Editor’s Note: The following are excerpts from an exclusive interview by Charlie Rose of PBS.

Charlie Rose: Are you satisfied with that rescue plan?

Warren Buffett: Well, I don’t think it’s perfect, but I don’t know that I could draw one that’s perfect. I’d rather be approximately right than precisely wrong, and it would be precisely wrong to turn it down.

We need — we have a terrific economy — it’s like a great athlete that’s had a cardiac arrest. It’s flat on the floor, and the paramedics have arrived. And they shouldn’t argue about whether they put the resuscitation equipment a quarter of an inch this way or a quarter of an inch this way, or they shouldn’t start criticizing the patient, because he didn’t have a blood pressure test or something like that. They should do what’s needed right now. And I think they will. I think the Congress will do the right thing. I think that they’ve — you know, they got into certain arguments and they start worrying about assessing blame, and there is a little demagoguery, but in the end, something this important, they’ll do the right thing. So this really is an economic Pearl Harbor. That sounds melodramatic, but I’ve never used that phrase before. And this really is one…

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…95 percent of the people at least are worse off in terms of their residential wealth plus stock wealth from a year ago or two years ago. That is bleeding into the real economy. I mean, that’s bleeding into auto sales and jewelry sales and furniture sales and all that. But that wave is just starting to hit. And if the paralysis we have in the credit markets, if every company continues to feel all we want to do is get our balance sheet down, sell assets, you know, it’s just the start of what can happen. Unemployment’s going to go up under any circumstances. I mean, the 6.1% is going to go higher. But whether it goes and quits at 7 or whether it quits at 10 or 11 or 12 depends on, among other things, the wisdom of Congress, and then the wisdom of, in terms of carrying out the plan that Congress authorizes.

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(On excessive investing in the derivatives and real estate bubble) …It’s a lot like Cinderella at the ball. I mean you know at midnight everything is going to turn to pumpkins and mice; right? But as the evening goes along, I mean, you know, the guys look better all the time, the music sounds better, it’s more and more fun, you think why the hell should I leave at quarter of 12. I’ll leave at two minutes to 12. But the trouble is, there are no clocks on the wall. And everybody thinks they’re going to leave at two minutes to 12.

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Confidence will come back. I will tell you this. This country is going to be living better ten years from now than it is now. It will be living better in 20 years from now than ten years from now. The ingredients that made this country, you know, the miracle of the world — I mean we had a seven for one improvement in the average American standard of living in the 20th century. Now, we had the Great Depression, we had two world wars, we had the flu epidemic. You know, we had oil shock. You know, we had all these terrible things happen. But something about the American system unleashed more and more of a potential to human beings over that hundred years so that we had a seven for one improvement. There’s never been any — I mean, you have centuries where if you’ve got a 1 percent improvement, then it’s something. So we’ve got a great system. And we’ve got more productive capacity now than we ever have. The American worker is more productive than he’s ever been. We’ve got more people to do it. We’ve got all the ingredients for a sensational future.

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We may need another stimulus - if we do, it’s - it should go to the lower and middle-income people. I mean the truth is, I’ve never had it so good in terms of taxes. I am paying the lowest tax rate that I’ve ever paid in my life. Now, that’s crazy. And if you look at the Forbes 400, they are paying a lower rate, accounting payroll taxes, than their secretary or - whomever around their office. On average. And so I think that actually people in my situation should be paying more tax. I think the rest of the country should be paying less, the 95 percent that Obama talks about or maybe even a little higher than that… Just imagine living on $21,000 a year, Charlie, $22,000 a year. I mean you have 20 percent of the population doing that. So you don’t have to worry about guys like me. I would push purchasing power - you push out $1,000 of purchasing to those people, it’s going to get - it’s going to get spent. And it needs to be spent. They need it. And it should come, to some extent, from guys like me.

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I think it’s terrible for people in effect to say that income from investment should be taxed at a much lower rate than income from labor… You know, everybody is against paying tax. I feel the same, everybody feels that way. But if you want a government that’s going to do the things we ask our government to do, you’ve got to get it from somebody. And over the years, the last - particularly the last six or eight years, they’ve taken less and less from a guy like me… The payroll tax is over a third of the receipts of the federal government. And they don’t take that from me on capital gains. They don’t take that from me on dividends. They take from the woman who comes in and takes the wastebaskets out.

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It’s going to be tough because the economy is going to be getting worse for a while. And it might fall off a cliff if this (bailout plan) doesn’t pass. But nobody will ever know that if it does… So that makes it tough. I mean, it’s tough to be in the legislature, you know, and vote for something and then people say, “Well, you voted all this money and you know, it’s all getting spent.” It isn’t getting spent. It’s getting invested. “But it’s all getting spent. Nothing’s happening. You know, how could you have done that? You haven’t done anything for me!” …What it really takes is leadership that knows what it’s all about and can explain what it’s all about… When the President of the United States goes out at, you know, 8:00 o’clock in the morning and then his own party votes - gets him 2 to 1 in the House - you know that somehow a message isn’t getting out. It takes real leadership.

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Whoever said, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure understated it and… a pound of cure that’s delayed another six months is going to need a ton of cure later on. I mean it would be crazy not to do this. It will not produce dramatic results though in the economy. That’s what people have to understand. You’re going to see unemployment go up. You know, you’re going to see lousy earnings in many businesses… You’re going to see more people unemployed. But the difference Charlie if we bottom this thing out at seven percent unemployed versus nine percent, that’s three million people, that’s three million people that if we do it wrong you know lose their jobs unnecessarily in my view… Just think of what it’s like, you know, to go home with a mortgage payment you know and kids and everything else. My dad had that happen to him in the early ‘30s. It you know you don’t want to create three million people more unnecessarily… I don’t want any viewer to go away think a magic wand exists in Congress. So they’re going to see some more bad news. But if we do this, we’re doing the right thing. And if - the system will work over time… We got a wonderful system.