McCain on CNN's "American Morning" Thursday

Full Transcript:

KIRAN CHETRY, CNN ANCHOR: Well, joining me now is Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. Senator, great to talk to you this morning. We worked out the kinks and I'm glad that you're with us.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Thank you, Kiran. There was a little technical delay there.

CHETRY: That's live TV in the morning for you. Well, I want to ask you first of all about you suspending your campaign to try and get this bill through the House. It didn't make it the first time. Did it hurt you that you weren't able to get enough House Republicans to get it passed?

MCCAIN: We'll get it passed. I came back and suspended my campaign and got the House into the negotiations at the table, which they had not been before. We were able to get a large increase in the number of Republicans who voted for it. We were able to make significant changes in the bill, which improved it rather dramatically. And I'm confident it will go through the House of Representatives.

I am proud of the work that I did, particularly engaging the House Republicans who have been completely shut out of any negotiations. It's now going to be a bipartisan and bicameral result. And Senator Obama said he would phone it in. That's the difference. I suspended my campaign and put my country first. And even if I had failed, it was still the right thing to do. We didn't fail. It's going to pass.

CHETRY: You know, some of our congressional reporters are saying that even though it is more attractive than it was to House Republicans, this isn't a shoe-in. What are you doing today to shore up support to make sure those Republicans hold-outs do vote for this?

MCCAIN: I continue to be in conversation with the Republican leadership and my friends in the House. Many of them are friends of mine. I think it's still going to be a tough vote. But I believe that it's going to pass. And I'm glad to have played a role in it. I didn't decide to stay on the trail and call in. I came to Washington and met face-to-face and worked hard and I'm very proud of that and I will always put my country first.

CHETRY: Some of your critics said that perhaps it was a stunt or perhaps that inserting presidential politics gummed up the works. What do us to that?

MCCAIN: I think look at what happened is the best way to answer that. If you want to get in the minutia, the Majority Leader, Senator Reid said, I had to sign on to anything that happened that was going to be a legislative package and then I came back to Washington and said that I shouldn't have come back to Washington. It was a little bit of foolishness there.

It shows, really, how bitter the partisanship is here, especially on the part of some of the leading Democrats. But, I'm proud of what we did. The Republicans got engaged. We got a much better package. I'm very confident we will pass this through the House. It may be tough. And we will have helped the American people. That's what my job is.

CHETRY: You know, and as evidence by this $700 billion bailout bill that's in Congress. You're really facing -- the next president is going to be facing quite a troubled economy. A $10 trillion deficit. What specifically are you going to be able to do to help the economy if you're in office?

MCCAIN: Well, create jobs through alternate -- eliminating our dependence on foreign oil, which is millions of jobs and stop sending $700 billion a year to countries that don't like us very much. To make health care affordable and available, to eliminate wasteful and unnecessary spending, which has been my record. Senator Obama wants to raise spending by some $860 billion by keeping taxes low.

CHETRY: May I ask you, though, about the Bush's -- about the president's tax cut?

MCCAIN: And creating a million more millions of jobs in America and I'm confident that we can get them on the right track.

CHETRY: Specifically with the president's tax cut, it's set to expire. Are you going to be able to keep that in place, given the tremendous deficit we're facing?

MCCAIN: If you raise people's taxes in a bad economy, then you will hurt the economy very badly. That's a matter of economic record. I don't want to raise anybody's taxes. Senator Obama has voted 92 times to raise people's taxes or against tax cuts as a member of the United States Senate. Again, we look at our records. He's the most liberal senator in the United States Senate. That means on spending and taxes, as well.

CHETRY: I've got to move on to your vice presidential nominee. Of course, the big debate is tonight between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden. And right now, there's been a lot of, I guess, questions being thrown around about your pick. Especially after her being unable to answer in an interview with Katie Couric what other Supreme Court decisions besides Roe v. Wade, that she does not support. Do you think that was a fair question to ask the vice presidential nominee?

MCCAIN: I think the American people decide what is fair. I know that there have been attacks on Sarah Palin, that have been remarkable to me in many ways. But I have total confidence in her. She's very comfortable in her own skin. She's had more experience in leadership than Senator Obama and Senator Biden put together. She's been a mayor, she's been a governor, she knows energy issues. She negotiated a $400 billion pipeline of natural gas to the lower 48. I'm very confident about her credentials and her vision and her strength for America. So, I'm very proud of her.

CHETRY: You said she's comfortable in her own skin. Some of the criticism has been that Sarah isn't allowed to be Sarah. That she's been tightly managed by the campaign. That she's been hold up and maybe given too much information. What can we expect to see tonight, as she debates Joe Biden?

MCCAIN: Well, I'm sure that all of those critics that you're talking about have been out there. But, the fact is she'll do fine tonight. She has experience, she has talent, she has leadership. She has great inner strength. She has an ability to lead that's been proven, taken on her own party. Joe Biden and Barack Obama have never taken on the leaders of their party on any issue. She's stood up for what's right for the people of Alaska and she will stand up for what's right for America. Either one of --

(CROSSTALK)

CHETRY: Well, Joe Biden did actually agree with you though, in the primary campaigns that we can't leave Iraq, and that you need to make sure that that war is funded. So he did -- and he said he was willing to lose because of it.

MCCAIN: Actually, Joe Biden said Iraq had to be broken up into three different countries. One of the more cockamamee ideas that I've heard in a long, long time. And has attacked the surge as not being a success. So, we have very different positions on Iraq, just as we did when he voted against the first Gulf War and I supported it. He has a long record of wrong votes on national security issues.

CHETRY: I'd love to talk to you more, but we got to let you go.

Senator John McCain, thanks so much for joining us this morning.

MCCAIN: Thanks for having me on. It's always good to be with you.

CHETRY: Thank you. You, too.