MTP Transcript for Oct. 15

MR. RUSSERT: Congressman Kennedy, one of the issues in this campaign has been your relationship with George Bush. Here’s the National Journal: “At his [Minnesota] GOP convention speech ... Kennedy never mentioned President Bush.” And yet the Congressional Quarterly says that during your tenure in Congress, you supported the president 92 percent of the time. Here’s a news clip which talks about “Kennedy has been considered a strong Bush ally since joining the House in 2000, according to Minnesota political analysts, who say they are surprised by his ads playing down a party affiliation and making no mention of the president. ...

“‘This is a party guy,’ said political scientist Lawrence R. Jacobs of the University of Minnesota. ‘He ran in a district that leaned pretty heavily Republican, and the way to win in that district is to run as a loyal Republican. Now he’s running in a statewide race where the president’s approval ratings are poor. ... It’s an attempt to reinvent himself.’”

Do you belive that George Bush is a great president?

REP. KENNEDY: I belive history is going to make that decision. This is a guy who’s human, like all of us. Has made mistakes, we’ve all made mistakes. You know, there are things...

MR. RUSSERT: Are you running as a George Bush Republican?

REP. KENNEDY: I’m running as Mark Kennedy. I’m running at a guy who believes strongly in values that I was raised with in Minnesota, the vote’s based on what’s best for Minnesota families.

MR. RUSSERT: But 92 percent of the time, you voted for President Bush.

REP. KENNEDY: There—you know, I don’t where they get those statistics, but I can tell you—you know, they, they only take one out of 10 votes. But I can tell you there are things I disagree with the president on, whether it be No Child Left Behind that I voted against my first year in Congress, or ANWR. There are things that I agree with him on, that you get prosperity for our kids not by raising taxes but by keeping it low, and that we keep our families safe by being on the offense in the war on terror.

But let me just address—we keep hearing Amy Klobuchar walking away from what she said before and trying to mislead people. She comes out against oil subsidies. At the state fair debate, she said that she was for the same energy bill that I voted for. She comes out and says in, in an ad that she’s going to save $90 billion, $90 billion, by having government-run prescription drug program on a program that only costs 60 billion. How do you save 90 billion on a program that costs 60 billion? And let me tell you, on Social Security, it’s going to be a lot more than a hard sell for me to be raising the retirement age. That is not the solution. I will oppose that. That is just one of many differences on Social Security where she wants to give Social Security to illegal immigrants, which would put billions of dollars at risk on a program that is already strained.

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