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American Morning

Majority Leader Daschle Standing by Comments Questioning Direction of War on Terror

Aired March 04, 2002 - 08:44   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Senate majority leader Tom Daschle is standing by his comments questioning the direction of the war on terror. And he says the president needs to keep Congress better informed about strategic developments.

Daschle's war of words is where we begin our weekly look under the dome with our Capitol Hill insiders, correspondents Kate Snow and Jonathan Karl. They both join us this morning from the west front on the Capitol, a lovely day working, but chilly, I can tell, by the way both of you look this morning.

Welcome.

Let's talk a little bit about the Sunday morning talk shows. Senator Tom Daschle on those shows defending his right to ask questions of the presidential strategy. "The Washington Post" saying in a very pointed editorial yesterday, that's really no different than what then-Senate majority leader Trent Lott did during the Clinton administration. What's the back story here, Kate?

KATE SNOW, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Let me give that to Jonathan actually.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Paula, Trent Lott actually said that he made a mistake back then during the Clinton years when he criticized Clinton while U.S. troops were in the field, so an interesting backtrack from Trent Lott yesterday on the talk shows, but the interesting story behind the scenes here is that there is real concern among Republicans, as well as Democrats, about the lack of consultation from the White House on military matters.

You mentioned the shadow government. The speaker of the House, Dennis Hastert is number three in line to the presidency. The president protean of the Senate, Robert Byrd, is number four in line for the presidency. Neither of them, and basically nobody that we can find up here, was informed about that shadow government operation. And also, the leaders have been having these weekly breakfasts or almost weekly breakfast with the president at the White House, where they're supposed to get briefings on national security issues, among other things, and they had to learn by reading in the newspapers about U.S. military plans for the Republic of Georgia and for Yemen. These leaders, not only for Tom Daschle, but also Trent Lott, concerned about that also. One other thing, in the state of South Dakota, which is Tom Daschle's home state, you have the hottest Senate race in the country going on right now. And now you've got an ad war going back and forth between the Democrats and Republicans over who is stronger in supporting the troops in Afghanistan. The Republicans have accused the Democratic candidate, incumbent Tim Johnson, of being insufficiently supportive of the Pentagon.

Now what happens, is the Democrats came back and ran an ad saying Tim Johnson's son, his son, is actually on the ground in Afghanistan, helping in the war effort over there. How could you question his patriotism?

So that's the story, Paula, it's going to be a major political issue, as well as the question of the typical back and forth between the White House and Congress over who is keeping who informed.

ZAHN: Yes, and wasn't there an ad in one of these campaigns actually linking Tom Daschle, making comparisons between him and Saddam Hussein?

KARL: Yes, that was a print ad, not run by the Republican Party, but by a conservative interest group, that had a picture of Saddam Hussein right next to Tom Daschle, not something that made the majority leader very happy.

SNOW: And Daschle's not even running for re-election. It's just appearing for South Dakota.

ZAHN: All right, Kate, I want to talk energy with you. The controversy over drilling in Alaska heats up, and we've been hearing about ANWAR, that acronym for some time. Now we're hearing about CAFE, and it's not cafe ole, is it?

SNOW: Right, right, a new acronym for you. It stands for corporate average fuel economy. Translation, you know, when you go to buy a car, you look at the sticker in the window. It has how many miles per gallon the car will get. Well, that's what we're talking about. Right now, cars on average have about 28 miles per gallon. That's the fuel efficiency they get, and light trucks or SUVs get about 21 miles to the gallon. On average, over the whole fleet of all SUVs.

What they want to do, the Democrats want to change that, they want to say that all cars and light trucks averaging all across the board should get 35 miles to the gallon, and they want to phase that in by the year 2013.

Now you notice I said light trucks, and SUVs, and there's a reason for that, Paula. They're not including heavy pickup trucks. Why would they not be including pickup trucks? Well, part of the answer is they want votes for this bill, and a lot of senators represent farm states, even Senator Daschle from South Dakota the other day said, people in South Dakota drive pickup trucks, so they're leaving pickup trucks out of this whole CAFE standards, out of these new fuel efficiency standards -- Paula. ZAHN: Yes, I remember, that was big news not long ago when Daschle was seen driving one of those huge SUVs during a home state visit. From energy reform, let's move on to election reform that is.

Jon, I thought we had heard the last of dangling chads, hanging chads. They're back. Why?

KARL: Yes, that's right, Paula. You know, the Congress has been trying ever since that Florida recount to try to do something to reform the election system here, to help get money to the states so that they can reform their election systems, get rid of those hanging chads, use more high-tech voting machines. And it looked like that proposal was dead last week on the Senate floor, but I can tell you now is we're hearing that there looks to be now a new deal between the Democrats and the Republicans. You can expect this week to see something on the floor of the U.S. Senate voted on. We believe that we will put some money, about $3 billion to the states, to get rid of those old voting machines, and to set some national standards.

ZAHN: Before we let you go, we understand as we start out yet another new week on the Hill, you have a favorite moment from last week. What was that, Kate?

SNOW: Well, remember we talked about Jeffrey Skilling was going to come and testify last week before a Senate panel. Here's my favorite moment. Jeffrey Skilling was talking about very serious matters, about Enron, about his role at Enron, and every single shot of Skilling, what do you see sitting right next to him but a Diet Coke. It was prominent in all the shots of Skilling. We called Coca- Cola, just FYI, and they said they have no comment on this. It's a very serious matter -- we wondered whether it was a product endorsement for Diet Coke.

KARL: Apparently not. And you know, when you saw the senators, who I guess were playing the good guys in this battle, they had a bottle of Poland Springs Water whenever they were on, so this was dueling product placements.

ZAHN: Yes, and what a fortune that would cost if you had to pay for that. All right, Jonathan and Kate, thanks so much. Get warm. It looks very mighty chilly out there.

SNOW: High of 38 today, Paula.

ZAHN: Got the same cool air blast we got here overnight.

Take care, thanks.

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