Tammy Haddad spoke with Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., for the Nov. 21 edition of "National Journal On Air." This is an edited transcript of their conversation.

NJ: Congressman Elijah Cummings is a member of the House -- he's the senior member actually, of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Congressman Cummings, welcome to "National Journal On Air."

Cummings: It's good to be with you.

NJ: Well, thank you, because we're trying to make sense of what happened this week in these bailout hearings and what people can expect to happen in the coming weeks.

Cummings: Basically what you had was the three major American auto companies coming in and trying to get some money to help them -- and basically in the form of a loan -- to help them get out of some of the difficulty they find themselves in. And the Congress had to look at this situation very seriously, because one out of every 10 American jobs are in some way related either directly or indirectly to the auto industry, and we simply cannot afford to lose those jobs. And so basically they came -- the auto execs came, they testified before the appropriate Senate committee and the appropriate House committee, and basically they were not able to make their case, and one reason being is that the members of the House and Senate could not determine with the limited information that they had whether we would be throwing good money after bad.

NJ: Which it sounds like -- in your other hearing with AIG, it sounds to the person reading and watching the hearings that's exactly what happened, because there is no accountability on that, right?

Cummings: That's exactly right. And as a matter of fact, I think the AIG hearings and what AIG has gone through pretty much made it even more difficult for the auto companies, because those hearings showed that there needed to be more accountability with regard to AIG and these various banks that money has been put into, so that they could, first of all -- first of all, there had to be a determination of what the ends would be -- in other words, what we were looking for the money to accomplish. And two, we needed to make sure that there was a way of accomplishing whatever it was. We needed a plan.

And so we made -- and I think that mistake was made with the initial funds, and now you've got the auto companies coming in asking for money, but they did not have sufficient plans to provide us with the accountability that we -- in other words, you need a measuring stick. And the plans would have allowed us first of all to see that the money would be used effectively and efficiently and that our goals could be achieved, but finally it would provide us with some kind of measurement just to determine whether those things had happened.

NJ: Well is that a failure of the Treasury Department on the AIG front, and is the same failure repeating itself?

Cummings: I think it's a failure on the part of a lot of people. I think it's a failure on the part of Mr. [Henry] Paulson, in that he initially brought a three-page plan to the Congress in a hearing and said get this done right away or else we're going to have total disaster, and so then the Congress rapidly tried to pull things together and create something out of that three-page plan. I think it was also our fault in the Congress. We perhaps needed to take another week, or another two weeks, to really get this right, because we see what fast action can do.

Mr. Paulson initially was going to be purchasing bad securities, and then he had to change around and start investing in banks, and that showed that, although I know things have been rapidly changing over the last several weeks, still it indicates that perhaps there were not appropriate measures placed in the original legislation with regards to the $700 billion that would have allowed us to have the accountability that we needed. And so I blame Mr. Paulson, Mr. [Ben] Bernanke, and I also blame us in the Congress. We could have done a better job.

NJ: Well, how are you going to make sure it's not going to happen again?

Cummings: Well, the way you do that is to do what, to her credit, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader [Harry] Reid did yesterday. That is, that after they heard the testimony of these execs from the automobile companies, they made it clear that, look, you haven't given us enough information in order for us to make a reasonable decision whether to help you. There are certain things you've got to do. You've got to bring us back a plan that shows that, you know, what your short-term efforts will be with regard to these funds, and how do you expect us to be in a position where we're not seeing you come back a month from now asking for additional funds?

Number two, within that plan we want to know now you're going to now build cars that are going to be more energy-efficient, because over the years you've been receiving warnings that you need to build energy-efficient cars to compete against the Japanese and others but you failed to do so. Instead you were trying to build big cars so that you could make more money, and those big cars, of course, consume more gasoline.

So give us a plan. And basically what we said, we wanted them to come back next month with that plan, short-term and long-term, so that we can then hold them to a plan -- that's assuming that we decide to make this loan.

NJ: Well, you've already called for the CEO of AIG to resign, and he hasn't done that yet, right?

Cummings: That's right, but believe me, AIG has come under phenomenal pressure. And you've got to understand how this whole political situation works. I would love for the chairman of AIG to resign, because I just don't think that he has the sensitivity with regard to the American people when he allows these junkets to continue, although I must admit that he has agreed because of the pressure from the Congress to cancel 160 of these junkets that probably would have taken place over the next year or two. So he's canceled 160 -- that's quite a few. But he still had a junket right after we gave him $86 billion, maybe six, seven weeks ago, and then about a week ago after that deal went up to $154 billion, right around the same time they go on another junket. And of course they claim that these junkets are necessary. They claim that they are for -- to train independent folks to sell their products and things of that nature, and that the sponsors were paying for the vast majority of it. But they admitted that some funds were coming out of the AIG account.

And so -- but putting pressure on AIG tells other folks that we cannot simply be a bank for you to come to whenever you feel like getting some money -- you get our money and then you go off to some spa, spend $1600 a room, get your massages, pedicures and facials, and have a good time and drink until you can't drink any more, and then expect that the government is going to stand there and continue to give you money. No. It doesn't work that way. So I think we've sent a strong message. But I've got to tell you, when these auto execs came to Washington this week in their chartered jets, all of them coming to the same location...

NJ: And each in a different jet, right?

Cummings: I'm sorry?

NJ: I said each in a different jet, not even together.

Cummings: Right, yeah, just like somebody said on one of the committees, why didn't you guys just get together and save some money and come at one-third the cost?

NJ: Well, should they resign? Do you think those CEOs should resign, too?

Cummings: You know, I want to be careful with regard to demanding resignations, because I think that, sadly, a lot of the -- first of all, to answer your question, I think if for no other reason because these CEOs don't seem to understand public relations, if nothing else they probably need to go just based on that. That you don't, on one hand, put out one hand begging for the hard-earned taxpayers' dollars to save your corporation, therefore save your job, but on the other hand you are spending money as if things are the same as they were seven or eight years ago. No. It doesn't work that way.

So they've got a PR lesson that just smacks the American people in the face when you consider, for example, the 53,000 people being laid off at Citigroup and the fact that one of the largest banks in our country is about to either be sold or to merge with another bank because of problems. And you think about all the people who have lost their jobs, who paid taxes when they were working, and now those same tax dollars would go to an AIG or to perhaps a Ford or Chrysler or GM when there are question marks as to how that money will be spent, and when they see things like the junkets and they see the corporate execs fly into Washington on the charters, it just makes people very, very angry.

And there's another thing that adds insult to injury -- when they see their fellow citizens not getting much relief at all with regard to foreclosure problems, and they are not being bailed out. Many of these people, many of them -- these people who are facing foreclosures -- got caught up in all kinds of predatory lending schemes and corruption and greed on the part of these people trying to sell them houses. Now I admit there are some people who should have said, this is just too good to be true. But there are a lot of people who became innocent victims of all of this, and they, too, need to be rescued.

NJ: The Treasury now wants to give some bailout funds to the credit card companies. Do you agree with that, by the way? Because people have been paying really high rates. You know, I get my own letters saying, you're going to have to pay higher rates, so it's not like they're suffering.

Cummings: I think that... I've got to tell you, I'd rather see -- if we're going to bail anybody out -- I'd rather see the automobile industry helped because I think, you know, when you get to talking about that one out of 10 jobs [in America being connected to the auto industry], that's very significant. And I think we'll have to take a look and see what it is with the credit card companies, or whatever. Because you're absolutely right; credit card companies nickel-and-dime you for everything. If you're a day late and you owe $24, you may end up paying $10 on top of the $24. So, we see that all the time. But I think we're just going to have to look at each case one by one.

But there's one thing that we have to keep in mind. The United States does not -- cannot afford to have an endless amount of money being spent bailing folks out. And I think that's part of the problem that the auto industry has run into. People are tired of bailing out these corporations and at the same time wondering whether there is that accountability. And think that Nancy Pelosi, House Speaker, wisely said, "Wait a minute, let's slow this train down, and if you want the government to even give you a loan, show us how you're going to pay it back, show us how you're going to keep people working, show us how you're going to be a smarter corporation." It may be that some of these corporate execs need to go. Maybe some of the boards need to go. But we've got to do things differently. We just can't continue, when you're on the critical list, to go out and party. It makes no sense.

NJ: Thank you, Congressman Elijah Cummings.

Cummings: Thank you.