convince the average consumer out there that they've got to help us by spending our way out of this recession? CLINTON: Well, first we can't completely spend our way out of the recession. The problem –
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on September 19, 2011. Filed under