Transcript for February 26

MR. RUSSERT: But people have sensed an evolution in your philosophy and your governing style. Tony Quinn, who covers politics in California wrote it this way, “Every new year seems to bring on a new Arnold Schwarzenegger. In his first State of the State address in January of ‘04, he was the Arnold who would ‘blow up the boxes’ and remake state government. That idea fizzled, and in 2005, he proclaimed the “year of reform.” This notion became the four ballot measures stomped on by voters in the November special election. So in 2006, Schwarzenegger is back with another ‘New Arnold,’ this time as the great empire builder.”

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, and you know, I’m very happy about that because when I came into office, I made it very clear that we have to recover, reform and rebuild. And this is exactly the agenda that I go after. And this is exactly what needs to be done in California. Like I said, not every single thing you do is going to be a success, but we have had much more successes than we had failures. It is an important thing here. I’m happy about what we have accomplished, bringing the state back, bringing businesses back to the state again and having more trade and the kind of relationships that we have, how well people are doing in California. They’re spending more money on education than ever before. More money on transportation. We have funding for the first time, Proposition 42, that we, as I said, put money in the rainy-day fund, paying down our debt. So there’s all kinds of wonderful things that are happening.

And also another thing I’m very proud of is the environmental things that we are doing. You know, the 25 million acres of conservancy that we put aside, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which is the greatest preservation of land in the history of California. The hydrogen highway that we’re building. Every 20 miles, a hydrogen fueling station, so that eventually we can have hydrogen-fueled cars driving there. You know, sending tough standards with, you know, greenhouse gases to reduce the greenhouse gases. All of those things I’m very proud of.

So I think that we did an incredible job for the state and you know, there’s, of course, also politics in there and the whole thing. It’s election year, everyone is trying to attack you. Then you have opponents that are trying to take your job away so they say things. But you know how this all works. I mean, for me what is important is that I enjoy fixing California. That’s what I was elected to do, and that’s what I’m doing.

MR. RUSSERT: But, Governor, your critics who are not partisan will point out that you said you’d get control of the spending and the budgetary problems and now you’re—want to spend more money, and you want to be the “Green Arnold” and the “Arnold the Builder.” This is from the Los Angeles Times. “Governor Schwarzenegger’s latest $125 billion budget plan would have state government spending $6.4 billion more than it takes in during the next fiscal year. ‘That moves the state in the wrong direction,’ says nonpartisan legislative analyst Elizabeth Hill.”

And this is from a fellow Republican, you know him well, Mike Spence. This is what Mr. Spence has to say, and I’ll read it for you. “One year out, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared: ‘We don’t have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem.” But what has he done about it?  Within two months of failing to persuade voters to ‘live within our means’ in last year’s special election, the governor has now raised the white flag of surrender to the spending lobby by proposing a $222 billion infrastructure plan which would include a record $68 billion in bonds, fee increases and $2.6 billion operating deficit this year, another $29 billion of red ink projected for the following four years. It seems we still have a spending problem.”

Which led the Orange County Register to write this simple line in an editorial, and here it is: “Does the governor have any principles?” What happened?

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, I have very strong principles, as you know. First of all, let me tell you that those people that are criticizing my infrastructure deal and my strategic growth plan are people that are a little bit confused about the difference between spending and investing. You know, when you go to those people—like, I went to one of my critics and I said, “What are you criticizing?” And he says, “Well, you’re spending too much money, $222 billion dollars.” And I said, “Well, let me ask you something.” I said, “How much money do you make a year?” He says, “150,000 dollars.” I say, “How much did you pay for your house?” He said, “A million dollars.” So I said, “So, did you pay cash?” And he says, “No.” I say, “How did you pay for it?” He says, “I borrowed. I got a loan.” I say, “Ah. You got a loan,” I said, “because it’s wise to pay off your loan over a period of 30 years rather than paying. You invested in your future.” And that’s exactly what we are doing in California.

MR. RUSSERT: But what happened when...

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: We are investing in the future.

MR. RUSSERT: What happened...

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: It’s not spending. Spending we’ve reduced. Remember what I said. We have cut down the structural deficit by 75 percent. It was expected to be $16.5 billion dollars. We’re now at $4.7 billion dollars. That is great progress, Tim, no matter what anyone says. This is just a few people. Remember one thing: 80 percent of the Republicans are with me, and it’s the old line that Ronald Reagan said, “If 80 percent of people are your friends, then you don’t have 20 percent enemies, you have 80 percent friends.” So I mean, that’s really the bottom line.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, the latest poll says—the latest poll says 66 percent Republicans. You’ve got to get it up to 80.

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Well, but my—no, no, it was 80 percent at the polls. But, I mean, we’re—like I said, we’re not getting involved in the numbers of the polls. The key thing is you know and everyone knows that we need to rebuild California. Our California has not been built in 30 years. And what I said in my speech to the Republican—at the Republican Convention was, “I’m not going to pass this burden on to the next generation.” We should start building now, we need more space, we need the universities built out. We need more classrooms, we need 40,000 new classrooms. We need to fix our levees, we need to fix our highways. All of those things need to be done that have been neglected for years, and I want to do that because that’s what I promised the people of California.

MR. RUSSERT: But it is spend, spend, spend.

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: No, it’s invest, invest, invest. Tim, you’re wrong. It’s invest.

MR. RUSSERT: But you did say—you did say that you’ve realized that it’s a lot tougher to balance the budget than you thought when you were campaigning for office.

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I say this today again. The key thing to know is that you have—when you’re in the private sector, you make a decision and you’re the only one that makes the decision. In a public sector—and this is one of the things you—I leaned when I got into this job—that you have 120 legislators and everyone has their own opinions. And so they now come in and tell you what they think is the right way to go and how we should cut. So if the Republicans say cut, cut, cut; if the Democrats say, raise tax, raise taxes, so you have to meet somewhere in the middle, and it’s a very challenging thing. I mean, just imagine that every question that you ask me, you have 120 people sitting here saying, “No, no, wait a minute. Ask it this way. No, do it this way. No, no, the question is too long. No, no, it’s too long for this, it’s the wrong way.” You—it’s very difficult to operate this way. But, it is doable and I’ve learned how to be more patient, I’ve learned how to work together with the Democrats and the Republicans, and we’re going to get the job done. But the fact is that we’ve cut down the spending and we are paying down debt, and we’re putting money in the rainy day fund, and we are now economically strong enough to build and rebuild California.

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