'This Week' Transcript: Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Carolyn Maloney
Sen. Susan Collins and Rep. Carolyn Maloney are interviewed on 'This Week.'
New York, April 22, 2012— -- (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS (voice-over): Good morning, and welcome to "This Week." Secret Service scandal.
(UNKNOWN): We let the boss down.
COLLINS: It was absolutely incredible that the Secret Service were engaged in such despicable, unprofessional, and dangerous behavior.
STEPHANOPOULOS: As the investigation spreads, what will be the fallout? Will President Obama pay a price?
(UNKNOWN): If heads don't roll, no behavior will change.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And the general election gets down and dirty early.
OBAMA: I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth.
ROMNEY: Even if you like Barack Obama, we can't afford Barack Obama.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But what's with all that talk about dogs?
KIMMEL: I guess now you're either on team "strap your dog to the roof" or team "throw your dog on the hibachi."
STEPHANOPOULOS: Topics for our headliners this morning, Senator Susan Collins, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney.
Plus, an expanded powerhouse roundtable with George Will, Donna Brazile, Matthew Dowd, Peggy Noonan of the Wall Street Journal, and in his "This Week" debut, Keith Olbermann.
ANNOUNCER: From ABC News, "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos. It's your voice, your vote. Reporting from ABC News election headquarters, George Stephanopoulos.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning. The headlines out of Washington this week swirled around a single theme: federal workers behaving badly. At the GSA, the depth of wasteful spending became clear when new photos showed official Jeffrey Neely living the high life at a Las Vegas hotel at taxpayer expense.
And the scandal involving the president's security detail in Colombia continues to spread, with six Secret Service agents now forced out, six others still under investigation, and 11 members of the military also under scrutiny.
The White House says security was not compromised and is standing by Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan, who personally briefed the president Friday. But Congress is stepping up its investigations, and our headliners are at the center of that work, Maine Senator Susan Collins, the ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, and New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney from the House Oversight Committee.
Welcome to you both. I think it's appropriate that we have female legislators here today, because we just learned this morning that the agent who swept in and cleaned this all up, female agent Paula Reid, head of the service detail down in Latin America, and she seemed to get to the bottom of this quickly.
COLLINS: She did. She acted decisively, appropriately, and I can't help but wonder if there'd been more women as part of that detail if this ever would have happened.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, what's the latest, though, on the investigation?
MALONEY: I would like to say I talked to Director Sullivan last night, and he was commending her leadership, too. She really went in there and cleaned up the mess. And one thing I asked him is, how many women are on the force? It's only 11 percent of the agents are women.
And if -- we agree on this. If there were more agents on the ground, maybe we would not have had this.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Only 11 percent?
MALONEY: And I can't help but keep asking this question, where are the women? We probably need to diversify the Secret Service and have more minorities and more women.
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