'Meet the Press' transcript for Jan. 25, 2009

REP. BOEHNER:  Well, Republicans believe that we have a difficult economy. We believe that we need an economic rescue plan that helps American families and small businesses, and one that will work.  And right now, given the concerns that we have over the size of this package and all of the spending in this package, we don't think it's going to work.  And so if it's plan that I see today, put me down in the no column.

MR. GREGORY:  And Republicans, rank and file, will fall in line?

REP. BOEHNER:  I think a lot of Republicans will vote no, because they see this as a lot of wasteful Washington spending, padding the bureaucracy and doing nothing to help create jobs and preserve jobs.

MR. GREGORY:  But what about your constituents?  Look at this new Gallup poll that shows support for President Obama among Republicans--the overall number, 68 percent approval rating; 45 percent approval rating among Republicans as opposed to 28 percent who disapprove.  President Bush never enjoyed those numbers among Democrats.

REP. BOEHNER:  Listen, we, we've made it clear we want to work with the new president.  He's made clear he wants to work with us.  That's why we laid out our ideas at his invitation the other day.  And we want to continue to work with him to help fix this economy.  David, this isn't about Democrat or Republican at this point.  We have some serious problems in our economy.  And believe me, all of us want the president to succeed.  We want this plan to work.  Now, there's no real daylight between the president and Republicans on the Hill.  There may be some disagreement over how much spending or how much in the way of tax relief.  But at the end of the day, we want him to succeed because America needs him to succeed.

MR. GREGORY:  I should also note that I think the president did have--President Bush had high ratings among Democrats after 9/11, just to put that on the record.

Let's talk about the banking crisis.  You said this week--this is the bailout money to help banks in this country who are losing money in a very difficult situation.  You said we need an exit strategy from the bailout plan known as the TARP.  Why?

REP. BOEHNER:  Well, at some point we need to understand how we're going to, how we're going to preserve taxpayer funds, how we're going to begin to withdraw those funds at some point.  Understand that I voted for this plan back in late September because I thought there was a credit crisis in America, we needed more capital in the system.  But--and so I, I corralled votes and I took an awful lot of hits for it.  But I've been rather critical over the last three or four months in terms of how it was spent; the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability.  And now they want the second half of this money, no demonstrated need and no plan for what they're going to do with it.  And I just...

MR. GREGORY:  You say no demonstrated need; the banks are woefully undercapitalized.  Do you disagree with that?  You think they don't need money?

REP. BOEHNER:  The banks have, the banks have problems.  But the administration need to comes to us and say, "All right, here's the problem, and here's what we're going to propose to do with this extra $350 billion." And you know, in this whole debate, whether it's the troubled asset relief program or this economic recovery package, somebody has to be looking out for the taxpayers.  And I'm going to tell you what, Republicans are going to be there to look out for American taxpayers.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me turn to the issue of the executive order that the president signed to close down the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year.  Is that realistic?

REP. BOEHNER:  I don't believe so.  And I've got concerns about it.  I understand the problem with Gitmo, and, and the black eye that it's given us, but President Bush wanted to close down Gitmo, too.  So did Senator John McCain.  And the reason that Gitmo's still there is they couldn't determine, what do you do with these 270 prisoners?  Some of them, you might be able to release, but we've already found 61 of those that we released back on the battlefield.  You don't want to bring them into the United States, where all the sudden they have rights of U.S. citizens.  We have to remember, these are terrorists who, who have attempted to kill Americans.  And, and unilaterally saying we're going to close Gitmo in a year, without knowing how we're going to deal with them, where we're going to house them, how we're going to try them, I think keeps a campaign promise but may be irresponsible.

MR. GREGORY:  Do you think that the president is making America less safe in taking this step?

REP. BOEHNER:  We don't know where the prisoners are going to go, and, and--nor how they're going to be tried.  You know, if, if the liberals in America believe that Gitmo ought to go, then maybe we ought to just open Alcatraz and move those prisoners there.

MR. GREGORY:  Now it's a national park and not really suitable for prisoners, however.

REP. BOEHNER:  It's very secure.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me ask you, before you go, about the future of the Republican Party.  What is the way back?

REP. BOEHNER:  The way back is to be able to communicate with the American people about who we are and what our principles are.  You know, the principles I grew up with are the principles of the Republican Party, even though I grew up as a Democrat.  And I've got 11 brothers and sisters, my dad owned a bar. I've had every rotten job there was in America, but thankful that I had each of those jobs.  And, and you know, most Americans think that if you work hard, you play by the rules, you got a really good chance of getting ahead.  And, and I don't want our party to be the party of no.  I want our party to be the party of better ideas, better solutions.  There are issues, a lot of issues that Americans are concerned about, and I think as a political party we have to be willing to put out--either work with the administration, work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle or, if we disagree, then what's our better solution for the American people?  And at the end of the day, I do think we have some better solutions.  And over the coming months, I think the American people will see more of them.

MR. GREGORY:  And in the meantime, are you rooting for President Obama?

REP. BOEHNER:  I am, because we need him to succeed.  America needs him to succeed.  We, we are, we are facing the most difficult challenge that we've faced over the last 50 years.  It's important that, that America wins, and that means everybody in this town needs to work together to ensure that we help America win this fight that we're in.

MR. GREGORY:  Congressman Boehner, good luck to you in your work as well.

REP. BOEHNER:  Thank you.

MR. GREGORY:  Thank you very much.

Coming next, week one for the new president:  making his move on the economy, foreign policy and more.  Insights and analysis from our roundtable:  Tom Friedman, Stephen Hayes and Michele Norris, all here, only on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  We are back and joined by Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard, Tom Friedman of The New York Times and Michele Norris of NPR.

Welcome to all of you.  Glad to have you here.

MS. MICHELE NORRIS:  Good to be here.

MR. STEPHEN HAYES:  Good to be here.

MR. GREGORY:  So here was a cartoon that struck us from The Oregonian newspaper.  It's President Obama at his desk in the White House there, and you see all the stuff on the floor.  Here's the caption:  "He left me a very nice note, but he forgot to clean out his desk." Lots of problems.

Michele Norris, the economy is job one, and we've heard from Larry Summers and Congressman Boehner, these are tough issues.

MS. NORRIS:  And he laid it out just how tough they were.  I mean, I was struck listening to him doing his inaugural address, how somber the language was in, in really explaining to people that the worst is yet to come; saying it once, saying it twice...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. NORRIS:  ...saying it three times.  I mean, the difficulty that he has--that he faces now is that the "Yes we can" president has to convince the "No we won't" Republicans that they need to sign on to the stimulus package. He's got a lot of capital at this point.  He made that clear when he sort of exercised that great confidence in that room when he met with Republicans this week.  But there's a lot of negotiating that has to go on, and it, it--the, the focus on the stimulus package, the focus on infrastructure, the vulnerability that he has is, is the things that we just heard Congressman Boehner talk about.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. NORRIS:  Some of the social programs, in making good on some of those promises that he made throughout the campaign to focus on education and health care and some of these other social issues, and to funnel money to the cities.

MR. GREGORY:  And, Tom Friedman, there's also a psychological problem here, which is that the government is saying to consumers here in America, businesses in America and around the world, "We need you to do something you're uncomfortable with.  You know, you're doing the prudent thing now, you're saving money, you're not spending as much, you're not borrowing the way you used to, which got us into the mess, but we need you to do those things right now because we're in a lot of trouble."

MR. TOM FRIEDMAN:  Well, I think consumers understand, all voters and savers understand there is something new here.  We, we haven't been to this play before.  And I would say it's because this economic crisis combines four things at a scale we've just never seen:  We've never seen this much leverage from this many institutions, on a global basis, wrapped in this much complexity--derivatives these guys didn't understand when they were going up, let alone when they're going down--and it was all started in American.  Not Thailand or Korea or Mexico, where we can protect ourselves, but started here. And when it starts here, no one can protect yourself.  I tell you, you take this much leverage, wrap it in this much globalization, in this much complexity and start it in America, and grandma's investing advice doesn't apply.  Everyone who bought on the dips has gotten creamed.

MS. NORRIS:  Right.

MR. FRIEDMAN:  And that's why--I've said this before, I will say it again: This moment we're in right now reminds me of that moment in the movie "Jaws" where Roy Scheider first sees the great white shark and he walks up to the captain's cabin, his eyes wide with fear, and he says, "You're going to need a bigger boat." We're going to need a bigger boat.

MR. GREGORY:  And, Steve Hayes, to that point, not only is the boat already huge, $2 trillion worth of stimulus or bailout spending since February of 2008 if this package passes in February of 2009--in 12 months, $2 trillion--and there's more talk of more money to help the banks in the future. Conservatives may have to leave their conservative principles at the door here.

MR. HAYES:  Well, I think that the risk for the Obama administration at this point is that they buy this bigger boat and then buy all sorts of other smaller boats and give them to political interests.

MR. GREGORY:  Hm.

MR. HAYES:  And that, I think, is a concern, and you heard John Boehner talk about it.  And I think that is--when you're looking at the situation we're in, and I agree with Tom in his basic assessment of it, you're talking about fundamentally reorienting the relationship between the U.S. government and its citizens in terms of what the citizens are being asked to do.  And the fact that this happened under a Republican president, at least initially in terms of the bailouts, in terms of the TARP, you can take The Oregonian cartoon, actually, and say, "Yes, he left President Obama with a lot to do."

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MR. HAYES:  But he also, in, in effect, gave him tremendous cover with which to do it.  This is a Republican administration.  And you hear Obama administration representatives talk about the opportunity.  They keep using the word opportunity...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MR. HAYES:  ...to do the kind of big things that he campaigned on, and that's a problem for Republicans.

MR. GREGORY:  There are big challenges in the Middle East as well, and the president spoke about them with his new secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, at the State Department; a very symbolic move.  He goes to the State Department with the vice president and says, "Diplomacy is back."

And, Tom Friedman, when he spoke about the fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Israelis, wasn't a lot of distance there between how President Bush spoke about it and how President Obama speaks about it.  But time is running out. And you write this in your column this morning in The New York Times:  "We're getting perilously close to closing the window on a two-state solution, because the two chief window-closers--Hamas in Gaza and" the financial--sorry, "the fanatical Jewish settlers in the West Bank--have been in the driver's seats.  Hamas is busy making a two-state solution inconceivable, while the settlers have steadily worked to make it impossible." Enter President Obama.

MR. FRIEDMAN:  Well, you know, this is going to be an enormous challenge, because I think we are at a stage right now in the Arab-Israeli peace process, David, where only presidential leadership is going to make a difference.  I'm a huge fan of George Mitchell.  He did--he's been appointed now the Middle East special envoy.  I think he can set the table for a lot.  But ultimately, Obama is going to have to get involved if he really wants to break the deadlock, because we're in a very different situation right now.  The parties have never been more broken.  If you want to be a peace maker today, it's not the days of Henry Kissinger; you fly to three capitals, talk to three kings, dictators or prime ministers, you strike a deal.  Right now Hamas and Fatah on the Palestinian side is completely broken, you got to do nation-building between them.  Second thing you're going to have to do is bring Hamas somehow into a Palestinian national unity government, otherwise the Palestinians are not going to make a decision.  And lastly, you've got Iran lurking back there and Syria, so the next--or Secretary of State Clinton, the next president's going to have to think about how we bring them in or isolate them.  It's so much more complicated.  I don't believe it can be done without real presidential involvement, and that's going to be very hard for a president whose job one right now rightfully is focusing on nation-building in America, not nation-building in Palestine, Israel.

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