Transcript for June 4

MR. HARWOOD: “We’re going to hold their feet to the fire.” They do not want—certainly in 2006--to get to the question of “What would you do differently?” because they’re split. We’ve talked a lot this year about splits in the Republican Party. Within the Democratic Party, the base of the party very much wants to get out of Iraq, and further questions, to some degree, the projections of American power. That’s fine when you talk about the sort of liberal—most liberal third of the population, but for others, for the swing voters Democrats need, they don’t question the projection of American power, and they’re not sure that the right thing to do is bring U.S. troops out.

MR. RUSSERT: It is interesting, though, that John Edwards has said he regrets his vote, it was a mistake. John Kerry, vote was a mistake. Biden, prior to the head, said his vote was a mistake. Russ Feingold voted against the war, Al Gore voted against the war. Hillary Clinton is still the one candidate out there who voted for the war who hasn’t pulled back on that vote.

MS. IFILL: She’s—it’s not insignificant that she’s also the one woman candidate who people are going to try to tar as being too soft. And so she’s almost got to be tougher. She’s got to be more firm in what it is that she says.

Now, that’s just interpreting it from her words. But also think about what these candidates have had to do. They’ve been able to carve out another line, which was, “We don’t support the war, but we support the troops.” We cannot underestimate the effects of the Haditha effect on even that argument. So I think that there—it’s a very rocky, very difficult road to navigate, and if you’re Hillary Clinton right now, maybe there’s room in the future to repudiate that vote, but there’s no reason to do it right now.

MR. HARWOOD: There are two things the Democrats worry about in a broad national sense right now. One is they charge that they’re going to raise your taxes. You’ll hear that from Republicans. And the second is this defeat and retreat. That still has some potency.

MR. RUSSERT: And also, this notion from the Republicans that if the Democrats take over Congress, here come the liberals. They’re going to take over all the committee structures. You can almost see the photographs being slotted in the TV ads now saying, “Watch out. You may not like us, but these are the Democrats.”

MS. IFILL: Yeah. Well, the photographs will probably be countered by the photographs of Duke Cunningham and others. Of course, Bill Jefferson, depending on whether there’s an indictment in that case or not, might offset that. But I think there’s going to be a lot of that mutual finger-pointing, and it could just make people say, forget about all of them.

MR. RUSSERT: This was in USA Today: “Bush tries to regain his footing on once-rock-solid conservative base. Whether President Bush is talking about a get-tough border policy or the importance of judicial restraint ... he is sure to throw in an appeal these days to wavering conservative supporters. ... Next week ... Bush will talk about the importance of a constitutional amendment that would bar gay marriage by defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, a major issue for social and religious conservatives. ... The president is scheduled to renew his call for a line-item veto, arguing it will help him rein in the runaway federal spending that has been another nagging source of conservative discontent.”

John, suddenly a constitutional amendment on gay marriage. We haven’t heard much about that in the last two years.

MR. HARWOOD: Well, we haven’t, but Republicans are very worried now that older voters, rural voters, religious conservatives, simply don’t have enough positive reasons to go out in midterm elections, which tend to be low turnout contests and dominated by which side has the most enthusiasm. The interesting thing about this is Bush has dropped among Republicans and among conservatives, but who’s really dropped are those Republican members of Congress. Their approval rating among conservatives in our Wall Street Journal/NBC poll since January of 2005 has fallen in half, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re so hot at the White House right now. They feel the White House has not backed them up.

MR. RUSSERT: You heard Senator Biden. He doesn’t think it works.

MS. IFILL: Three states: Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, the only states where President Bush is now getting over 50 percent approval ratings. That’s tough for him. So he’s got to speak to that base. He’s got to expand that base. He’s dropped precipitously among Republicans, he’s dropped even more so off the map among independents.

But one thing, before we talk about what’s going to happen with the gay marriage debate, it’s important to remember what Senator Biden was just saying, which is that it takes two-thirds of a vote in the Senate to get this thing through. So it takes two-thirds of the House and Senate of the states. We’re talking about a constitutional amendment. So anything we do this week, paying attention to the president’s speeches, because the president has suddenly racheted up on this issue, or the debate on the Senate on this, on flag burning, on anything which involves a constitutional amendment, you have to talk about the reality of it. How much of this is a debate about the issue, a cultural touchstone issue—which is fine to have that kind of debate in Congress—and how much of it is about changing anything?

MR. HARWOOD: And Tim, on Biden’s point, in the long term, there’s no question this is a dying flame. The question is, how long is it politically useful for Republicans? Young people do not care about this issue. I talked to a senior Republican pollster on Friday who said people under 40 just don’t care about gay marriage at all in a large sense. And so Republicans know that this is a losing argument, you know, five, 10, 20 years down the road. But right now, it still has some utility for them.

MS. IFILL: Partly because people under 40 aren’t the ones voting right now.

MR. HARWOOD: Exactly.

MR. RUSSERT: When you hear discussion about the line-item veto, the get control—federal spending under control, I went back and looked at federal spending on a variety of categories from 2001 when the president became president, Republicans controlled the House and the Senate and the White House. And look at this. The budget went from a $281 billion dollar surplus to a $336 billion dollar deficit. A swing of $617 billion dollars. Federal spending went up 37 percent. The debt went up 46 percent. How is a line-item veto going to change any of that?

Bush Administration

(2001-Current)

          2001      Now      Increase

Budget    $281b     $336b    +$617b

          surplus   deficit

Federal   $1.9      $2.6     +37%

Spending  trillion  trillion

Debt      $5.7      $8.3     +46%

          trillion  trillion

MR. HARWOOD: It’s not going to change it very much, and when you really look at the complaints from some of these conservatives on the Hill, you have to also look back at what happened when the president came out with his Social Security privatization plan last year and when he came out with Medicare entitlement cuts this year. Republicans don’t want to vote for those things. So they share responsibility with the administration for what’s happened on the deficit. I talked to a White House official this morning who has some hope that perhaps after the election, the last two years of the Bush presidency, they will be some more appetite with help from new Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson to deal with entitlements. But so far there hasn’t been much appetite.

MS. IFILL: But you’re talking about a real disconnect, not only between the Congress and Republicans in Congress and what the president is talking about, but also with the American people. I was struck by one poll number that I found this week which is that people were asked whether their gas prices, which everyone says we’re all so concerned about gas prices going through the roof, will it affect your vacation plans? Seventy-three percent said no. So, is there a disconnect between members of Congress and the White House? Yes. Is there a disconnect between what Americans say they’re concerned about and what they’re willing to do about it? Yes. And that has to do with the deficit as well.

MR. RUSSERT: Well, when people hear a line-item veto, “get tough on federal spending,” do they know that both parties have been reluctant to tackle the big issue of entitlement reform in, in—throughout years, and we’re leaving our kids a huge legacy of debt?

MS. IFILL: And do they know that when Bill Clinton had the line-item veto that didn’t—that wasn’t exactly what brought the deficit down? That’s, that’s an executive privilege issue, not an issue about balancing the budget.

MR. RUSSERT: John, you mentioned Hank Paulson, the new secretary of the treasury nominee. “Mr. Risk Goes to Washington” according to BusinessWeek. He is a strong environmentalist, very much outspoken on global warming. How’s he going to fit in in the Bush White House?

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