Transcript for Sept. 3

MR. CASEY: Tim, what you’ve got here is some, some Washington hot air and lecturing. Here, here are the facts. He just, he just completely misrepresented the facts. He, he said here today, as he did a week ago, that, that I didn’t make the statement I made on the pay raise until after the election when people were defeated. That is 100 percent wrong.

There’s only one person at this table who has made a commitment, or made a commitment when he was first elected to office never to take a pay raise and then he did, and it’s this guy right here. I never made that promise and never broke that promise. And on the issue of the state pay raise, I came out very clearly, long before Election Day in November ‘05 against it. And, and Rick Santorum when he was asked...

SEN. SANTORUM: You didn’t do anything when you could’ve stopped it.

MR. CASEY: When he was, when he was—hold on, Rick.

SEN. SANTORUM: You didn’t do anything when you could’ve stopped it.

MR. CASEY: When he was, when he, when he was asked about it, when he was asked about it...

SEN. SANTORUM: Why didn’t you try to stop it, Bob?

MR. CASEY: What—you never, you never took a position in it.

SEN. SANTORUM: Why didn’t you try to stop it? Why didn’t you try to stop it? You could’ve stopped it.

MR. CASEY: But, you know what?

SEN. SANTORUM: You could’ve—you, you know what you said?

MR. CASEY: Rick, you got to—you got to do your job as state treasurer.

SEN. SANTORUM: You said, you said to your, you said to your newspaper that you didn’t even ask about it. You didn’t even ask your lawyers what you could do. And then six months...

MR. CASEY: You have no idea what we didn’t ask about. Rick, there’s only one...

SEN. SANTORUM: That was, that was in the paper. You answered the reporter and the reporter asked you why didn’t you do anything? You said, “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t even ask about it.”

MR. CASEY: You know, you’re wrong about this.

SEN. SANTORUM: That is not—I’ll give you the quote. In fact, we’ll provide it for everybody here today.

MR. CASEY: You’re wrong about this. You didn’t take a position on the state pay raise.

SEN. SANTORUM: I’m not a state official, you are.

MR. CASEY: Oh. Oh, I see.

SEN. SANTORUM: You were in a position—you signed the pay raise checks. You had an opportunity to stop this pay raise.

MR. CASEY: It’s called following the law. Following the law.

SEN. SANTORUM: And you said that you were following the law that you say now is unconstitutional.

MR. CASEY: Following the law.

SEN. SANTORUM: You filed a brief, you filed a brief saying it was unconstitutional.

MR. CASEY: Following the law. You have a legal opinion about what it is.

Right.

SEN. SANTORUM: You filed a brief saying it was unconstitutional.

MR. CASEY: Let’s—following the law, Rick. It’s a new concept here.

SEN. SANTORUM: How can you say it’s following the law if you say it’s unconstitutional?

MR. RUSSERT: Let, let me, let me—Senator, let me raise, let me, let me raise the...

MR. CASEY: Why did you vote yourself a pay raise three times when you said to the people of Pennsylvania you would never do that?

SEN. SANTORUM: I voted three—I said to, to the Congressional District when I ran...

MR. CASEY: And then you voted against the minimum wage 13 times.

SEN. SANTORUM: When I, when I—and I voted for it 11--10 times. What, what I will tell you is that on the pay raise, yes. When I, when I got elected to Congress, I said I wouldn’t take the pay raise, and in fact I didn’t. And I wrote checks back to the treasury for four years. When I ran for the Senate I said I...

MR. CASEY: You...

SEN. SANTORUM: When I ran for the Senate I said I would accept the salary and accept the cost of living. That’s what I said, and I have done so every time. I’ve only voted for three in 16 years, a total of 6 percents pay raise.  You had a chance to stop this pay raise before it happened. You could’ve filed a suit. You could’ve gone after these folks who—and you didn’t. You didn’t say anything until October, a month before the election. Three months after the pay raise.

MR. RUSSERT: Ano—Senator.

MR. CASEY: Oh, now it’s a month before. I thought it was after. I thought it was after.

SEN. SANTORUM: I said you didn’t—you filed a brief after the election. You said nothing—you sent a press release a month...

MR. RUSSERT: We’ll look—all right, we’ll look at the transcript. To be continued.

SEN. SANTORUM: After.

MR. RUSSERT: Another issue that’s risen in this campaign, particularly in western Pennsylvania, is the issue of residency.

SEN. SANTORUM: Yeah.

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 8: Casey, Barbour, Rendell, roundtable, Brokaw Nov. 1: Tim Geithner, David Plouffe, roundtable Oct. 25: Cornyn, Schumer, Burnett, Sorkin, roundtable Oct. 18: Jarrett, Dodd, Kyl, Shriver, Podesta Oct. 11: Levin, Graham, McCaffrey, Myers, roundtable Oct. 4: Ambassador Susan Rice, roundtable Sept. 27: Bill Clinton, Paterson, Kyl, Webb Sept. 20: President Obama, Sen. Graham, Rep. Boehner, roundtable Sept. 13: Durbin, Cornyn, Dean, Gingrich, roundtable Sept. 6: Axelrod, roundtable Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: