Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Preview of President Bush's Speech

Aired July 09, 2002 - 07:02   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: "Up Front" this morning, President Bush's plan to restore credibility and responsibility to America's blue-chip businesses. It is a speech that's getting lots of attention from Wall Street to Main Street.

CNN's Jonathan Karl is standing by on Capitol Hill with a preview -- good morning, Jonathan.

JONATHAN KARL, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Well, the president is taking his message of corporate responsibility right to Wall Street. It's his effort to restore confidence in corporate America and also in the stock market and not incidentally in his own party's ability to take on corporate wrongdoers. He is going to propose measures, including tough, new penalties on corporate wrongdoers, including throwing them in jail, possible jail time for CEOs who knowingly cook the books.

The president offered somewhat of a preview of all of this last -- yesterday, last night, at the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm going to outline tough, new laws and actions to punish abuses, restore investor confidence and protect the pensions of American workers. We have a duty to every worker, shareholder and investor in America to punish the guilty, to close loopholes and protect employee pensions, and we will.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: But even before hearing the president's proposals, Democrats here on Capitol Hill were calling them too little, too late. They are moving full steam ahead with their own reform measures here on Capitol Hill.

And Democrats also sense a real political opening here. There is a Democratic group run in part by James Carville, the former Clinton adviser, and it is running an ad today in New York and in Washington, D.C. on cable television that hits the president very hard. It's the kind of ad you usually see in the heat of a campaign, taking aim at the president's own performance as a corporate manager, his role on the board of Harken Energy back in the early 1990s, and his controversial stock sale back then. That ad running in small media markets now, just New York and Washington on cable television, but it is a sense of what the Democrats think they have here.

The president responded to that yesterday as well in his news conference.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: I know that this is an election year, and both Republicans and Democrats will be focused on politics. That's normal during an election year. But we must not be distracted from the important work that we share. It will take a lot of work and bipartisan cooperation to get important legislation out of the Congress before they all go home to campaign. The agenda is full, the time is short, and the nation is watching.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: And the Democratic response on Capitol Hill will be immediate. Democratic leaders plan to hold a press conference later this morning with laid-off workers from both WorldCom and Enron -- Paula.

ZAHN: And of course, there are some Democrats out there, though, who are saying that that criticism misses the point, and Senator Corzine will make that point in an interview that will air in the next hour of CNN.

Jonathan Karl, thanks so much.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.