'Meet the Press' transcript for June 14, 2009

MR. GREGORY:  But it sounds conditional.  You've waited this long in office, six months, before any level of engagement, now you're still saying...

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  No, no, no, no.

MR. GREGORY:  ...if a decision is made.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  No, no, no, no, no.  Look, look, look.

MR. GREGORY:  What causes the decision to go forward?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Look, the decision has been made to talk.  We've, we have put--the P5 plus 1 have laid on the table a proposal to the Iranians saying we are ready to talk.  And we've indicated we'll fully participate in that. We're ready to participate, we're ready to talk.

MR. GREGORY:  But what's the message?  What's the bottom line?  Is this president going to be the one who allows Iran to go nuclear, or is he the president who stopped it?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  He's going to be the president that stopped it, God willing.  We are not going to allow Iran to go nuclear any more than the rest of the world is going to allow it to go nuclear.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me ask you about another flash point this morning, and that is North Korea.  New sanctions in place, the ability for the international community to interdict vessels coming from North Korea and look for nuclear materials.  The North has said this is a provocative step, has said it would be an act of war.  What now?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  We're going to enforce the U.N. resolution.  The U.N. resolution is probably the most unifying thing that's been done.  Look, this is--North Korea is a very destabilizing element in East Asia.  Everyone now realizes that.  The Chinese realize it, the Russians realize it.  They've gone further than they've ever gone in joining us on real sanctions against North Korea, and it is important that we make sure those sanctions stick.  And those sanctions prohibit them from exporting or importing weapons, they allow interdiction of their ships under certain circumstances, they, they--all host countries are, are to deny them portage if in fact they are asked to be boarded and they will not allow that to be happened, if there's good reason to believe they're carrying weapons.  And so this is a matter of us now keeping the pressure on.  Again...

MR. GREGORY:  Even if they say it's an act of war.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Even...

MR. GREGORY:  Even if they say it's a provocation of war.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Even if they say an act of war.  They say a lot of things. This is a fellow and this is a regime that says an awful lot of things.  And the truth of the matter is that it is a destabilizing force in the region. There is a coalescing of that conclusion on the part of the Chinese, the Russians, Japanese, South Koreans, Americans like never before.  And we are...

MR. GREGORY:  What does he want?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  God only knows what he wants.  You know, there's all kinds of discussions whether this is about succession, wanting his, his son to succeed him, whether or not he's looking for respect, whether or not he really wants a nuclear capability to threaten the region.  There's a whole range of them.  We can't guess his motives, we just have to deal with the reality that a North Korea that is either proliferating weapons and/or missiles or a North Korea that is using those weapons or has them mounted on missiles is a serious danger and a threat to the world and particularly in East Asia.

MR. GREGORY:  What is the administration doing right now to negotiate the release of those two journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who are over there now, sentenced to prison?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  I don't think it's appropriate nor in the interest of the journalists for me to discuss that.

MR. GREGORY:  But is there activity under way, is there a negotiation under way?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  No, no comment on that.

MR. GREGORY:  All right.  I want to come back to the issue of foreign policy, a lot to discuss there, but I want to go to the other big test for this administration, and that is, of course, the economy.  You are in charge of monitoring the stimulus.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  That's right.

MR. GREGORY:  Eight hundred billion dollar stimulus.  A hundred days after it was signed, the president said 150,000 jobs had been created or saved.  Can you explain where that number comes from?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Sure.  Yes, look, there's an econometric model that, that economists have been using for decades to correlate the economic circumstances of the nation with the creation of jobs.  It is a model known as question, it's a model the Council of Economic Advisers have used to come up with that 150,000 jobs.  But in fact--and by the way, I think we're going to create 600,000 jobs in the next 100 days, because now this thing is beginning to roll out.  We actually have let these contracts, the governors with--who have money for road contracts and so on, they're now just putting spades in the ground, just hiring people.  And so I don't know anybody who's argued with the model that we've used.  But the key here for us is not whether or not we're going to argue about how many jobs, you know, there, there are out there, it's whether or not are we in fact producing employment for people?  And it's undeniable.

MR. GREGORY:  But--well, but that's an important point.  You say people aren't arguing about that; in fact, they are.  I mean, you're suggesting that this is an accepted model.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Well, no, I...

MR. GREGORY:  Your own economic adviser said this on Tuesday:  "[Jared] Bernstein, Biden's economic adviser, said in an interview that the president's citation of [saving or creating] 150,000 [jobs] is `an estimate' based partly on what the economy would look like in the absence of the stimulus package. But Bernstein said he could not break down how many of those jobs were created vs.  saved.  `That's a division we're not able to make at a level of accuracy we're comfortable with.' he said." And now you're talking about another 600,000 jobs.  Should America just accept that level of progress?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Look--yeah.  No, no, they shouldn't.  Look, whether this is, whether this was 147,000 jobs or 158,000 jobs is not the relevant point. Look, let me put it this way.  Prior to us taking office, the job loss for the month was over 700,000 jobs.  It's been over 600,000.  Since we've taken office the job loss has dropped now to 343,000 jobs; below other people's estimates, below the consensus estimate.  Can I claim credit that all of that's due, due to the recovery package?  No.  But it clearly has had an impact.

MR. GREGORY:  But the point of the stimulus was it would stop the unemployment picture from getting worse, right?  Wasn't that the claim?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  And it has.

MR. GREGORY:  It has?  Well, here...

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  It's not getting worse.

MR. GREGORY:  But here's the reality, and that is...

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Relative.

MR. GREGORY:  ...that when this report was issued by your economic adviser...

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Yes.

MR. GREGORY:  ...and Dr. Romer from the White House, the assertion was that you could keep unemployment at 8 percent and then it would go down after that. In fact, it's now at 9.4 percent.  Was it oversold?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  No, look.  No.  What we did is we took the econometric models that were used by businesses as well as academics.  At the time no one realized how bad the economy was.  The projections, in fact, turned out to be worse.  But it was--we, we, we took the mainstream model as to what we thought and everyone else thought the unemployment rate would be.  But the fact of the matter is the--I don't think anyone can dispute the unemployment rate would be considerably higher, but for--at least 150,000 jobs higher, but for this economic stimulus package.

MR. GREGORY:  Right.  But the, but this package was sold on the premise that it would in fact keep unemployment at 8 percent.  It's exceeded that...

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

MR. GREGORY:  ...with the recovery plan.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  It wasn't sold on that.  It was sold on it would create...

MR. GREGORY:  That's what the report said, Mr. Vice President.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  ...or--no, it said it would--what would happen was it would save or create jobs.  It's doing that.  It is doing that.  Everyone guessed wrong, at the time the estimate was made, about what the state of the economy was at the moment this was passed.  Now, we're going to recalibrate this in terms of what we've inherited, what in fact is going on out there. But look, the bottom line is that jobs are being created that would not have been there before.  All you've got to do is go into New York City.  There's 14,000 teachers working who got their, got their notices.  Go with me up to New Flyer bus company up in Minnesota, come--I mean, there--it's--throughout the country, it's creating jobs.

MR. GREGORY:  Regardless, though, the economy is worse off with or without this stimulus plan that this administration expected.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  The economy was worse off when we made the assessment than anyone thought it was.  The economy is actually getting better, things are getting better.  We have a long, long way to go.  But now you see what's happening.  We're having a, a situation where housing is starting to improve, where lending is starting to come forward, where we have a situation where we've gained some control of the automobile companies who otherwise would have had to been liquidated in terms of them staying in business and having a prospect of growing.  So I think if you ask out there, look--and look at what the, you know, these measures of confidence in the economy are.  Everyone feels mildly better about where the economy's going.

MR. GREGORY:  One more point about the stimulus, and that is you said when this thing was being debated, most of it would get out the door right away, $800 billion.  And yet just this week there were reports about the fact that only 6 percent of that money has been spent so far.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  No, I don't know who said...

MR. GREGORY:  Where are the projects?

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  ...we're going to get $800 billion out the door in 100 days.  We have over 2,000 projects approved.  We have now a situation where you have people--you're going to see in the next--and let me--this is an important point.  You let a contractor build a highway.  It's $42 million, like I was just--did one in the state of Kansas, $42 million dollars.  Now what's happened?  The governor, the governor gets that approval.  What's he doing?  Puts it out to bid, competitive bid.  It took somewhere between a month and three months to get those bids back.  Now the spades are in the ground.  Now it's working.  That's why we're confidently going to predict that we will increase fourfold what went--and now $150 billion--$140 billion has been obligated now.  But obligation requires, then, the states to go forward and get the contracting done according to the rules that they have within the state for competitive bidding.

MR. GREGORY:  This administration, this president has said we're going to get America's fiscal house in order.

VICE PRES. BIDEN:  Yes.

MR. GREGORY:  And yet the only negative ratings this president has are in two areas, the budget deficit and controlling spending.  Here's the USA Today/Gallup Poll from just this week.  And you see the budget deficit numbers, 48 percent disapproval; controlling spending, 51 percent disapproval. And here's why.  Between $800 billion stimulus, bailouts, a promise to do away with the Bush tax cuts, there is a projection of $7 trillion in deficits over 10 years.  And then this week the president says, "Look, we're going to be like a typical American family.  We're going to start paying for things as we go," only there are big exceptions to that to the tune of $2.5 trillion over 10 years.  This was the Washington Post editorial on Friday:  "The president's self-congratulatory back-patting about fiscal rectitude is more than a bit hard to take in light of the huge exceptions he would grant.  ...  Mr. Obama's professions of being willing to make hard choices are belied by his failure to adjust his spending plans to budgetary reality.  Something will need to give--either raising significantly more revenue or dramatically scaling back government." Where are the tough choices, Mr. Vice President?

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