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CNN Novak, Hunt & Shields

Richard Gephardt Discusses U.S. Energy Policy

Aired May 19, 2001 - 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.
AL HUNT, CO-HOST: I'm Al Hunt. Robert Novak and I will question the House Democratic leader.

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: He is Congressman Richard Gephardt of Missouri.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NOVAK (voice-over): With gasoline prices rising at the pump and blackouts threatened in California, President Bush rolled out his energy policy. He called for greater production of power and fuel, also proposing tax breaks for conservation.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If we fail to act, this great country could face a darker future, a future that is unfortunately being previewed in rising prices at the gas pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California.

SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: Their plan offers no solutions to the short-term problems. We're also concerned about many of the solutions their plan offers to America's long-term energy challenges.

NOVAK: Meanwhile, President Bush's tax cut made progress in both the Senate and House, aiming at final passage by Memorial Day.

Minority Leader Gephardt has been in the forefront of opposition to the president's policy on both energy and taxes. He is in his 13th year as House Democratic floor leader, the first six as majority leader; since then leading a Democratic minority.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

NOVAK: Mr. Leader, you heard Senator Daschle criticize the Bush energy policy for being short on short-term solutions. I think you have made the same criticism yourself.

What is the Democratic answer to the short-term energy problems in this country?

REP. RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO), MINORITY LEADER: Well, first of all, Bob, if you go to California, as I did about a week ago, and you listen to the people, you can quickly sense that there is a crisis afoot on the West Coast. GEPHARDT: People have seen their energy bills go up 10 and 20 times. If a gallon of milk had gone up as fast as electricity has in California, a gallon of milk today in California would be $190.

So what the president's plan really needed was price caps in the short term in California to stop this crisis, which is bankrupting millions of people on the West Coast.

NOVAK: Well, a lot of people, Congressman Gephardt, outside the state of California and inside, are worried about the escalating price of gasoline at the pump. And I would like you to listen to what one of your younger, aggressive Democratic congressmen, Robert Wexler from Florida, had to say about it the other night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ROBERT WEXLER (D), FLORIDA: Why aren't we talking about rescinding the gasoline tax? 18.4 cents we would take right off the bill today. But, at the same time, let's not harm highway projects. Let's take it right out of the $1.3 trillion. That's a tax cut that real Americans could see next week, not 11 years from now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

NOVAK: He was talking about the $1.3 trillion tax cut. What's wrong with Congressman Wexler's idea, sir?

GEPHARDT: Well, it was an idea that came up a year ago when we had higher gasoline prices, and I thought then and I think now that it's not the best idea. And the reason I believe that is that we have ongoing projects that really help us with energy conservation -- mass transit projects, better road projects. And if go quickly to rescinding that tax it could injure the long-term commitment to these projects and would be counterproductive. So I think it's an idea that we always look at when we get into these deals.

Far better, to me, is what Bill Clinton did a year ago and what I would hope George Bush would do now: First, there is no reason we can't tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, bring more stocks into marketplace, bring the price down. Secondly, he ought to be talking to OPEC and Mexico and urging them to bring more supply into the market. They've been cutting back in the last few months.

NOVAK: In all fairness, Mr. Leader, President Bush has been in office just a little over 100 days. President Clinton was in office for eight years without an energy plan. Doesn't the Clinton administration have to take the blame for the problems that seem to be afflicting this country on the energy question?

GEPHARDT: I don't think so, Bob. I really think that you have to look at two things: One, six of those eight years, the Republicans controlled the Congress, and I don't remember any of them talking about any energy program that they wanted. In fact, some of the Republican leaders in the Congress have only begun to talk about this problem in the last week when the president's program came forward. Secondly, President Clinton had a good energy program, and a lot of it did get done. Some of it he did on his own, like going after OPEC and capping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

But remember, it was the Clinton administration that came forward and passed research projects into renewables, into fuel cells, to bring down car mileage and to help with conservation. And he had a very active program of investigating research on coal gasification and alternative fuels -- solar, wind and other things that have been coming on line and will come on line in the future.

HUNT: Mr. Leader, much of what the Cheney task force has proposed could be done administratively. President Bush has just ordered all federal agencies to speed up a approval of refineries and power plants. Do you agree?

GEPHARDT: Clearly, we need more supply. If we're not rolling back the Clean Air Act -- and I hope that isn't done -- than there's nothing wrong. In fact, it's a positive to try to bring on line more supply. That's what they're doing in California and the West Coast.

HUNT: So you agree with what the president proposed?

GEPHARDT: If he's not rolling back the Clean Air Act, which I don't believe we have to do, I think bringing on more supply is very consistent with what we'd call for in our plan.

HUNT: Let me ask you this: Apart from California, do we have an energy crisis in this country? And if so, what sacrifices are you asking Americans to make?

GEPHARDT: Well, I think we have an increased need for more energy. We also have a need for conservation and a need for continuing research into renewables and other clean-burning fuels and environmentally sensitive ways of dealing with these problems.

HUNT: But you would not term it a crisis?

GEPHARDT: I think there's a crisis on the West Coast. I think when you have gasoline prices going from about $1.30 to $2.00, on their way to $3.00, you've got a crisis in price on gasoline, which will affect everybody in this country.

So, yes, we have an energy problem. In some parts of the country, it's already a crisis. And we need a long-term, short-term, medium-term plan, and I'm afraid the president's plan is not that. It's heavy on drilling. And most importantly, the good parts of his plan are not in his budget and not in his tax bill, which really makes a mockery of what he's really suggesting.

NOVAK: I'm sorry, you mean the fact that he's offering tax incentives for conservation and that's not in the budget or the tax bill. Is that what you mean by that?

GEPHARDT: Right, Bob. As you know, we're putting through this week, supposedly, a $1.3 trillion tax cut, probably the biggest tax cut in our history, and there's not a penny in it for the energy stuff that he suggested this week. And probably this is the last tax bill for some time.

So, you know, it's one thing to say you're going to do something; it's another thing to do it. This tax bill and this budget does not contain the ideas that he put forward in his energy plan.

NOVAK: Sir, from the long-term aspect, the president wants an increase in nuclear power. Now, in the last 22 years since the Three Mile Island incident, there's been no safety problems with power. We now have 20 percent of the electric power in the country produced by nuclear reactors -- 103 reactors.

What's wrong with -- well, let me ask you, do you support the president then, since this is a safe, economical way to get electric power to increase and speed up the production of nuclear energy?

GEPHARDT: I don't support moving forward with the licensing and building of new nuclear plants. But I do support adding money for research into making nuclear technology safer, more uniform, not only across our country but across the world. And most importantly, we need real, quick research and effective research on what to do with the nuclear waste.

We have not solved this problem. We've got nuclear waste all over the country. We can't come to an agreement on where to put it because nobody wants it going through their state and nobody wants it in their state at the end of the day.

There's new technology, I am told, being developed in Europe.

GEPHARDT: Maybe we can help with that.

If you could answer those two questions -- safety of the plants and an effective and a consensus way to deal with the waste -- then you could begin to talk about nuclear technology going forward, but not now.

HUNT: Mr. Gephardt, let me ask you just one question before we go to the break, and that is that a number of labor unions -- including the Teamsters Union, headed by your old law school classmate, Jim Hoffa -- some of the building trades have been quite supportive of President Bush's proposal to add supply to build more plants, including nuclear plants.

Do you think that they're just putting their parochial interests ahead of the national interests?

GEPHARDT: Well, first of all, they have not endorsed the president's plan. The president was right in bringing them in and talking to them. I talked to them later in the week about our plan, and we're going to meet again next week and talk in great detail about our plan.

There are things in the president's plan that like on the surface, but they needed to hear some of the other concerns that people have.

Look, this is an American problem. It's not a Democratic problem; it's not a Republican problem. And we need solutions that we can all agree on. And we're going to work in the Democratic Party to take the parts of the president's plan that we agree with and we're going to try to get them done. We're going to lean forward to solve this problem.

If you go out and listen to people, as I have, out in the country, about this problem, you know quickly people don't want to hear about politics, they want to hear about solutions. And obviously organized labor can be a very important part of the solution.

HUNT: Congressman, we're going to take a break right now.

But we'll be back in just a minute to ask Dick Gephardt over this Preakness weekend whether the Democratic horse is riderless.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

NOVAK: House Democratic Leader Gephardt, the Republican majority in Congress is driving for final passage of the tax bill by Memorial Day. Seems to be that the debate is over whether it's going to be $1.3 trillion or $1.6 trillion as a total amount; whether the top marginal rate will 33 percent or 36 percent.

Mr. Gephardt, the Democrats have really lost the war on taxes, haven't they?

GEPHARDT: I don't think so, Bob. Obviously, we don't control the Congress or the presidency. So you knew going in that Republicans are going to pretty much have their way on taxes in the Senate.

The Democrats have brought a little bit of moderation to the bill. But it's still too large, it's still not focused on the right people, and it doesn't do enough in the early years. Most of it, as you know, is in the later years. It explodes out in those later years.

So we need the tax relief now, and we need it for the right things. And in terms of its overall size, my great worry is that, in the out years, Medicare, Social Security, education, health care are not going to be treated properly in our budget because the tax cut is going to explode in those later years.

NOVAK: But there's not much you can do about it. And I'd like to read to you -- and we'll put it up on the screen -- what the former secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, said about the Democratic Party.

He said, "There's no cohesive voice and no obvious Democratic leader. Daschle comes close, but he's hardly a household name. Clinton is not around. He left under a cloud. Gore has chosen to be quiet. Terry McAuliffe doesn't have the stature. There's a tremendous void in terms of a person to speak for the Democratic Party." He apparently forgot about Dick Gephardt. But does he have a point, sir? Is the Democratic Party right now a riderless horse?

GEPHARDT: No, I don't think so, Bob. You know, when you lose an election, it has consequences. We don't have the presidency, we don't control the Congress. We lost all three for the first time in probably 50 years. That has consequences. You can't expect a party as large and broad as ours to have someone jump up and say, "I'm the leader, and everyone is going to listen to me."

But I think we're effectively working together. We're as unified as I've ever seen our party. We've had really good alternatives to both the budget and the tax bill and now the energy bill.

This is a party...

HUNT: Mr. Gephardt...

GEPHARDT: ... well, look, we tied in the election. We just didn't win in overtime. So we're going to move forward, and we're going to win the election in 2002. We're going to win the House and Senate back.

HUNT: But a number of Democrats in this town complain privately that you are reacting -- "you" being the party leaders -- are reacting rather than proposing anything new.

And Stu Rothenberg, our CNN colleague, had a piece a few weeks ago in which he quoted one of these Democrats as saying -- I want to quote -- about you, Dick Gephardt, quote, "At one time he was in the idea business, but he has not had a new idea in eight years."

Is that fair?

GEPHARDT: Well, you know, when you're in the job of being in the minority, you have to try to pull your people together, unify them, come up with alternatives. The president is always the proposer, and when President Clinton was in office, he was proposing things and we tried to be supportive.

Now we're trying to provide the loyal opposition and put forward what we think are legitimate and good alternatives to the policies that are being put forward.

In a few days I'm going to start talking about philosophy and ideology of our party, and we're going to start coming forward with our affirmative agenda leading up to the election of 2002. And we're in the idea business, and we're going to be rolling out those ideas.

NOVAK: We have just 90 seconds before the break.

Mr. Leader, our foreign policy question -- terrible bloodshed and turmoil in the Middle East. In your opinion, is the Bush administration and President Bush doing enough to try to alleviate the situation there? GEPHARDT: Well, I think the Bush administration is, and I hope it will be, becoming more active in the Middle East and other places around the world.

Look, we're the leader in the world, this little bitty world that we all live in. What happens in the Middle East, unfortunately, affects us ultimately here, or in Kosovo, or in North Korea. So we need to be working with both sides to try to bring about a lessening of the violence.

I think the Bush administration in the last few weeks has been talking about doing that. I hope they will do that because, without our leadership, I don't think the violence is going to stop anytime soon.

HUNT: Mr. Gephardt, at home you have been a vocal supporter of campaign finance reform. Yet, as the bill comes to the House, the number-three Democrat in your leadership, Martin Frost, says it's a bill that will destroy political parties. Robert Bauer, who has been your outside counsel on campaign finance issues, is privately urging Democrats to vote against it.

My question is, is all of this being done with your knowledge and with your approval? And will you deliver enough votes to pass campaign finance reform?

GEPHARDT: Well, our leadership in the Democratic Party in the House, in the last three years passed the McCain-Feingold bill twice, without changes. We fended off all amendments. It took about 200 Democrats, only about 50 Republicans. I'm proud of that.

I am for this bill. I can't tell others what to think, but I'm going to work as hard as I know how to get this bill through the House of Representatives...

HUNT: Will it pass?

GEPHARDT: ... if the Republican leadership will let it come up. The question I've got today is, is the speaker going to let it come up before the year is out and we run out of the time to do this bill?

HUNT: Mr. Leader, we're going to take a break now.

But we'll be back in just a minute with "The Big Question" for Dick Gephardt.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: And now "The Big Question" for Dick Gephardt.

Congressman, I have spoken to a number of Democrats the past few days, including some who are close to you, and they all say about you that you hope the Democrats will win back control of the House in 2002. If they do, you will remain speaker. If they do not, you will run for president in 2004, or you would like to.

Let's skip with the pro forma "I haven't made up my mind yet," if you will, and just tell me, isn't this a perfectly logical scenario?

GEPHARDT: Well, it's a scenario that requires me and everybody else to get way, way, way ahead of where we need to be.

In order to win the House back, which I really want to do for all of the right reasons -- for the main reason that we would regain the agenda in the Congress and in the country, which I think we need to do -- we need to stay focused on that election, and that's what I'm doing every day. Outside of my duties as minority leader and my duties in voting on the floor and holding together our coalition, I work to win back House seats, to win back that majority, to get the agenda.

NOVAK: We're nearly out of time here. Need a very quick answer -- you would have been speaker, Mr. Gephardt, if you had won any of the last four elections, if the Democrats had won any of the last four elections in the House. Is this 2002 election, your fifth chance, going to be your last chance to be speaker in the real world?

GEPHARDT: Well, Bob, we won every one of those elections. We picked up seats. The '94 election, we lost 52 seats in the House...

(CROSSTALK)

NOVAK: Last chance (UNINTELLIGIBLE) with the election?

GEPHARDT: We won nine, five and two, and we're going to win it back with five more seats in 2002.

NOVAK: OK, Dick Gephardt, thank you very much for being with us.

Al Hunt and I will be back with a comment after these messages.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HUNT: Bob, Dick Gephardt limited the energy crisis pretty much to California and the West, but I'll tell you, the Democrats think it's a crisis for George Bush. They think they've got a winner on this one.

NOVAK: I was very interested, Al, that he said he was going to make some ideological, philosophical comments because they sure cannot win the votes in this Congress.

HUNT: This has become a unicameral legislature. They can win some in the Senate, but the House really is irrelevant to most of what goes on in Washington.

NOVAK: Dick Gephardt wouldn't admit it, but I think 2002 is his last chance to be speaker. If he doesn't make that, he'll run for president. Could make that.

I'm Robert Novak.

HUNT: And I'm Al Hunt.

NOVAK: Coming up in one half hour on Reliable Sources: reporting rumors. Florida Governor Jeb Bush denies having an extramarital affair.

And at 7:00 p.m. Eastern, the "CAPITAL GANG" talks about President Bush's energy and tax plans, plus an interview with Georgia Congressman John Lewis.

HUNT: That's all for now. Thanks for joining us.

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