Transcript: NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press – Dec. 12, 2010

(Source: NBC’s Meet the Press)

MR. GREGORY:  Coming next, my exclusive interview with independent New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.  If Washington is broken, could an independent candidate be the answer?  Right after this brief commercial beak.

(Announcements)

MR. GREGORY:  We are back, joined now by the mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg.

Welcome back.  Always nice to have you.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG:  Thank you for having me.

MR. GREGORY:  You have heard the administration make its case on the issue of tax cuts.  I want to ask you, last time you were here you were in favor of a temporary extension of the tax cuts, middle class, wealthier earners.  But you felt it had to be pegged to some long-term solutions as well, which is not the case in this compromise.  Are you disappointed with what’s been accomplished?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No, I think you should be encouraged because at least the–both sides of the aisle and both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue have finally come together to do something in a bipartisan way.  And I’m sure the president would have liked other things, but the real world of governing is to do what is possible, and everybody getting something, nobody getting 100 percent of what they want.  So I think–I view this as the first step.  And incidentally, the president did get some of the things he wanted–an extension of some tax cuts that he was in favor of for business, and an extension of benefits for the unemployed.

MR. GREGORY:  What about the debt?  I mean, here we were–last week the president was talking about the debt, the Debt Commission’s findings.  Within 80 hours he is championing an agreement that adds a trillion dollars to the debt.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, the bottom line is, unless he does this, he’s not going to get a chance to do the next step.  You know, the president has got to get some of the other party to go along with him, and he’s got to keep his own party in line.  That’s what leadership is all about.  And you can’t sit there and say, “I’m going to do everything at once,” you’ll never get anything done. He’s made a step, he’s opened the door, and I think now it’s incumbent on him to keep working together with the Republicans and the Democrats.  And the next thing is going to be a lot tougher, as you point out.  It’s easy to reduce taxes, very hard to reduce expenses.

MR. GREGORY:  But is there a concern that when, really, people look at this, this is a two-year extension…

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  …2012, hard to believe any politician’s not going to vote in an election year to extend tax cuts.  Does it send a signal that we’re not serious about tackling the long-term debt picture?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  I don’t–no, I don’t think it does that.  I think we are not serious about attacking the long-term debt problem, and that’s one of the things that he’s going to have to find a way to get on the agenda.  You saw–you have this commission, well-run commission, some smart people, they come up with some ideas, and then Congress doesn’t even want to consider them. That’s disappointing.

On the other hand, eventually they’re going to have to face some of these issues because some–the Chinese are going to stop buying our debt, we’re going to get to the point where business has so little confidence they’re not willing to expand.  There’s a lot of problems facing us down the road.  Some of these trust funds, like Social Security, running out of money.  Medicaid and Medicare just taking over the whole economy.  So, whether you like it or not, there’s going to be a point where you have to stop kicking the can down the road.  And this president is, his job is, to some extent, to explain to the public why that’s the case.  It’s going to require shared sacrifice. Never easy to get sacrifice, but that’s what leadership’s all about.

MR. GREGORY:  What about the impact on jobs?  Do you believe the tax cuts have an actual stimulative effect on the economy?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  I don’t think there’s any question that they put more people–more money in people’s hands, and I think that the public will do a better job with more money in their hands to stimulate the economy than you will do with government programs.

MR. GREGORY:  But, Mayor, economists say, especially wealthier Americans don’t end up necessarily spending money that they, that they keep through tax cuts.  And look at the effect of the Bush tax cuts over a decade.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well…

MR. GREGORY:  …what some have called a decade of, of futility, if you look at the number of jobs created.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  OK.  But number one, some of these things are not connected, they just happen to have at same–happened at the same time.  And I think the more money you put in people’s hands, the more they will spend.  And if they don’t spend it, they invest it.  And investing it is another way of creating jobs.  It puts money into mutual funds or other kinds of banks that can go out and make loans, and we need to do that.

MR. GREGORY:  What about the president’s leadership?  You’ve had some observations about him, one of them in, in an interview with GQ, a portion of which I’ll put up on the screen.  You said, “The president, I think, needs some better advisers.  He campaigns, `I’m going to do A,’ then he doesn’t do it. Now he’s pissed off the supporters and the opponents.  You go for it.” Does his agreement on this deal signal to you that he’s going in a different direction?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No.  I think he signals that he’s going for it.

MR. GREGORY:  He is going for it?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Because–he’s got–yeah, because he can’t just sit there and depend on ideology.  His job is to lead, and, and leadership is about doing the possible, not sitting around and waiting for the perfect.  You know, I start with the assumption that–or with, with the belief that this president has to succeed.  We all have an enormous amount of capital invested in his success.  His success is the country’s success.  And whether you like him or not, whether you voted for him or not, if you want to vote for somebody else, you’ll have that opportunity in two years.  But right now we should all pull together–Republicans and Democrats, both sides of the aisle, the public as well as the elected officials–and make sure that this president’s successful.

MR. GREGORY:  How does he deal with an angry liberal base?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  He says, “Look, this is what I did.  This is the best I can do.  Suck it up and let’s get on together.  We have a lot of other things that we can do together.  This is not the only tough vote, this is not the only issue.  And whether you’re a liberal or a conservative, there are lots of other things that you probably feel the country should be doing and can do.”

MR. GREGORY:  The big question is whether our nation’s leaders are making the tough choices, whether they’re making the sacrifices to really make progress. You spoke about that this week in New York about the gridlock in our politics.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Yes.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me play a portion of that.

(Videotape, Wednesday)

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  As families struggle to get by, they have seen little but partisan gridlock, political pandering and legislative influence peddling, finger-pointing, blame games, and endless attacks.  Put simply, when it comes to creating jobs, government hasn’t gotten the job done.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  And to follow up on that, do you think we have the balance right between investment in the economy, innovation in our economy, and the kind of austerity that you’ve just been talking about that is necessary to make tough choices about how much we’re spending?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No, no, I don’t.  I don’t think that we’re focusing on innovation.  If you go back and look at history, back in like–I think it was like 1816 or something like that, DeWitt Clinton built the Eric Canal.  It opened the whole Midwest.  During the Lincoln presidency, the Civil War, transcontinental railway opened the whole country up.  Henry Ford, about 1900, 1905, all of a sudden created factories and processes that could employ and awful lot of people.  You go World War II, World War II did help the economy a little bit, but the great thing that came out of World War II was the GI bill. For the first time, the average person could go to college and have the skills to do it.  And you go right on, whether it was microchips or lasers or cell phones, the Internet, each of these things is innovative things that have created new industries, and we are not putting the kind of money into basic research that we used to do, so that I don’t know where the next thing is coming from.  And what’s really worrisome is, because of our immigration policy, the next great thing might be invented or developed elsewheres, not in our country.

MR. GREGORY:  But so that raises the question of–Larry Summers suggested this, this week–which is the best thing you can do for economic recovery is make sure you achieve rapid economic recovery before you get to the business of slashing the deficit.  And yet that doesn’t seem to be where the politics is moving in Washington or, or even the voice of the electorate in midterms.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No, no, it isn’t.  But on the other hand, I don’t believe that you need big stimulus things to get the economy going.  I think there’s some things that don’t cost very much money but would have a much greater impact.  Number one, you’ve got to build confidence.  If you think about it, banks have money but they’re unwilling to make loans.  Companies have money. I think we’re at a record amount of cash.  There was an article in the paper the other day in companies, bank accounts that they are unwilling to spend on plant and new employees.  We’ve got to make sure that people understand that this country is going to pull together.  It’s confidence more than anything else.  If people have confidence, the, the consumer will start spending money. And it’s the biggest single impediment to growth.

MR. GREGORY:  What about tough choices?  As you look at this landscape of spending, entitlements, other parts of the budget, immigration, what is a tough choice that you would support Washington making now that moves the country forward?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  First thing is open the doors to those with the skills we need from around the world.  I think the whole issue of what you do with 11 million undocumented, I feel very strongly we should give them a path to citizenship.  But, regardless, the whole issue of family reunification, it’s a compassion thing, understand that, but we cannot let those two issues, which are controversial and will take some time to work out, get in the way of right away starting to make sure anybody that gets a graduate degree in America from overseas gets a green card attached to their diploma.  That’s the ways that we are going to keep going.  You know, all these other countries are trying to attract the best and the brightest, and we’re helping them.  It’s even worse, we’re educating them and then helping them.  This is craziness.  I call it national suicide.  We have to go and, and get the immigrants here.  So the first thing I would do is that, and that doesn’t cost any money.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me spend a couple minutes talking about politics.  There was the cover of…

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  I’m shocked.  I didn’t think it would come up.

MR. GREGORY:  Shocked we would get to that.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  Let me show you the cover of the New York Post this week about your speech.  State of the Union.  “Presidential” in quotes, “Mike reads riot act to DC.”

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Good picture.

MR. GREGORY:  Do you think an independent can be president?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  I don’t know.  I’m not going to run for president, for the, the job.  I’ve got a great job.  I’m going to finish out my 1,100 and whatever number of days it is left to go, and I’ll leave the politics to the experts.

MR. GREGORY:  Do you think that it’s possible to scrap the two party system? Would you be in favor of that?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, the original Founding Fathers didn’t seem to have an interest in party politics, and I’ve worked very hard in New York for nonpartisan elections.  I’m going to give a speech at an organization next week on nonpartisan redistricting.  Now, parties have a place; but party loyalty, I don’t think, should get in the way of doing what you as an elected official believe what’s right.  And I think that’s what most of the public wants.

MR. GREGORY:  You say you don’t want to run for president.  Yet, based on all my reporting, you’re taking a serious look at this, doing some calculations about whether this could be something that you could actually win.  Are you saying that you’re not even looking at the possibility of running?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No, I’m not looking at the possibility of running.  I’ve got a great job, and I’m going to stay with it.

MR. GREGORY:  OK.  So…

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  I am going to speak out on those things that affect New York City.  That’s my job.  People that say, “Oh, you shouldn’t be talking on a national level,” well, we crated 55,000 private sector jobs in New York in the last 12 months.  That’s much greater than the percentage we should create with our population.  But we can’t do everything without help from the federal government and our state government.  And so I’m out there talking about immigration, talking about regulation, talking about the president being out there selling our products, all of these kinds of things, because that’ll help us out.

MR. GREGORY:  But if, if advisers came to you and said, “You know, Mr. Mayor, we’ve taken a hard look at this.  We think this would not just be a vanity plate, you could actually win this thing,” would you change your mind?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No.

MR. GREGORY:  No way, no how?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  No way, no how.  Because…

MR. GREGORY:  So your supporters who, who create all this buzz should cease and desist?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  They–I don’t think most of them do create this buzz.  I mean, yes, they should cease and desist, but most of this is just because the press wants to have something to write about.  But the bottom line is, I’ve got a great job, I want to go out being, having a reputation as a very good, maybe the greatest mayor ever.  And I’m lucky to have three predecessors, Giuliani and Dinkins and Koch, all of whom have been very helpful in trying to make me a better mayor.

MR. GREGORY:  One of the things you said, I want to play another portion of your speech from Wednesday, because you talked about the broken nature of our politics.  And let me show that piece of it.

(Videotape, Wednesday)

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Despite what ideologues on the left believe, government can’t tax and spend its way back to prosperity, especially when that spending is driven by pork barrel politics.  At the same time, despite what ideologues on the right believe, government should not stand aside and wait for the business cycle to run its natural course.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  As somebody who wants to influence the national dialogue, you know, we’ve looked at this, sounds a lot like what candidate Obama said in 2008.  And it’s easy on the outside to say that kind of thing rhetorically. But what makes you think that you or anybody else who believes what you believe, could come in to be the president and could roll Congress, and could somehow do what the president has been unable to do in terms of bridging that divide?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Well, my job is to do what I’d said the federal and state government should do in New York, at our level.  And been in office for nine years now, New York City has done pretty well during that period of time.  We never had the deep recession that other cities have, and we have recovered faster.

MR. GREGORY:  But the question is still, how do you–even a New York model, you’re not dealing with Congress.  Isn’t it easier said than done to say from the outside, “Hey, get in there and roll Congress, tell the far left and the far right that they’re both irrational”?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  You know, this–there’s no easy jobs in the world, and particularly in the politically charged world that we live in with the constant scrutiny of the press and the lack of bill–of funds to go ahead. But, you know, that’s the job.  And I think the president is personally capable of doing it, and I think he is doing it.  I think we don’t give him enough credit.  I have said he should go around the world and, and sell our products.  He was in India.  I–he negotiated a trade deal with Korea, which I think will be great for our manufacturers who will sell to Korea, and great for the consumers who will buy stuff from Korea.

I’ve said that he should get more business experience on–in his advisers. Why?  Well, I–well, I come from the business background, so of course I would think that.  But you, you read the papers, he’s talking to Roger Altman, somebody I was told in the–saw in the paper was being considered.  He’d be perfect.  There are other people like that who can give him a broader perspective, and I think the perspective of somebody who’s actually had to get up in the morning and sweep the floors before his employees can–came in, and locked the door afterwards, and worry about how to make the, the payroll is exactly the kind of experience that he should have himself, or if he doesn’t have it, because nobody’s going to have all experiences, get other people that have that they can tell him and say, “You know, what you’re talking about is theoretical.  Let me tell you the real world.” Unless you’ve done everything, which you can’t do, you don’t know everything.  But you can have advisers that can give–tell you what the real world is about.

MR. GREGORY:  And before you go, is Cliff Lee the key to a world championship for the Yankees?

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  You know, as they say, hope springs eternal.  My job before I leave office, and I’ve only got three seasons to do it, is to have a Subway Series.  Giuliani had a Subway Series.  I’d had a World Series, had a, a Super Bowl win, haven’t had a subway series yet.

MR. GREGORY:  We’ll wait and see.  Mayor Bloomberg, thanks, as always.

MAYOR BLOOMBERG:  Thanks for having me.