'Meet the Press' transcript for April 19, 2009

MS. EASTON:  That is the largest drop, the steepest drop in the history since we've been releasing this issue.

MR. GREGORY:  Let's actually refer to that more specifically.  This is from the, the cover piece...

MS. EASTON:  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  ...out of Fortune magazine that talks about economic performers of the, of the Fortune 500.  Last year the worst economic performance in the 55-year history of, of the Fortune 500 list, biggest 500 companies, earnings dropped 84.7 percent, as you just said, from the previous year, from $645 billion to $98.9 billion.  It's the largest ever one-year decline.

MS. EASTON:  So while things are--there are signs, and as, as President Obama says in our issue, you know, there are signs of some stabilizing, but there are a lot of risks to this economy still.  And it's--I think people have to understand that this is a long haul, and the, the key to this long haul is the banking system...

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

MS. EASTON:  ...and the recovery of the banking system.  And I find--and what's happening is that Barack Obama has--is facing a very difficult political issue on that.  And we saw that in his Georgetown speech.  He needs banks to come back.  He needs their profitability.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. EASTON:  He needs them to lend.  But he's also got the liberal wing of his party saying, "Oh, you know, we--they're too profitable now." So you saw him spend a lot of time in this speech dwelling on...

MR. GREGORY:  But it's not just the left.  It is the--populism on the left and the right...

MS. EASTON:  Right.  That's--yes.

MR. GREGORY:  ...Steven Pearlstein, that says, "Hey, wait a minute.  I'm still losing jobs, I'm worried about my job.  And wait a minute, the bankers, we've given them hundreds of billions of dollars, they're profitable again in the first quarter?" How does that compute?  Is that not a political risk for their recovery effort?

MR. PEARLSTEIN:  It is.  And it's, it's always been the hard thing about this financial rescue thing.  You know, we can't, we can't rescue the economy without rescuing the banking system, and you can't rescue the banking system without rescuing banks.  And people got to get over it, you know.  First of all, we didn't give them the money, as Harold points out, we lent them the money.  And some of them want to pay it back.  And in the meantime we're earning interest.  So we didn't give it to them.  But we ought to really--you know, if the banks are getting healthy, we should--that's a good thing for us. And we've got to get over this thing, "Well, if it's good for them, it's, it's bad for us." We are all in this together.  We own the--part of the banks now, so as shareholders maybe we would be...

MR. GREGORY:  Can I...

MR. PEARLSTEIN:  ...be cheering the fact that they made a profit.

MR. GREGORY:  I want to follow up on one point, this question of recovery. We know that unemployment is something that lags.  So if the recession were to end, say this fall, as some forecasters think it will, when do you think unemployment would actually peak?

MR. PEARLSTEIN:  Not till the end of next year at the earliest.

MR. GREGORY:  So it could take an additional year...

MR. PEARLSTEIN:  Yes, sir.

MR. GREGORY:  ...of job losses.  That's pretty frightening.

MR. STENGEL:  And then people--by the way, we call it a lagging indicator. You lose your job, you're not a lagging indicator.  You are in serious trouble.

MR. GREGORY:  Sure.

MR. STENGEL:  And the thing is...

MR. PEARLSTEIN:  You're a present indicator.

MS. EASTON:  Right.

MR. STENGEL:  Well, that's right, you're a present indicator.  And the point is, is we're, we're thinking, "Oh, the economy will be healthy but unemployment will go up to 10 percent." I mean, does anybody here at this table think it's not going to go up to 10 percent?

MR. PEARLSTEIN:  No.

MR. STENGEL:  Everybody does.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

REP. FORD:  You know, the interesting thing about your numbers as you, as you showed, from $650 to $84 billion, $85, I can't remember the exact numbers, that was not a function of taxes being too high.  That was a function of revenue going down and incomes being too low.  So as much as this conversation about taxes is relevant, what is more relevant is how do we drive incomes up? How do we create more jobs?  And I think a legitimate argument--and I hope that people stop questioning President Obama's intentions here in calling him a socialist and suggesting he's making the nation unsafe--I think Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, said it best.  His intention shouldn't be a question.  I never questioned President Bush's intentions.  We can debate the policy.  And his policies, I think there's a legitimate debate that's under way.  I happen to think the investments in these places will drive incomes up...

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

REP. FORD:  ...and make the Fortune 500 list more attractive next year than it was this year.

MR. GREGORY:  I just--we've only got a couple minutes left, and I want to move from the economy to another big issue this week, Congressman Armey, and that was the release by the administration of these so-called torture memos. These were memos that were produced by the Justice Department giving a legal opinion about how terrorism suspects could be interrogated; the use of techniques like waterboarding, which the Obama administration says is torture, stress positions, slaps, the discussion of, of the use of insects, etc.  A lot of controversy, Congressman Armey, about the release of these memos by the administration.  Former CIA director Michael Hayden wrote this in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal:  "The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy.  Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11th, 2001." Do you agree?

REP. ARMEY:  Yeah.  It--clearly it was a political act, and I think one thing I would hope that President Obama could finally get to the point where he can put George Bush away.  He's retired, his time is over.  Forget about--why are you taking smacking George Bush around now?  Look for the future.  But as a strategic decision with respect to the security of the United States it was, frankly, a grotesquely irresponsible move and it's going to diminish our ability to maintain better security.

MR. GREGORY:  Rick Stengel:

MR. STENGEL:  Congressman, you--but you--he's basically saying let bygones be bygones.  He's not prosecuting anybody.  He could prosecute people.  He could prosecute the former CIA director.  I mean, he's very Mandelalike in the sense that he's saying let the past be the past and let us move into the future.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. EASTON:  But there's still...

REP. ARMEY:  So then why release the report, if not to take a shot at President Bush, former President Bush?

MS. EASTON:  And it...

MR. GREGORY:  But isn't it bigger than taking a shot at President Bush?

REP. ARMEY:  That's...

MR. GREGORY:  I mean, you've got--Harold, you've got the fact that Pat Leahy in the Senate is saying we need some kind of truth commission here to find out exactly what it was done and why it was done.  I mean, look, this is a bigger debate about how we treat America's enemies.  Is that a debate worth having, or is it just looking back?

REP. FORD:  Look, I think the president said it best at the, at the summit with some of the Latin American and South American leaders.  He said look, the past is the past, let's move forward.  He's talked about moving along the, the--with Cuba.  It's important to note, as much as we want to do that, if this debate took place in Cuba right now half of us would be arrested if we disagreed with the government.  So dissent is still not encouraged.  I'd say this.  After September the 11th we asked men and women in this country serving in our military and our intelligence agencies to go out and find bad guys. I'm always a little hesitant afterwards when we try to judge the kinds of things they did.  That being said, we are America and we got to live up to a certain standard, and I think what the president did was strike the right balance in how they went about dealing with this.

MR. GREGORY:  Nina, you were going to make a point.

MS. EASTON:  I was just going to say that he clearly wanted to put this behind him, or behind the country, by releasing them.  And the question is, did he, or are there more reverberations?  Is it going to harm the CIA?  Is the Hill going to investigate the authors of those legal memos, which is the next shoe to drop in this?

MR. GREGORY:  Right.

MS. EASTON:  And so while he says there aren't going to be prosecutions, there could very well be John Conyer's investigating the authors of these legal memos on, on these--and I just wanted to point out one thing.  Dennis Blair, the director of National Intelligence, said in, in one very telling quote, "It's very easy to look back on this safe, warm April 2009 day and second guess a lot of these decisions."

MR. GREGORY:  Mm-hmm.

Fifteen seconds, Congressman.  Would Democrats in power have treated terrorism suspects differently?

REP. ARMEY:  I don't know.  I mean, quite frankly, it's a technical question. It's a question of very desperate circumstances and high anxiety.  It's very difficult to tell who would've done what.

MR. GREGORY:  OK.

REP. ARMEY:  But I do think forget about it.  But again, this was, in my estimation, strictly a political action and it was irresponsible.

MR. GREGORY:  We're going to leave it there.  Thank you all very much.  We're going to continue our discussion with Congressman Armey and Harold Ford Jr. online, ask them some questions our viewers have submitted via e-mail and Twitter.  Watch our MEET THE PRESS Take Two Web extra.  It's up this afternoon on our Web site.  Plus, look for updates from me throughout the week all on mtp.msnbc.com.

And we'll be right back with an important program note about next week's guest.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  That's all for today.  Next week, an exclusive interview with King Abdullah of Jordan just days after his first White House meeting with the president.  That's right here next week.  If it's Sunday, it's MEET THE PRESS.

More from NBC News broadcasts Struggling species gets helping hand Astronaut over the moon for daughter’s birth   Panel examines cancer screening confusion Report: Vet aid program riddled with fraud Knox speaks out, calls victim a ‘friend’ McCain says he enjoyed Palin’s book   Polluters, watch out for 'eco-cops'   Follow on Twitter: Making a Difference

MORE FROM MEET THE PRESS

Meet the Press Section Front

Nov. 22: Senate roundtable, Brinker, Snyderman Nov. 15: Clinton, Duncan, Gingrich, Sharpton 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 Meet the Press Section Front   Add Meet the Press headlines to your news reader: