What Battles Lie Ahead in Washington?
JEFF GREENFIELD, HOST: Was it only a few months ago when we were asking what was Washington going to do with all that surplus money? Well, now that it's clear that there is a lot less money around than anyone thought, we're asking different questions, like will there be a bigger military budget, more money for the schools, prescription drug benefits for the elderly? And what about lower taxes down the road? The battles ahead in Washington tonight on GREENFIELD AT LARGE. You may remember the famous line of the late Senator Dirksen, "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money." That old chestnut sprang to mind with the news that tomorrow the Congressional Budget Office will apparently say that the surplus is a few billion dollars smaller than the White House estimated just days ago. Enough to mean that the government may be dipping into the Social Security trust fund to the tune of about $9 billion. There'll be a lot of debate about this. A fair number of people are already saying there is not and never has been any real trust fund. But the point is, today's estimates are about $125 billion, give or take a few stray billion, less than they were just last April, and that is bound to color almost every fight over policy, programs, and politics when the president and Congress return to Washington next week. Now, if you're talking about political warfare, there is no better combat journalist than CNN senior White House correspondent John King, who joins us from Crawford, Texas. John, where are you? That doesn't look like the president's ranch?</s>JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It does not. We have come to the font of all knowledge in Crawford, Ms. Westerfield's fourth grade classroom at the Crawford Elementary School.</s>GREENFIELD: OK. Well, let's see if there are questions that we can find there at the elementary school. When the president said, as he did a couple of days ago, that the news about the smaller surplus is incredibly positive news, does that give us a pretty good hint of how the president, how the administration, plans to position itself when it gets back to Washington?</s>KING: Absolutely. It gives you a very clear hint that this president, and especially his budget director, Mitch Daniels, and the vice president, Dick Cheney, are conservatives who long have thought one way to crimp down on government spending is to leave less money in Washington. How do you do that? You do that with a big tax cut. Mr. Bush did that. He knows the Democrats are attacking him today. They will attack him tomorrow. They will attack him through the year 2004. Mr. Bush will make the case the tax cut was the right idea. Yes, the surplus is shrinking because the economy is slowing, but that the answer is not to raise taxes, it's to cut spending, or at least control the growth in spending. The president quite comfortable delivering that message. The Democrats gearing up, though, for a pretty big battle when we come back for the budget fight in September.</s>GREENFIELD: Well, let's talk about the one group we haven't mentioned yet, the Republicans in Congress who control the House and are one short in the Senate. If this incredibly positive news means that there won't be money, say, for a prescription drug benefits for the elderly, which both parties promised last fall, if a number of programs that Congress loves to pass, especially when it gets back into those home districts, is it good news for the congressional Republicans?</s>KING: Well, that's a big question. Number one, the president needs to get the congressional Republicans to go along with him. Remember, they face the voters first in the year 2002. Many Republicans want pork for their districts. Many Republicans want even more for defense. So, the president will have a discipline issue with the Republicans as well. And we can try to sit here today and figure out who wins and who loses. Remember, these things often take time. President Clinton, a very tough budget fight in his first year. One could argue Democrats suffered in 1994. Remember Marjorie Margolies- Mezvinsky? She cast the decided vote, she lost her seat. She would say it was because of the budget. Yet the economy came back by the time President Clinton ran for reelection. He coasted to victory. So, what happens in the next weeks or months, it might take a little longer. Say, November 2002, before we understand just how the voters process it all.</s>GREENFIELD: John, very briefly, as you, this veteran combat journalist of politics looks at this terrain, right now, who holds the higher ground, the president or the Congressional Democrats?</s>KING: Well, the president has the presidency, which gives him the bully-pulpit. Who holds the higher ground? Who knows. The economy holds the higher ground. We will learn from the numbers in, coming up this week when we get a revised GDP, when we get the numbers in the weeks and months ahead. If tax revenues pick up and the economy picks up, then the president holds the higher ground. We do not know because we've never seen the president in this environment. This is his first budget fight. He got the tax cut through, but Republicans controlled the Senate then. He now has an environment of Republicans in the House, Democrats in the Senate, he has to get this through. We have here, in the classroom, to help us with this, the eight ball. If you want to ask whose going to win, we'll ask the eight ball. It says "outlook not so good," but it doesn't say for who.</s>GREENFIELD: You know, I've always thought that John King had the best sources of any correspondent and know we know exactly what those sources are. Thank you, John King, in Crawford, Texas.</s>KING: All right, Jeff.</s>GREENFIELD: Joining me now from our Washington bureau to try to predict what lies beneath and ahead for Congress and for the president's legislative program are Jake Tapper of CNN's TAKE FIVE and Salon.com, Sam MacDonald, who is editor of "Reason" magazine, and Tish Durkin, a columnist for "The National Journal." I am here by my lonesome in New York, by the way, because of stormy weather that kept the shuttles from flying. And speaking of stormy weather, Sam MacDonald, if the president comes back to Washington and is saying it's incredibly positive news that the surplus is $125 billion stronger, is he in any danger on the credibility issue that just a year ago he was saying that we could afford a tax cut because the surplus is so big?</s>SAM MACDONALD, "REASON": Sure, he's in danger. But he shouldn't be. I think that this should be a victory parade for conservatives. The whole idea was that money can't be trusted in Washington's hands, so let's send it back to Peoria. And that's where it all is. There's no more money left. So they should be on the high ground, but it seems that they're -- have their tails between their legs instead.</s>GREENFIELD: Well, that's what I was going to ask you, was are the congressional Republicans, though, likely to participate in that victory parade, as I asked John King, if it means that some of the programs they want to see pass for their own political futures may be in danger?</s>MACDONALD: Absolutely not, because the idea of the Republican Party as the smaller government party isn't really accurate, I would argue, and they want the goodies just like the Democrats do. And it's going to be hard to pry those pork-barrel projects away from them.</s>GREENFIELD: Jake Tapper, the Democrats, one might think, have an issue, a juicy issue that, you know, when we left the surplus was $125 billion bigger. But aren't they in a little bit of a trap since the only way out of this from their perspective may well be to, if not raise taxes, at least eliminate the later-year tax cuts? They don't want to do that, do they?</s>JAKE TAPPER, CNN'S "TAKE FIVE": No, they don't, although I did hear one House Democratic aide today talk about the possibility of proposing a bill where they would take back the tax cut that the richest 1 percent got in order to, for instance, fund education. But Democrats are in a bind, as you say. They don't want to take away the tax cut that Bush gave, but at the same time they don't want to pass very austere appropriations bills. And yet, they have to support some sort of fiscal responsibility to really fight Bush. So it's -- it's a tough situation for them.</s>GREENFIELD: So, Tish Durkin, it sounds -- it sounds as though Republican congressional leaders may have a problem, Democrats in Congress may have a problem. Let me ask you what I asked John King. Who, as we come back to Washington in this new climate, who holds the higher ground from a purely tactical point of view?</s>TISH DURKIN, "NATIONAL JOURNAL": You know, I think that rather than seeing this as a Republican versus Democratic issue, I'm -- I'm beginning to see it as a president versus Congress issue. I think that's -- that he's got the momentum here to lose. I think it's a much -- and also, just from a sort of, you know, a political perennial, that people are much more willing to blame the Congress as spendthrifts and irresponsible and bureaucratic and so on and so forth than they are to blame their president, and I think that's a problem for Republicans and Congress as well as Democrats.</s>GREENFIELD: Well, in fact, you anticipated my next question. I don't know of any time when a president of either party isn't eager to beat up on the Congress.</s>DURKIN: Exactly.</s>GREENFIELD: So does that suggest to you that we may be seeing a situation -- and it isn't -- wouldn't be the first time -- where the people in Congress of the president's own party start feeling that he, the president, is putting them in the bind that John King described, namely, they're going to suffer because of his agenda?</s>DURKIN: I think congressional Democrats circa 1994, '95 may be having a feeling of sympathy or empathy with their Republican counterparts.</s>GREENFIELD: All right. We're going to take a break, and when we come back, I want to ask the question, where will the political battles be fought first this fall? And later, the one sure, absolute road to a second term for George W. Bush, when we come back.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: One of the temptations is to use Social Security money for something other than Social Security. Now, the good news is, is that both political parties in both bodies of Congress have declared that we're not going to do that.</s>GREENFIELD: President Bush. We are back with our guests, Jake Tapper of CNN's TAKE FIVE, Sam MacDonald, editor of "Reason" magazine, Tish Durkin of "The National Journal." They are in Washington because we're talking about what happens when Congress and the president get back to work. Sam MacDonald, if in fact we are about to see a political war begin, where is Ft. Sumpter? That is, when and were will the first shot be fired? What's the first battle, you think?</s>MACDONALD: I think the most important question is, like you said, not where but when. If Bush and congressional Republicans can move defense and education up and get that spending done before they spend all the rest of the money, they'll be in good shape because those are the issues that they've staked their political claim on. If they wait until the end and the money is all gone, they're forced into a box, and either they're going to have to not increase defense, like they want to, not fully fund the education bill, or dip into Social Security more than they want to. So it's about when these battles happen. They'd like to have it first.</s>DURKIN: I also think, if I could add an interesting possibility, is that they'll get stuck in the position of having to declare some program or part of a program an emergency and thereby be able to violate the spending caps, and if that happens, then the president will be faced with the stark choice of whether to agree with that or veto it. And then, depending on what the item is, whether it's defense or education, I think the fall out from that could be very interesting.</s>GREENFIELD: Is there any reason, Tish, to believe that the Democrats are prepared to let the president set the timing of these things, as Sam suggested he'll want to? To say, OK...</s>DURKIN: Absolutely...</s>GREENFIELD: Go ahead.</s>DURKIN: Absolutely no reason whatsoever.</s>TAPPER: Especially because -- if I could just jump in for a second. The education and the defense appropriation bills -- there are 13 appropriation bills passed every year. Those two are the only two in the House of Representatives that have not come out of committee yet. So, in order to have the education and defense bills be the first two, they're going to have to tie up the appropriations process for about a month. And just put everything on hold.</s>DURKIN: Senator Byrd, the head of the appropriations committee, has been at this a long time, and he was planning on this order of events some months ago, so I think it's safe to assume that the Republicans have got an uphill battle to move those bills up.</s>GREENFIELD: See, the only thing -- go ahead, Sam.</s>MACDONALD: I think the only thing they're going to try to be able to do is pull on the patriotic heart strings and try to hope that they can argue, well, our boys overseas are not going to have these needed funds and they're not going to have their C-rations or their bullets. But it's really uphill and I don't think they're going to be able to pull it off.</s>TAPPER: It worked during the recount.</s>GREENFIELD: You know, any -- see, Jake's written a book about it, so, you know, he's -- he's -- he hasn't given that one up yet. But I do want to raise a question as the one person who's not in Washington today -- though, you know, that's logistical -- is this. Within Washington, this notion of the shrinking surplus has -- seems to have galvanized, if not obsessed, everybody. Is -- as a political matter, if the president can argue, look, we've still got $159 billion, nobody's going to be denied Social Security, you've all got your tax refund checks, is the -- is the issue of the shrinking surplus, as such, does that have any political teeth to it?</s>DURKIN: The Republicans are so hoping that the American people will end up framing this just the way that you framed it, Jeff. They want it to be these Democrats are tossing around CBO numbers and spending caps and so on and so forth, because they're inside-the- Beltway, spendthrift bureaucrats whereas I, President Bush, and those wise enough to follow me in the Congress are concerned about what's going on around the kitchen tables in the United States. That's exactly what they're -- what they're hoping.</s>TAPPER: Except remember that Bush did run on a number of issues that would cost a lot of money. More money for defense, more money for education, a prescription drug benefits for seniors. These things they just simply don't have the money for anymore.</s>MACDONALD: But also, the Republicans weren't the only people who wanted to give a tax cut. A lot of Democrats did jump and go with the Republicans, and I think that they're going to be hammering that home coming up.</s>DURKIN: In fact...</s>GREENFIELD: Tish, I wanted to ask you, as a political matter -- I mean, you've got folks like Max Baucus, a Democrat of Montana, Tim Johnson, Democrat of South Dakota, running for re-election in states that went overwhelmingly for Bush. If the Democrats try to put on the table some kind of repeal or trimming of the tax cuts, are those candidates really going to want that?</s>DURKIN: You know, I don't think so, for two reasons. One is what I was just going to say before, one of my favorite ironies of this, is that the Democrats in Montana have been running ads this summer supporting Senator Baucus for his courage in standing up to the congressional leadership and voting for the tax cuts. So I don't think that their principles are so -- take them to the point of political suicide. The other point which Democrats well know -- and I think it's a valid one -- is that it's highly unlikely that a Republican candidate running against a Democrat for any of those seats is going to try to fault a person in such a state for having voted for the tax cut. They'd probably be more vulnerable had they voted against the tax cut.</s>GREENFIELD: So, Jake Tapper, then, if you were assessing the single-most powerful weapon that the Democrats have as they come back, if it's not going to be the -- you know, we're going to oppose tax cuts, where do they hold the high ground, if at all?</s>TAPPER: Well, they hold the high ground in that Bush has broken promises now. He is dipping into the Medicare trust fund, he is dipping into the Social Security trust fund, and he's not going to be able to fund a lot of the things that he promised he would: prescription drug benefit, education to the degree that he wanted. On the other hand, Republicans and -- well, I think Tish is right when she frames this in terms of Bush versus Congress and not Republicans versus Democrats, because Bush points out rightly that the Congress is on a mad spending spree and they have been. That they spent -- they had an increase in discretionary spending 8 percent last year. The problem is that Bush's budget, which counted on the numbers that we know no longer exist, Bush's proposed budget for this year had a 6 percent increase. So he's just a little less of a big -- a big spender.</s>GREENFIELD: In the time that we have before we break, Sam, I want to ask, I guess it's the inevitable question, is there any fallout from Congressman Condit's dominance of the news this summer that you think is going to have any political impact as we get into the fall?</s>MACDONALD: I don't think. I don't see anybody able to gain from it. There's a -- a lot of chance of stepping on a land mine there and not much upside. I think it's just like the rest of the election. If the economy does well, the Republicans win. If the economy continues tanking, the Democrats lose, Chandra Levy aside.</s>GREENFIELD: Jake or Tish, do either of you have any reason to think that Sam's wrong about this, that there will be no impact?</s>TAPPER: I think that there might be an impact actually. I mean, the fact that Congressman Gephardt, the Democratic leader in the House, came out and said something negatively against Gary Condit for the first time on Friday says to me that he's looking at the polls, which show that the approval rating for Congress is down 10 points since May. And in addition, they -- when Condit is on TV, when he's on the air, he sucks out all the oxygen and the Democrats can't hammer the Republicans for the Social Security issue.</s>GREENFIELD: All right, I want to take a break. And when we come back, I'm going to invite our guests in Washington to tell us about potential issues that are -- that may not be on the horizon, but may actually jump up and become important in the months ahead. That's ahead.</s>GREENFIELD: We're back. We're talking about the coming Washington wars with Jake Tapper from Salon.com and CNN's "TAKE FIVE," Tish Durkin of "The National Journal," Sam MacDonald from "Reason" magazine. As I said earlier, they're all in Washington because the shuttle decided not to fly today and we don't have high-speed rail service. Tish Durkin, assuming that high-speed rail is not on the congressional agenda, is there something...</s>DURKIN: Well, I don't know how significant it will play, but how significantly it will seem to be as we get into these budget battles. But one thing that jumps out at me is that part of the education bill, which is going to be such a political football in the fall, one of the bones of contention is going to be the special education appropriation, which was, if viewers remember, the -- sort of the straw that broke the camel's back with regard to the relationship between Senator Jim Jeffords and the White House, prompting him to become an independent and move the Senate over to the Democrats.</s>GREENFIELD: Sam, have you got a candidate of your own that you think we're not looking at but you're saying, watch this one?</s>MACDONALD: Well, it's kind of lighthearted, but I think it could be important. Representative Phil English from Pennsylvania has proposed a bill to slash the beer tax, which means billions of dollars. But it makes sense. The beer tax is incredibly high. And if you actually cannot sell the American people on a tax cut on beer, the tax cuts are done. So we'll see how it plays out. I hope it works.</s>GREENFIELD: All right, well, we'll adjourn to our favorite watering hole and keep an eye on that. Jake Tapper, is there an issue that you think you're seeing and saying, yes, that one's going to play?</s>TAPPER: There are a few, but there's one that I don't know how significant it is, but it's certainly fun to cover, and that is there's a bill by Senator Allard, a Republican of Colorado, who is up for re-election next year, which would ban the transport for roosters for use in cock-fighting, as I'm sure you know Jeff having gone to many cock fights. There are three states in which it's legal and 47 in which it's not. And this would cut down on those cock breeders in Texas and other -- and other places from sending their roosters to New Mexico and Oklahoma and Louisiana, where it is legal.</s>GREENFIELD: All right. Well, I think we're already demonstrating that at least the male members of this panel may have a little too much time on their hands: beer tax and cock -- I guess there might be a bill to legalize beer sales at cock fights.</s>MACDONALD: I would be all for it.</s>DURKIN: ... linkage.</s>GREENFIELD: So let -- but let me actually broaden this out a little bit, and that is, to return to something that I -- it seems to me has always been true in politics, and that is the frequency of the disconnection between what riles Washington and what the public actually cares about. Is there some -- if I asked each of you, what is the biggest danger right now -- let's talk about the president, since he seems maybe to hold the higher ground. What's the biggest danger other than the economy tanking in which something that is embroiled in Washington could actually begin to have national political clout?</s>TAPPER: I think one of the problems is that President Bush came to Washington truly with an outsider way of looking at things, and immediately surrounded himself with a lot of people, like OMB Director Mitch Daniels and others, who really do business the way in Washington -- the way people in Washington do business, and that includes budget tricks and all sorts of chicanery and porting this tax off until this point and this. And you know, the estate tax is eliminated but then in 10 years it comes back. And those sorts of things might make Bush look like another Washington politician when in actuality he isn't one.</s>DURKIN: Right. I would argue that if his presidency turns out to be successful, it would be precisely because he knew how to project himself as an outsider while in fact behaving as an insider.</s>GREENFIELD: In the few minutes, seconds we have left, Sam, is there any -- we've heard a lot about bipartisanship all during the presidential run-off and in January. What's the -- what's the chances, what are the chances for bipartisanship in this fall?</s>MACDONALD: They're all going to be claiming it. I think when they get together, I think they're all going to agree and hold hands and talk about how the military needs an extra $18 billion. But behind the scenes, it's going to be, where's that money going to come from? So it'll be bipartisanship on everybody's face, but they're going to be back-stabbing like always.</s>GREENFIELD: OK. With that -- with that optimistic note, thanks very much to my guests in Washington, both voluntarily and otherwise: Jake Tapper of Salon.com and CNN's "TAKE FIVE"; Sam MacDonald of "Reason" magazine; and Tish Durkin of "The National Journal." When we return, the key to a Bush second term: Trent Lott's not going to like it.</s>GREENFIELD: "And Another Thing": Since we're already polling about the next presidential election, here is a notion you might want to keep in mind. If history is a guide, the best thing that could happen to George W. Bush would be for the Democrats to take over the Congress in 2002. Why? Look at the record. The last president to win a second full term with his party in control of the Congress was Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lyndon Johnson doesn't count. He was filling out JFK's term when he ran. Think about it: Ike in '56, Nixon in '72, Reagan in '84, Clinton in '96, all won with one or both houses in opposition hands. The only president who ran for a second term with his party in full control of the Congress was Jimmy Carter in 1980. He lost in a landslide, and his party lost the Senate as well. Why? With the other guys running things in Congress, the president has someone to blame when things go wrong. They didn't do enough, they spent too much, they shut down the government. A perfect target for any president. So if Bush wants to make his re-election more likely, he's got to do everything he can to give Democrats control of Capitol Hill a year from now. Oh, history also says Mr. Bush might want to avoid a recession. I'm Jeff Greenfield. Thanks for watching. Tomorrow, closing the digital divide in our classrooms. Are more computers really going to rescue our failing schools? "SPORTS TONIGHT" is next.