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CNN Live At Daybreak
D.C. Doings: Budget, Intelligence Probe
Aired February 02, 2004 - 06:35 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.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is B-day in Washington. President Bush will present Congress with a budget proposal. It will include 12 -- count them, 12 -- zeros: $2.4 trillion.
Actually, there's a lot going on in Washington today, so we take you live there now and our producer, Paul Courson.
First, let's get to the budget -- Paul.
PAUL COURSON, CNN WASHINGTON MORNING PRODUCER: I'm trying to think of what a check would look like if you wrote it out with that many zeros in it, Carol. It's just amazing.
COSTELLO: I don't think it would fit on the line.
COURSON: Well, there is a lot of spending involved. There are also some cuts. I guess cuts in the Washington term of the word. You know, in Washington, if you don't get as much money that you expected, it's sometimes portrayed as a cut, and there are some government programs that will be limited in their spending to .5 percent, which is less than the amount of inflation. So, some of those program chiefs are going to be calling it a cut. Other programs will be limited to 1 percent; again, less than they would have expected.
Other spending points that they'll be having in the budget that's coming out today will include permanent tax cuts proposed at $2.9 trillion. We've got $1 billion in new money for the mission to Mars. And we've got $18 million, an increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, Carol.
Defense spending should go up by 7 percent in the proposal coming out today, and homeland security should go up about 10 percent.
COSTELLO: Will there be some contentious fighting over this proposal in Congress, Paul?
COURSON: There will. The programs especially that are under- funded will be argued on the floor of Congress as to whether they deserve more money or not. And then, Democrats are very concerned about the tax cuts that are proposed in this. If they were to make them permanent, what would that do for the deficit? And what would that do for the nation's economy if that red ink gets too high?
COSTELLO: I also wanted to ask you about the president ordering an independent commission to look into pre-war intelligence. He didn't want to do that. He finally decided to. Why? COURSON: Well, we saw this last week with David Kay's testimony, the top U.S. inspector. He has now left that position. But he did testify on Capitol Hill that we didn't have the kind of intelligence that we should have had to have made a reliable estimate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
So, what now the president will order up is: How come? Why didn't we have more people on the ground as sources for this sort of intelligence? And what sort of reliance were we really making in the conclusions that we drew?
COSTELLO: All right, Paul Courson live from D.C. this morning. Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired February 2, 2004 - 06:35 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: It is B-day in Washington. President Bush will present Congress with a budget proposal. It will include 12 -- count them, 12 -- zeros: $2.4 trillion.
Actually, there's a lot going on in Washington today, so we take you live there now and our producer, Paul Courson.
First, let's get to the budget -- Paul.
PAUL COURSON, CNN WASHINGTON MORNING PRODUCER: I'm trying to think of what a check would look like if you wrote it out with that many zeros in it, Carol. It's just amazing.
COSTELLO: I don't think it would fit on the line.
COURSON: Well, there is a lot of spending involved. There are also some cuts. I guess cuts in the Washington term of the word. You know, in Washington, if you don't get as much money that you expected, it's sometimes portrayed as a cut, and there are some government programs that will be limited in their spending to .5 percent, which is less than the amount of inflation. So, some of those program chiefs are going to be calling it a cut. Other programs will be limited to 1 percent; again, less than they would have expected.
Other spending points that they'll be having in the budget that's coming out today will include permanent tax cuts proposed at $2.9 trillion. We've got $1 billion in new money for the mission to Mars. And we've got $18 million, an increase for the National Endowment for the Arts, Carol.
Defense spending should go up by 7 percent in the proposal coming out today, and homeland security should go up about 10 percent.
COSTELLO: Will there be some contentious fighting over this proposal in Congress, Paul?
COURSON: There will. The programs especially that are under- funded will be argued on the floor of Congress as to whether they deserve more money or not. And then, Democrats are very concerned about the tax cuts that are proposed in this. If they were to make them permanent, what would that do for the deficit? And what would that do for the nation's economy if that red ink gets too high?
COSTELLO: I also wanted to ask you about the president ordering an independent commission to look into pre-war intelligence. He didn't want to do that. He finally decided to. Why? COURSON: Well, we saw this last week with David Kay's testimony, the top U.S. inspector. He has now left that position. But he did testify on Capitol Hill that we didn't have the kind of intelligence that we should have had to have made a reliable estimate of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
So, what now the president will order up is: How come? Why didn't we have more people on the ground as sources for this sort of intelligence? And what sort of reliance were we really making in the conclusions that we drew?
COSTELLO: All right, Paul Courson live from D.C. this morning. Thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
