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CNN Novak, Hunt & Shields

Interview With Richard Gephardt

Aired January 26, 2002 - 17:30   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.
ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: I'm Robert Novak. Al Hunt and I will question the top Democrat in the House of Representatives.

AL HUNT, CO-HOST: He is Minority Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT (voice-over): With President Bush scheduled to lay out his program this coming week in the State of the Union address, congressional leaders announced plans to revive economic stimulus legislation that died in a partisan dispute last year.

SEN. THOMAS DASCHLE (D-SD), MAJORITY LEADER: A new year brings a new opportunity to start over. We're going to do that and work in hopefully a very positive and a bipartisan spirit.

REP. DENNIS HASTERT (R-IL), HOUSE SPEAKER: We've made a commitment to at least start to discuss and try to work things out. I'm committed, and I think other leaders are that we need some type of a stimulus package.

HUNT: Congressman Gephardt delivered his own version of the State of the Union message, softening the attack on President Bush's tax cuts by other Democratic leaders.

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), MINORITY LEADER: It's my view that we shouldn't be reconsidering tax cuts in the middle of a recession. And in any case, the president has taken them off the table.

So I'm proposing that next month a group of leaders from both sides of the aisle come together at the White House for an economic growth summit to take the long look ahead.

HUNT: Dick Gephardt, then a St. Louis city alderman, was elected to Congress in 1976 at the age of 35. In 1989, the year after he sought the presidential nomination, he became Democratic leader of the House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HUNT: Mr. Leader, there were two headlines this week which we will show our viewers. On Wednesday, the Congressional Budget Office reports that the big budget surpluses have almost vanished, we're going into deficit the next couple years.

On Thursday, you gave a speech in which you laid out your vision for the next decade, including an array of new tax credits for energy and education, more spending on technology and research.

How do you pay for your vision?

GEPHARDT: Well, first, we've got to be realistic about where we are. You cannot change the tax bill. The president has said that over his dead body would the tax bill be changed. That's where we are. We've got to deal with where we are.

We need to do it in a couple of ways, in my view. First, we've got to be bipartisan. We've made real progress fighting terrorism together. We've had a weekly meeting with the president. I think it's yielded some good results. So that's why I'm talking about a summit, bringing the two sides together.

Look, we have disagreements. The tax bill that's in force is not my tax bill, I would have done it very differently, would have done a lot of the things that I had in the speech. But we lost. It is a waste of time to re-litigate that question at this point.

But we do need to sit down together to look at the long haul, to look at the recession we're in, to look at the fact that deficits are coming back, and figure out together what we can actually do to move the country in the right direction.

HUNT: Well, you raise a bit of a red herring when you say we shouldn't revisit the tax cut in the middle of a recession. I don't think anyone is proposing that. The proposal that Senator Kennedy and others have offered is in 2004, presumably when the recession is long gone, then you revisit those tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans.

Are you willing to say that in order to pay for what you have proposed you will weigh, when the recession is over, to consider postponing the tax cuts?

GEPHARDT: Well, I think you've got to sit down with people who have to be involved in the discussion. The president has to sign or not sign legislation. The majority in the House has to decide whether or not to bring up legislation.

We need to sit down in a respectful, trusting way, as we have on terrorism, and finally try to work out a long-term economic growth plan for this country.

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about 10 years from now is we're always looking at today and tomorrow and next week. We need to look at where we're going to be on energy 10 years from now, where we're going to be on education 10 years from now, where we're going to be on pensions and retirement 10 years from now, and begin making some sensible decisions, work out short-term, medium-term, long-term plans that make sense.

HUNT: You mentioned retirement. The CBO report also said that because of the budget situation you will have to tap into the Social Security surplus to the tune of some $242 billion -- just about what's raised by postponing the top tax rate.

Leadership is about choices, Mr. Gephardt. If you confine that choice, tap into Social Security or revisit those tax cuts, which do you come down?

GEPHARDT: Al, we litigated this whole question last year. We made all the arguments that you just made. We said these things would happen. We are where we are.

HUNT: And you're not going to make a choice?

GEPHARDT: Yes, I want to make good choices. I want us to make them, though, in an effective way. If all we do is throw rhetorical bombs at one another, stand in the positions we've been in for the last eight months, nothing is going to happen that's good for the people.

We've made real progress on airline security, on terrorism, on even an education bill that we got done in a bipartisan way.

The last 15 years around here have just been in partisan wrangling. People expect more than that from us, and we ought to be able to do it.

NOVAK: Mr. Leader, you're implying, and a lot of people are going to infer from what you say, that the rhetorical bombs you're referring to were thrown by Senate Democratic Leader, Majority Leader Tom Daschle and Senator Ted Kennedy. Is that what you mean?

GEPHARDT: No, I don't mean that at all.

Look, I think Tom Daschle is one of the most principled, effective people that we've ever had in government and in the Democratic Party. He came forward with a speech in which he stated a lot of important positions, not just on taxes and budgeting, but on education, on energy, on a lot of the issues that I tried to treat as well; as did Ted Kennedy. Ted Kennedy talked about a lot of the things that he believes need to be done in this country. And they both talked about bipartisanship, which is what I talked about the other day.

Look, you're in a situation -- we're in a tough situation. This is a critical juncture in our country. We just sustained one of the worst attacks, probably the worst attack in the country in our history. Our economy has slipped into recession. We're looking at deficits. We got problems with Social Security. It is time to sit down in a respectful and trusting way and try to figure our way through this together.

NOVAK: On Thursday, before the Senate Budget Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said the economy is recovering, there is no need for an economic stimulus package.

A lot of Republicans, Congressman Gephardt, say that the economic stimulus package you have doesn't stimulate the economy, it helps some unemployed people.

Isn't the message from the Federal Reserve chairman such that we don't need this right now?

GEPHARDT: Bob, I think we've had a consensus between the president, Senate Democrats and Republicans, and House Democrats for at least eight, 10, 12 weeks, maybe longer, maybe two and a half months, that we should have an economic stimulus package that gives tax incentives to individuals, tax incentives to businesses and takes care of the unemployed.

And even though it's not a panacea for where we are economically and it isn't going to solve all the problems, I think you do need to try to do those things. I think you need the kind of package that Tom Daschle and, frankly, Trent Lott are talking about, and I think the president would take.

We've just got to convince House Republicans that this is a sensible -- they've been the group among all three parties that have been out of step with what everybody else wants to do.

NOVAK: OK, in that connection, the Republicans -- in your speech, you referred to right-wing Republican zealots. You said the president should ignore them.

Are you talking about some of your colleagues? How about naming some names? Who are these right-wing Republican zealots?

GEPHARDT: Let's look at the two examples I used in my speech. We could have had, I think, a bipartisan agreement on an airline security bill early on. It was only Tom DeLay and Dick Armey...

NOVAK: So those are the right-wing zealots you're talking about?

GEPHARDT: ...it's Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were holding out for the people who have the contracts now for the airport screeners, against what I think the White House would have easily signed and what Senate Democrats and Republicans and House Democrats could have easily agreed on.

The same thing on the stimulus package. We could have had a stimulus package in 10 minutes. I talked to the president about it on a plane ride back from Chicago. I mentioned the three things that Daschle has offered in the last few days. He said, "It sounds good to me." He brought it up again and again in our meetings. It was House Republicans who insisted on a $25 billion tax cut, going back 15 years, for the largest corporations in America.

HUNT: Congressman, let me talk about the mushrooming Enron scandal. From what you've seen, do you think that the Bush White House or the Bush campaign is culpable of wrong doing? GEPHARDT: Well, first of all, I think we need to find the facts in a responsible, exhaustive way. We don't know all the facts yet, that's why these investigations are going on, should go on, and I hope they do them as quickly and as effectively as possible.

And then we can try to reach conclusions about what went wrong, who did what and then what we need to do to fix the problem, if we can, for the future, so it doesn't happen again.

HUNT: You don't know if Bush did anything wrong or not?

GEPHARDT: I don't think we can reach a conclusion yet.

HUNT: Do you agree that this is...

GEPHARDT: I think there's an appearance here of impropriety just from the fact, as I said, the other day, that you've got huge contributions going to both parties, but mostly to the Republican side. And then you have this problem occurring.

I said yesterday in my speech, maybe the worst thing about all this is that the Republican administration, perhaps, failed to do things it might have been able to do. I don't know this yet, but we ought to look at it. Because they were worried about the appearance of impropriety because they got millions of dollars from Enron.

That's one of the aspects we've got to look at.

NOVAK: Mr. Leader...

GEPHARDT: It is bad to have these huge contributions in politics. That's why I'm thrilled we got the discharge out. We're going to have a chance to pass campaign reform, and I'm going to do everything I can to get it done.

NOVAK: Mr. Leader, we're going have to take a break, but I want to ask you one quick question. You just got back from a trip, including a trip to the Middle East.

Do you believe -- you refused to see Yasser Arafat or talk to him when you were there. There's a lot of reports out now that there's sentiment within the Bush administration not to talk to Yasser Arafat anymore, to de-recognize, as it were, the Palestinian Authority.

If you want to have the U.S. involved in the peace process in the Middle East, if you don't talk to Arafat, who do you talk to?

GEPHARDT: Well, that's a very difficult question. I'm sure our administration is trying to grapple with it. It's tough to know.

We did talk to other Palestinian leaders, who are younger and coming along. There's a big split, I'm sure, in that group. Everybody doesn't see things alike, no better than we see things alike in the Democratic party here.

But he is still their leader. We still need to try to... NOVAK: So you wouldn't cut him off?

GEPHARDT: I'm not sure exactly how we should respond to what's happened. I think we're in a very tough spot, here, as the people in the region are.

But we have no choice, as the defense minister in Israel told us, there is no military answer to this problem. We got to sit around a table and figure it out. We've got to have peace, and I believe that.

And I -- as the leading country in the world and in that region, we need to help bring about that peace. I think the administration is trying hard to do that.

And I've come back from the trip with what I hope are constructive suggestions that I'm going to make to the administration, for how to help make that happen.

NOVAK: We do have to take a break, and when we come back, we'll ask Congressman Dick Gephardt if the country needs more money for homeland security.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Mr. Gephardt, President Bush has proposed to double spending on homeland security, domestic terrorism to $37.7 billion in his new budget. Is that sufficient?

GEPHARDT: I think it's probably a good start.

I think the hard thing here is two things. One, we've got to make the right choices. And I think we've got to use a lot of high technology to make the right choices.

Look, if we defend every vulnerability we have in this society, we could spend all of our wealth trying to protect our national wealth.

But we have to make wise decisions. I hope Tom Ridge brings us good decisions. We will back him and help him to try to do that.

Secondly, I think a big need here is to collapse a lot of the responsibilities within the federal government to make this thing more streamlined. We have over 40 agencies that are involved in these efforts, and we need to get Tom Ridge...

(CROSSTALK)

HUNT: But you think the spending level is about right, the $37.7 that's been requested?

GEPHARDT: I think it's a good start. I don't know where we'll wind up with all this. We've got really hear his recommendations, and then try to analyze it to the best of our ability.

NOVAK: Mr. Leader, in connection with homeland security, on November 30 you sent out an e-mail newsletter -- and put up on the screen. You said, "While homeland security should not be a partisan issue, Republican leaders in Congress continue to resist efforts to crack a bipartisan proposal to eliminate threats and protect Americans from further attack."

When you accuse your colleagues, who, today, you've accused of being right-wing zealots, of not protecting Americans, that doesn't sound very bipartisan, does it?

GEPHARDT: Well, what I am saying and what I'll continue to say is that we need to come to, first, a conversation and a negotiation and an agreement on what needs to be done in the country on homeland security.

When we were in that period of time, we came forward with what we thought were constructive recommendations to try to increase our homeland security. And on the Republican side they were simply unwilling to talk about it, unwilling to deal with it. They wanted to put it off until this year, even though I think we all knew we were going to need to do some things. Maybe now we can get down to brass tacks.

NOVAK: Your close friend, Robert Shrum, very able Democratic consultant, and James Carville, another powerful thinker in the Democratic Party, put out a statement where they -- a paper some time ago, where they said the president should be supported by Democrats on the war, but really attack him on everything else. And they said that this was a golden opportunity for the Democratic Party. Do you agree with them?

GEPHARDT: Bob, I have tremendous respect for both of them. But as I tried to say yesterday, I think this is a time when both sides need to try as hard as they possibly can to reach consensus and bipartisan agreement.

We've met with the president every week since September the 11th, the four leaders and the president. I told the president on September the 12th, "We need to trust you and you need to trust us." And I really believe we tried to do that on terrorism, on education, on helping the airline.

And I think we need to do that now on the economy. We're not going to fight terrorism if the economy is weak and falling apart.

HUNT: Congressman, let me return to your trip to the Middle East. As well as Israel, you also went to four Arab countries, and you specifically praised the Egyptians for the help they've offered in our war against terrorism.

I want to ask you, in talking to those countries, do you come away with a view that if the United States expands this war and tries to take out Saddam Hussein, that privately some of these Arab countries would be supportive? Or do you think it really would cause an important public rupture?

GEPHARDT: I think we've got to keep our coalition together. I think the president's done a good job of that. We need to continue to do that.

We need to keep their support in the fight against terrorism. They have been good. They continue to help us, and we need to get that in the future.

I think our greatest challenge going forward is to not only find the terrorists and bring them to justice, do homeland security, which is very important, but we have an ongoing challenge with the rest of the world to try to change a lot of thinking and conditions in a broad swathe of the world to have a different set of values and a different set of views about America and the West.

HUNT: Just quickly, do you think we -- the goal of America, that the policy of America should be to take out Saddam Hussein?

GEPHARDT: I think we've got to get Saddam Hussein to be a better participant in the world community. I think it's quite valid that the administration is trying to get U.N. inspectors back in Iraq. I think it is hopeful to look for other leadership in Iraq, and I think the administration is doing that.

Whatever we do needs to be done in a wise, incremental, sensible, logical way, increasing pressure on Iraq with our allies, even in the Arab world, to get them to be a constructive member of the world community.

NOVAK: A few weeks ago, Congressman Gephardt, on this program we asked Senator John Breaux of Louisiana if he was worried that the Democratic Party was drifting back to the left, and this is the answer he gave. Let's just listen to him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN BREAUX (D), LOUISIANA: It does worry me. I think that the way we have to go about making government work is by forming coalitions from the center working out. I don't think we can come from the left.

The traditional basis of the Democratic Party is not large enough to create a majority. We have to appeal to moderates and many mainstream individuals.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: Do you agree with Senator Breaux?

GEPHARDT: I think the Democratic Party in the last 10 years has been the moderate party in the country. I think we've had great consensus within our party.

I was at the Democratic Leadership Council yesterday to give my speech. John Sweeney, who's the head of organized labor, was at the speech. Terry McAuliffe was there, as the chair of the party. I think we've had that kind of real consensus within the party.

NOVAK: Senator Breaux is worried in vain, then, you think. GEPHARDT: I think we've made great progress. I won't tell you we don't have disagreements within the party; we do and should. But I think we've had tremendous consensus. I think it's the Republican Party that has a right-wing element that is really out of step with the rest of the country.

NOVAK: We're going to have to take another break, and when we come back we'll have "The Big Question" for Dick Gephardt of Missouri.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: "The Big Question" for House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt:

Congressman, if the Democrats regain control of the House of Representatives in this year's election, will you pledge that you would serve out the next two years as speaker and not run for president?

GEPHARDT: Bob, I learned a long time ago that if you're going to achieve your goal, you'd better stay focused on that goal.

Let me give you a football analogy. If I'm Curt Warner at the one-yard line trying to score a touchdown, I'd better be thinking full-time about getting across that one-yard line and not about...

(CROSSTALK)

NOVAK: Was that a yes that you would not -- you would serve out the full term?

GEPHARDT: I'm focused on winning the House back, and that's what I'm working on. The future will take care of itself.

HUNT: In that effort to win the House back, do you support you colleague Gary Condit, who's running for reelection?

GEPHARDT: I want to hold that seat. We are not taking a position in that primary. We are going to help whoever wins the primary try to hold that seat. And we want to win the House back, and that seat will be an important part of it. It's a good Democratic seat.

And Gary might win the primary. If he does, we'll be fully supportive of his efforts...

HUNT: But no preference in the primary?

GEPHARDT: We're going to stay out of the primary.

HUNT: Dick Gephardt, thank you for being with us.

Bob Novak and I will be back with a comment or two in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) HUNT: Bob, I tried, but Dick Gephardt wasn't going to take the bait on that tax cut.

But, you know, all of his plans for the future, they're boxed in. There's not the money to do the agenda that Gephardt talked about.

NOVAK: I think the congressman is running for president, and I think he wants to run as a moderate and a centrist Democrat. But how do you do that when you're referring to your colleagues Dick Armey and Tom DeLay as right-wing zealots? That's kind of a difficult balancing act, isn't it?

HUNT: Well, except I think they are right-wing zealots.

The one thing that Dick Gephardt can do, though, Bob, is he can bridge that gap in the Democratic Party, that divide between left and right. And that may be an asset if he runs for president, but it's a real problem if he leaves the House. I'm not sure how many Democrats would do that.

NOVAK: Well, you know, I think he has a very attractive personality, so do a lot of people in the Democratic Party. But a lot of people feel he moved to the left in 1988 when he ran for president the last time; now he's moving to the right. And some of this liberal friends, I can tell you, are not happy with his performance in giving that speech this week.

I'm Robert Novak.

HUNT: And I'm Al Hunt.

Coming up at 7:00 p.m. on "CAPITAL GANG": the Enron scandal moves to Capitol Hill, Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh comes home, and our "Newsmaker of the Week," Mike McCurry.

NOVAK: And be sure to tune in Monday at 4:00 p.m. for the return of "INSIDE POLITICS" with Judy Woodruff.

Thanks for joining us.

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