Obama: 'Put The Fire Out' on Economic Crisis

Sept. 30, 2008 — -- The following is an ABC News transcript of an interview between Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and ABC News' John Berman today in Reno, Nev.

Berman: Senator, you called on both Democrats and Republicans to step up to the plate today [on the economic crisis], what are you doing personally to make sure they do?

Obama: Well, I started the day talking to President Bush. [Democratic Majority] Leader Harry Reid and Speaker Pelosi, I spoke to late last night, and what I've told them is let's do what's required to get the plan done.

If that means me making calls to individual members, we can do that. If it means thinking through additional tweaks to the basic structure that improves it and makes it more likely that we get support from some House Republicans, as well as others, then let's do that. So for example, there's one that should gather some good bipartisan support --

Berman: Are you calling members today?

Obama: I will be calling members and getting their ideas. The main thing is to just move away from this hyper-political environment and recognize the house is on fire, lets put the fire out first and we can figure out what caused it.

Berman: You're a very persuasive man, you have a certain amount of influence with your own party, could you have done more, should you have done more, before the House vote yesterday to lobby for votes?

Obama: Oh, absolutely, not because -- if you think about it, there was a deal struck between [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi and Republican [Minority House] leader [John] Boehner.

The Democrats were supposed to get 120 votes, they got 140 so there was no sense on the Democratic side that we weren't following through on our commitments and apparently there were some problems on that side. I don't think me calling House Republican members would have been that helpful, I tend not to be that persuasive on that side of the aisle.

But if you look at how I've approached this throughout, I haven't done a lot of work in the spotlight, I haven't gone out of my way to try to take credit for this. But if you look at the final product of this bill and you compare it to the principles I announced the first day, in terms of making sure the taxpayers were protected, that we didn't have money going to CEO's, that we have strong oversight, homeowners were helped, those are the central improvements to the bill that have been made.