McCain: 'A waste of taxpayers' dollars'

A rush transcript of the interview is below. 

JOE SCARBOROUGH, CO-HOST, 'MORNING JOE': We’ve got Sen. John McCain, and we can ask him. Let’s bring in now, Republican presidential nominee, Sen. John McCain.

Sen. McCain, all morning we’ve been showing some of the pork through tax extenders that was put into this bill last night. Please explain to Americans, and let’s put the list up again. You’ve got almost $200 million in this bill for tax breaks for Puerto Rican and Virgin Island rum producers, $128 million for people who make auto racing tracks, wool research, kids wooden arrows $6 million.

Here, we have what Warren Buffet’s calling our economic Pearl Harbor, and the Senate still can’t help themselves.  Why did these items have to be in this critical bill?

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, that’s just the way the system is working in Washington and the reason why it’s got to be fixed and it’s got to be changed. And no matter what the stakes are, you’ve got to stop this by starting to veto bills that come across the president’s desk. They can’t help themselves.

And if you like some of those pork barrel projects, look at some of the ones that Sen. Obama has proposed. Over $932 million worth of pork of barrel projects.

SCARBOROUGH:  You know, Senator, though, what’s so staggering is the fact that even before Obama was in the Senate, after 9-11, my God, 9-11, while Ground Zero was still smoldering, you all passed a bill to take care of it, to protect this country, and people used the 9-11 relief bill to put pork barrel projects in there.

It’s just-it’s insanity.

MCCAIN: It’s insanity, and it’s obscenity because it’s a waste of taxpayer’s dollars, and it goes on.  And until we stop it, until we get, frankly, a president who will say I’m going to veto those bills, I’m going to make the people famous that put them on there, famous-and by the way, Joe, you know that this problem has grown and grown and grown.

The last couple of years, they’ve had some restraint, but it will continue to grow, and it’s-it’s-it’s terrible.  And it really is corrupting because...

SCARBOROUGH:  The buck, though, stops...

(CROSSTALK)

SCARBOROUGH:  Go ahead.  I’m sorry, Senator.

MCCAIN:  The corruption in Washington is not the lobbyists.  It’s the system that allows the lobbyists to take advantage of these backroom deals, these pork barrel projects, these outrageous procedures that the Americans don’t know about.  You’ve got to fix the system.  Then the symptoms of it, I think, in a large degree, are taken care of.

SCARBOROUGH:  All right.  Senator, explain this to me.  When George W. Bush became president of the United States, we had a $105 billion surplus.  We have now seen that-that surplus go to a deficit.  We’ve going to have a $500 billion deficit year, a $5 trillion debt became a $10 trillion debt.

George W. Bush never vetoed a single spending bill while Rome was burning.  Why not?

MCCAIN: Because they believed that having the majority for a long time-not the last two years-that they didn’t want to harm the old boy cozy network that existed and cause these earmark spending to lurch completely out of control.  You remember they were literally auctioning off chairmanships of committees, and I and others fought tooth and nail against it, railed against it.

I was called the sheriff.  I was able to eliminate a lot of these projects, and there’s a handful of us that have been fighting and warning that this could be incredibly harmful to the Republican Party. 

We came to power in ‘94 to change Washington, and Washington changed us.

And there’s a sharp difference, a total difference between myself and President Bush on the issue of pork barrel and earmark and out-of-control spending and the growth of government without paying for it. Don’t forget that part.

SCARBOROUGH: No doubt about it. Let’s turn from the bill that was passed last night to what’s going to happen tonight. Sarah Palin’s going to be debating Joe Biden. Sarah has not done very well in some of these one-on-one interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson.

Do you believe-would you be willing to admit this morning that your campaign may not have handled Sarah Palin as well as they should have during the past month?

MCCAIN: No. I think we’ve handled her fine. I think the criticism and the attacks have been unprecedented.  She’ll be just fine.  She’ll do fine tonight.

Whenever she’s between her and the American people, she does just fine.  She’s experienced.  She’s knowledgeable.  She’s very strong person.  I’m proud of her record, and I’m proud of her.

MIKA BRZEZINSKI, CO-HOST, 'MORNING JOE':  Senator, it’s Mika Brzezinski here in New York, and we’ll be watching the debate tonight to see what happens.  I want to just ask you one final question, though, about the bill because I think given, especially what you’ve been just saying on our broadcast right now, why then didn’t you vote against a bill that is corrupting and stand up to pork and all this spending during an economic crisis that some say this-puts this country on the brink of-of economic disaster?

MCCAIN:  Because of what you just said, Mika, that this bill is putting us on the brink of economic disaster. There were plenty of other bills that I fought against, voted against-well, the bill to-you know, the Medicare prescription drug program, I was-I voted against it because it didn’t-because of the fact that it wasn’t paid for.  We’re laying the cost on to future generations of Americans.

I’ve fought against plenty of bills. I am proud of my work spending my campaign, coming back to Washington, getting the Republicans at the table which they were not, improving the bill, and I believe it will pass.

Sen. Obama phoned it in.

BRZEZINSKI: But if we’re going to have leadership through a crisis like this, and if we’re going to look to you for that leadership, don’t we have to stand up to the very things that are bringing Washington and, at this point, Wall Street, down?

MCCAIN: If you look at the Citizens for a Sound Economy, the National Taxpayers Union, the Citizens against Government Waste, I have been a hero to them because I have fought continuously, continuously against these.

Sen. Obama has never stood up to the leadership of his party on any issue. Not a one. And I fought the leadership of my party and I have had success. I saved the taxpayers $6.8 billion on a tanker deal that was-that was going to cost the taxpayers that much because of this cozy deal.  It ended up with people in jail. 

I investigated Jack Abramoff, the leading-and he’s now in jail. The leading lobbyist in Washington, I fought against his pork barrel spending.  And my record is very clear.  Sen. Obama never has. There’s a difference.

SCARBOROUGH: So Senator, of course, there’s an old saying that a week is a lifetime in politics.

MCCAIN:  Uh-huh.

SCARBOROUGH: The past two weeks have not been very good for you.  A new Time-CNN group of polls from battleground states show you losing ground in Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, Virginia.  What’s happened over the past two weeks?  Why did we go from a month where you had all the momentum, the wind was at your back, your poll numbers were going up, to the past two weeks where you have been dropping in just about every poll?

MCCAIN:  Well, first of all, Joe, you know very well that these are temporary things.  The fact is...

SCARBOROUGH:  Right.

MCCAIN:  ...  the focus was on fiscal we were facing. I understand that. And I’d there’s going to be ups and downs in political campaigns. I’m happy with where I am. I’m happy with where we’re going. We’re the underdog. I love being the underdog.  And we’re going to be just fine starting tonight with Sarah Palin’s performance. And I’m confident that as the polls bounce up and down, we’re going to be up late on election night.

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