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Meet the PressMR. GREGORY: from his home state of South Carolina this morning, the Washington leader of the tea party, Republican Senator Jim DeMint.
Senator, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
SEN. JIM DeMINT (R-SC): Thank you, David. And I can't claim to be the leader of the tea party, but I'm sure glad they raised the interest level of the American voter this year. It made a real difference in the election.
MR. GREGORY: Well, well, let me ask you that, plain and simple. Is the tea party now running the Republican Party?
SEN. DeMINT: Hardly. I'm hoping the Republican Party will embrace a lot of the ideas of the tea party, but it's a mistake to think that the tea party is one big organization. It's made of up thousands of leaders all across the country of, of citizens who are just tired of out-of-control spending. They want to take back the power from the Washington politicians. And I think they made a huge difference in the election. But they're just a part of this awakening of the American people, this citizen activism, I think, that's realigning politics in America today.
MR. GREGORY: What about the election results on Tuesday? In your judgment, was that step one in making President Obama a one-term president?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, I don't know that that's the issue. I think people are rejecting in large numbers this rampage of government spending and takeover that the, the president has been leading, but also even before Obama was president, Pelosi and Reid have been in charge of the Congress now for four years. They've had plenty of time to show what they're going to do. Pelosi said there would not be anymore deficit spending; we've had $5 trillion in deficit since then. So I think this is a rejection of Obama's policy. But this is not about whether or not he's a one- or two-term president. This is about turning our country away from a fiscal cliff. We're in trouble, and we don't have time to play politics anymore. We have got to look at the federal government, determine what it absolutely has to do, and then see if we can devolve power and spending back to the states.
MR. GREGORY: Well, and I, I want to ask you about some specific areas of--issue areas of the agenda. Before I do that, another question about the tea party. You were active in supporting tea party candidates around the country. You had some, some big winners around the country that you campaigned for. There are some of them. But you also had some notable losses, particularly in the Senate, and I want to single one out. You were behind Christine O'Donnell, who lost, of course, in Delaware. And here was the front page of the Wilmington News Journal on Wednesday after the election. The banner headline, "No taste for tea." And frankly, there's been some backlash about your support for her. Politico reported it this way this week: "A bloc of prominent senators and operatives said party purists like Palin and Senator DeMint had foolishly pushed nominees too conservative to win in politically competitive states. ...
`If you think what happened in Delaware is "a win" for the Republican Party then we don't have a snowball's chance to win the White House,'" that's Senator Lindsey Graham, also from South Carolina. "`If you think Delaware was a wake-up call for Republicans then we have a shot at doing well for a long time.'" Do you think the tea party actually cost the Republican Party control of the Senate?
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SEN. DeMINT: That is a very silly thing to say, David. The tea party are responsible for just about every Republican who was elected around the country. This time last year, if people'll think about it, we were concerned about holding our own. Many thought Republicans would fall below 38 in, in the Senate. So I supported all the Republican candidates, including Christine O'Donnell. Unfortunately, she was so maligned by Republicans, I don't think she ever had a chance. But we had historic gains in the Senate and in the House, so...
MR. GREGORY: Senator, you're not really saying that it was just lack of Republican support that tanked her candidacy, are you? This is a woman who said on national--in an ad that she was not a witch.
SEN. DeMINT: Well, I think we did see in the, in the wake of her primary win, a number of Republicans suggest she was not a viable candidate. That, that did make it difficult for her to start on the right foot. But all over the country we saw candidates like Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Marco Rubio in Florida, Rand Paul in Kentucky, we saw candidates that were supported by a tea party in, in a new active wave of, of citizens change the face of the Senate. This is what Republicans have needed for a long time, a new, young Republicans, Cuban-American senator. We've got African-American congressmen. This is a huge change for the Republican Party, and I think it's going to be very positive for our country.
MR. GREGORY: All right. So, Senator, let me go down the list of important issues that I know you care about, and let's try to do this in, in--a little bit more quickly than we might normally get some answers for you. On health care, how do you go about dismantling it?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, first of all we have to stop the funding of Obamacare and over the next two years show the American people what the real options are to improve the system we have now. I don't think Americans want to throw out our current system, they want to improve it. And there are a lot of ways we can make insurance more available, more affordable, available to those with pre-existing conditions. And we need to let the American people know that there are ways to do this without moving to the government-control system. The first step is obviously to, to defund it, and I think we can do that with Republicans controlling the House.
MR. GREGORY: But do you think repeal is realistic?
SEN. DeMINT: Yes, I do. I think the next Republican running for president needs to run on complete repeal of Obamacare because we really can't tweak it, David. It's built on a platform of government control, and that doesn't really work in America. We need a, a patient-physician system that's based more on competition and free markets. We really can't do that under this system that's so heavily prescribed in, in Obamacare.
MR. GREGORY: Well, you're talking about the president in 2012, running for president. You don't really think that you can overcome a presidential veto of repealing health care in the Senate, do you?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, not before 2012. But we can certainly defund it. Most, most aspects of this new Obamacare are not implemented for two more years, so it's very realistic to think we can slow the implementation of it or delay it, and then replace it in 2012 with, with a real plan to improve health care in America.
MR. GREGORY: All right, let me move to a few others. The cultural litmus test for Republicans, I've been told, the earmark issue. This is pork barrel spending as part of the budget process. You want them done away with, as do other tea party lawmakers and other Republicans. But Mitch McConnell, of course, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, was asked about it the other day, and this is what he said.
(Videotape, Thursday)
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): As I think all of you know, you could eliminate every congressional earmark and it would save no money. It's really an argument about discretion.
(End videotape)
MR. GREGORY: Doesn't sound like he's with you all the way. Is this a showdown coming for Republicans?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, it, it may be. But I think the message is clear from the American people, and I know there's some senior members in Congress who think it's their job to take on bacon. But the real reason for the dysfunction of Congress right now is you have over 500 congressmen and senators who think they're there to bring home the bacon. It's kind of, "To heck with America, just give me the money." We can't do that anymore. Parochial politics needs to be out in Washington.
MR. GREGORY: But what about Leader McConnell? He is not with you.
SEN. DeMINT: We need to focus on...
MR. GREGORY: He is suggesting that it's more a question of discretion. This is a leader of the Republicans. Are you prepared to go toe-to-toe with him, and is this going to be a big showdown with your Republican leadership?
SEN. DeMINT: I don't think so. Mitch McConnell has voted twice for an earmark ban that I've proposed in the Senate. Just about every Republican who is running for the Senate this time ran on a no earmark pledge. And we've had a vote where over half of our conference has voted for the ban before. Obviously, I'm hopeful I will have leadership support. But we've got a number of co-sponsors. Tom Coburn and I are leading the effort for this earmark ban, and, and we know John Boehner has committed to it in the House. We're not going to have earmarks. So it's, it's really silly for some senior Republicans in the Senate to try to block it.
MR. GREGORY: All right. Let me ask you about another hot button issue, and that is the debt ceiling. Come spring Congress is going to have to vote to raise the debt ceiling because our debt is increasing and it's reaching the $4.3 trillion limit that Congress has already set--$14.3 trillion limit that Congress set in February. Will you vote to increase the debt ceiling?
SEN. DeMINT: No, I won't, not, not unless this debt ceiling is combined with some path to balancing our budget, returning to 2008 spending levels, repealing Obamacare. We have got to demonstrate that we have the resolve to cut spending. Now, we've already spent the money, and raising the debt ceiling is just like paying off your credit card bill; but we cannot allow that to go through the Congress without showing the American people that we are going to balance the budget and we're not going to continue to raise the debt in America.
MR. GREGORY: All right. Well, let me ask you specifically about that. Where would--do you think the American people have to be prepared for sacrifice? Which part of the budget, knowing that there's only 15 percent that's nondiscretionery, or that's real--nondefense discretionary part of the budget, what are you going to target for cuts?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, I don't think the American people are going to have to sacrifice as much as the government bureaucrats who get paid about twice what the American worker does. First of all, we just need to return to pre-Obama levels of spending in 2008. We need to cut earmarks so people will quit focusing on taking home the bacon. We need to defund Obamacare, and then we need to look at the entitlement programs, such as the way Paul Ryan has done in the House with his road maps to America's future, to fix our tax code, to fix Social Security and Medicare, and to cut the cost over time. We've got the plans, David, to do this, we just--we need to talk about them, we need to help the American people see where we're going...
MR. GREGORY: But let me just...
SEN. DeMINT: ...but we can cut spending.
MR. GREGORY: Let me just stop you. I want to be very, very, very specific because going back to 2008 spending levels will not get anywhere close to balancing the budget. So you're saying that everything has to be on the table--cuts in defense, cuts in Medicare, cuts in Social Security. Is that right?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, no, we're not talking about cuts in Social Security. If we can just cut the administrative waste, we can cut hundreds of billions of dollars a year at the federal level. So before we start cutting--I mean, we need to keep our promises to seniors, David, and cutting benefits to seniors is not on the table. Excuse me, let me grab a sip of water.
MR. GREGORY: But then, but where, but where do you make the cuts? I mean, if you're protecting everything for those, the most potent political groups like seniors who go out and vote, where are you really going to balance the budget?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, look at Paul Ryan's road map to the future. We see a clear path to moving back to a balanced budget over time. Again, the plans are on the table. We don't have to cut benefits for seniors, and we don't need to cut Medicare like, like the Democrats did in this big Obamacare bill. We can restore sanity in Washington without cutting any benefits to seniors or veterans.
MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you a final question about 2012. Who's got the inside track for president, and do you think tea party forces--yourself, Sarah Palin--have an inside track moving forward?
SEN. DeMINT: Well, I think the, the, the voters have the inside track here. I think the citizen activism is going to change politics. I think Sarah Palin did an incredible amount of good to raise the interest level of what's going on in politics, so she did a lot for the Republican Party, Michele Bachmann, others. But we've got a, I think, a great list of folks, including the next person who'll be on your show, Chris Christie, who's demonstrated a lot of courage. And probably more than anything else right now, David, we need politicians with the courage to make very difficult decisions, to fight special interest groups, and that's what I want to see in the next Republican nominee.
MR. GREGORY: All right. Senator DeMint, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
SEN. DeMINT: Thank you, David.
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