Van Hollen Discusses Opportunities for Compromise During Budget Negotiations on MSNBC

Washington, DC – Today Maryland Congressman Chris Van Hollen, Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, appeared on MSNBC with Andrea Mitchell to discuss the start of budget negotiations between the House and the Senate. Below is a transcript of his interview, and the video is available here.

ANDREA MITCHELL, MSNBC: Right there with him was Congressman Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. Welcome very much for joining us here now. I know everybody is scooting out of town but you guys are actually getting down to business. What happened today and what kind of start was it? Was it predictive of anything for the way you're going forward? 

REP. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN: Well, Andrea, this was mostly an informal gathering really just to kick things off, you know, get together and begin the conversation. We obviously have to schedule the official gathering of the budget conference and so the Chairs will do that. But everybody got together and said we want to make this process work, and I hope that we do. 

MITCHELL: I know you've been critical in the past of the Paul Ryan House budget and the House members have been very critical of what the Senate did. The president says that everything is on the table. Does that mean taxes? From the Republican standpoint, that's been a nonstarter. Does that mean entitlement cuts? That's something a lot of Democrats don't want. What are you really looking at and how big a deal can be accomplished in such a short timeframe? 

VAN HOLLEN: Well, that’s something the negotiators will have to decide, what the scope of the discussion is. But, as you indicated, right now it’s a very large scope. Because you have the House Republican budget, the Ryan budget, and then you have the Senate Democratic budget and other Democratic proposals. And there are very significant differences between the two. And the answer is that everything in those budgets needs to be on the table. We've always been clear that we would support finding savings in mandatory health programs. We've done it in a way that doesn't hurt the beneficiaries by improving coordination of care, changing incentives in the system. And we very much hope that our Republican colleagues will agree to talk about revenue. After all, if you say you care about the deficit, if you say you care about the debt, surely you should be willing to close at least one tax loophole for the purpose of reducing the deficit. There are lots of corporate tax breaks that simply gum up the tax code. And so, we need to have everything on the table as part of the discussion. 

MITCHELL: Let’s take a look at what Paul Ryan had to say. Because it wasn't about taxes today, at least not in public.

VIDEO [REP. PAUL RYAN]:  I want to have a budget agreement that gets this debt and deficit under control, that does right by future generations and helps us grow the economy. And we're going to try to figure out if we can find an agreement to do that.

MITCHELL: Do you think that everything is on the table?

VAN HOLLEN: Well look, as I said, by definition, the scope of a conference committee is the two budgets, the House and the Senate budget. And the Senate budget takes a balanced approach, just like many bipartisan commissions have recommended. They understand that in order to reduce our long-term deficit, you have to look at the spending side, especially the so-called mandatory spending side. Things are on automatic pilot. But you also have to look at revenue. If you take that off the table, then you put much too big a burden on everybody else. And so I was worried the other day when the Speaker of the House said, hey, I want to have a negotiation. I want to sit down at the table. But, by the way, we refuse to talk about revenue. Well, that's not a negotiation. I think the American people recognize that's trying to rig the discussion before it starts. And I hope our Republican colleagues won't do that as we go forward. Because if we're going to be successful, people have to be willing to have all these elements that are in the budgets as part of the discussion.

MITCHELL: Nancy Pelosi said just now, a little while ago, that she was surprised by some of the stuff that was sneaked into that bill. It was supposed to be a clean bill. What happened at the last moment?

VAN HOLLEN: Are you referring now to the bill from last night?

MITCHELL: Yeah, I'm referring to dams and bridges and a lot of stuff. Some people say they are good projects that were in play and needed to be continually funded and because there's no budget, a continuing resolution wouldn't have done that. That said, that's hardly a way to legislate.

VAN HOLLEN: Well look, I don't disagree with you, Andrea. As you know, there was a proposal put in there by Senator McConnell of Kentucky. And he's going to have to speak to the merits of his proposal. What I do know is when it got to the House of Representatives we faced a very simple decision. Do we want to shut down the government? Do we want to default on our bills? We made the right decision in that regard. One of the things I hope, Andrea, comes out of this, people stop using the threat and the club of government shutdown or defaulting on our obligations to try to extract some kind of partisan concessions. That is not the way it works. And it was proven to be a failing strategy over the last 16 days. This was a totally unnecessary amount of pain that was inflicted on the country, on the American people, on the economy. So hopefully, no one will try and rerun that play. And the question is whether that lesson has, in fact, been learned by some of our colleagues as we go forward.

MITCHELL: Chris Van Hollen. Thank you very much, Congressman. 

VAN HOLLEN: Thank you.