February 2009 - Posts
Hardball’s Chris Matthews explains his reaction, heard on air, about Gov. Bobby Jindal as he appeared before cameras to give the GOP rebuttal to President Barack Obama's speech Tuesday night.
Watch the video, below.
On Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi joined Chris Matthews on "Hardball" to discuss why she feels the economic recovery bill will work.
Below is an excerpt of the transcript.
CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST, HARDBALL: Speaker, thank you. I was watching yesterday from my office, and I saw Sen. Harry Reid walk out with some Republican senators and announced there was an agreement on the giant economy recovery bill. Where were you?
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-Calif.), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: Well, they had agreement among themselves, and we were pretty much in agreement, but they had just reached agreement, were eager to announce it. We wanted to see the language. And it all worked out just fine.
MATTHEWS: But Sen. Reid said there was an agreement at that time. Was there, between the House and the Senate?
PELOSI: Pretty much. But again, you have to see the language. In other words, words have power, and they make a difference.
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MATTHEWS: Why did three Republican senators get the right to toy around with a bill of this importance historically? It seems like they get to decide what's in, what's out, and whether there is, in fact, a recovery bill. I'm talking about Sens. Specter, Snowe and Collins. They were treated yesterday by the Senate majority leader as if they were the profiles in courage, the key people in passing this bill.
PELOSI: Now, you'll have to talk to the Senate about profiles in courage over there, as well as the role they all played. But what is important to note is that 90 percent of the bill is the bill that the House wrote and sent over there. This is the legislative process. We act; they act; we reconcile. And in order to get the votes, they had to make certain changes in the legislation. As long as it was not undermining the purpose of our interest in school construction, unemployed workers, those kinds of issues, we were able to find compatibility.
But again, as far as the dynamic in the Senate is concerned, I had my hands filled as the speaker of the House, juggling all of the interests here.
MATTHEWS: But you're the only constitutional officer on Capitol Hill.
PELOSI: That's right.
To read a complete copy of the transcript with video, click here.
By Chris Matthews
Last night was a special evening here in Washington. Kathy and I were at Ford's Theater for the 200th Anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth.
It was the grand re-opening of that old theater where tragedy struck that Good Friday of 1865.
I felt the history being made as President Barack Obama came down the aisle with First Lady Michelle to take their seats in the first row.
I wonder what it must have been like last night to be our new president standing in that place, on the very stage of Ford's Theater, surrounded by such history in a place so tied to our feelings, even our country's recurring sense of remorse about this noble man Abraham Lincoln.
I think back to the frozen day in Springfield, Illinois, in the cold yet sunny winter of 2007 when the junior senator from that state strode out before a crowd of 17,000 in three degree weather to speak in a public space between the State Capitol where young Lincoln served as state legislature and his law office across the street and upstairs on the corner building.
In Ford's Theater last night we were reminded that Lincoln's greatest words came in that daunting Second Inaugural, what could be the greatest speech ever given in this country, words he spoke just weeks before his death as the great Civil War was coming to an end.
"With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
Here is President Obama today in the Capitol Rotunda at a ceremony on Lincoln's 200th birthday:
"I cannot claim to know as much about his life and works as many of those who are also speaking today, but I can say that I feel a special gratitude to this singular figure who in so many ways made my own story possible and who in so many ways made America's story possible.
As we meet here today, at a moment when we are far less divided than in Lincoln's day, but when we are once again debating the critical issues of our time - and debating them fiercely - let us remember that we are doing so as servants to the same flag, as representatives of the same people, and as stakeholders in a common future."
