Should Bush's Economic Summit Include Democrats?
ANNOUNCER:  CROSSFIRE: on the left, James Carville and Paul Begala. On the right: Robert Novak and Tucker Carlson. In the</s>CROSSFIRE: Take one dictator, add big oil, smear liberally with political innuendo, and send in the army. It's the perfect accompaniment for a cruel economy. The CROSSFIRE "Political Grill."</s>MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK CITY: Nobody's taking away your right to smoke.</s>ANNOUNCER: But if His Honor gets his way, smokers will have to butt out of all the bars and restaurants in New York.</s>BLOOMBERG: Look, if you want to smoke on the street, smoke on the street. You don't have a right to hurt others.</s>ANNOUNCER: Who are the biggest losers in the arena? Half the guys on the court, or all the women in line for the restroom? We'll talk to the father of potty parity. Tonight on CROSSFIRE. From the George Washington University, Paul Begala and Robert Novak.</s>ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Welcome to CROSSFIRE. Tonight do-gooders' attempts to fix two of the most annoying things about going out in public: breathing other people's cigarette smoke and those long lines at the women's restroom. Is it really gender discrimination? But first, our daily lineup of stories for the discriminating political junky: our CROSSFIRE "Political Alert." This morning the Secret Service started enforcing new traffic regulations around the White House: no parking, standing or stopping is allowed along four blocks of 17th Street, which runs along the western edge of the White House grounds. Trucks are now banned along an eight-block stretch on 17th. Now, not only is President Bush more than 1,400 miles out of town, there's no specific security threat to the White House. It's just the bureaucrats' overactive imagination. I used to say the Secret Service would like to turn Washington into a closed city like Gorky in the Soviet Union. I was just kidding, but maybe I shouldn't be now.</s>PAUL BEGALA, CO-HOST: Bob, I love the Secret Service, they protect our president. If the Bush administration thinks we need to do this, far be it for me to defend them, but if they think we should do it, I support them. I think they're right. We've got to protect our president and our vice president. Speaking of our president, though, he's hosting an economic forum next week in Waco, Texas that will exclude critics of his administration's economic policies. Now, Bush was once a cheerleader at the exclusive Philips Andover Academy, so apparently he doesn't like those who doesn't have the proper team spirit. The conference will make room, however, for several multimillionaire CEOs who've given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush and the GOP. Now, when President Clinton hosted a similar economic forum back in Little Rock, Arkansas, it included all sides, including Paul O'Neill, who was then the CEO of Alcoa, and is now President Bush's treasury secretary. I suppose Bush's philosophy is: I want people who write big checks, not people who use big words.</s>NOVAK: The reason he's not inviting potty-mouths like you, Paul, is he didn't want to turn this into a political roast, and that's the way Democrats are. Sam Waksal, the disgraced ImClone CEO, did the perp walk back in June. Waksal is accused of insider trading. This week he was indicted on additional charges, including bank fraud and obstruction of justice. That doesn't seem to bother his favorite politician, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. "New York Post" ace reporter Deborah Orin reports that Hillary does not plan to return a penny -- not a single penny -- of the $27,000 that Waksal has contributed to her. New York's other Democratic senator, Chuck Schumer, doesn't plan to give back Waksal's $3,000, nor will various Democratic committees get rid of more than $70,000 from Waksal. You see, dirty money from a crook is OK if it goes to liberal Democrats.</s>BEGALA: I'll bet you Hillary would give back that money if Bush and Cheney would give back the money that they got from Harkin and Halliburton, the companies that they ran into the ground while they cashed out. I mean, that's a lot worse.</s>BEGALA: Dick Cheney is the ultra...</s>NOVAK: Dick Armey.</s>CHUNG: I'm sorry, Dick Armey. I was just talking about Dick Cheney. Thank you, Bob. Armey is an ultra-right wing House majority leader, but he's beginning to sound a little bit like a liberal. Maybe that's why I'm so confused. Today's "New York Times" reports that Mr. Armey has described an unprovoked U.S. attack on Saddam Hussein as "unjustifiable." In today's "Los Angeles Times" Armey says he supports lifting the embargo and opening trade relations with Fidel Castro's communist Cuba. Similarly, arch-conservative Senator Jesse Helms has had a late- career reversal on AIDS. He now supports assistance to Africa to find the virus. Analysts contribute the change of heart either to the fact that both men are retiring after long careers this year, or the fact that hell froze over this afternoon.</s>NOVAK: You see, the thing you can't understand, Paul -- or can't seem to understand is that going to war is a very serious thing. It isn't politics, it isn't ideology, it's what's the national interest of the country. And I admire Dick Armey for standing up and saying what he thinks on that.</s>BEGALA: I do understand that.</s>NOVAK: The leading North Carolina Democratic senator candidate is Erskine Bowles, who was President Clinton's White House chief of staff, though you'd never know it from Bowles. Republicans have been taunting him to mention his old boss Clinton's name, just once. Bowles finally succumbed this week in addressing a Rotary Club meeting when he bragged about what he called Clinton's fiscal discipline. To reward Bowles, Republican strategists sent him a recording of Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man." Incidentally, Mark Shields and I will interview Bowles' probable GOP opponent Elizabeth Dole tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. Eastern on "NOVAK, HUNT AND SHIELDS." Don't miss it.</s>BEGALA: Erskine Bowles ought to be proud of the work he did for President Clinton, helping him create all those jobs and balance the budget. And he should not make the mistake Al Gore made of hiding from the most successful president in my lifetime. The Combined Law Enforcement Association of Texas is a great group -- believe me, I know them, I've worked with them -- but it's come up with a truly dumb idea. It has asked all the political candidates in the state of Texas to stop advertising on television for the first 11 days of September, supposedly in memory of the 3,000 Americans killed in the terrorist attacks. Now, it's lost on me how stifling democracy in all of its messy, cacophonous beauty, pays tribute to Americans who lost their lives to terrorists who hate democracy. I think a better commemoration would be to call on all the politicians to support better pay and benefits for the cops, firefighters and other government workers who help make our democracy work.</s>NOVAK: Paul, I agree with you. That is a dumb idea. But it's also a dumb idea to try to turn the commemoration of September 11 into a labor issue -- a labor union issue. It is not that.</s>BEGALA: Well, I think that they ought to pay those guys what they're worth. In WorldCom's home state of Mississippi this week, our president had the nerve to talk about corporate reform, even as he raised special interest money for the Republican who was WorldCom's congressman. Secret Service agents moved the discussion inside for fear that our president would be struck lightning from God almighty for his hypocrisy, and I'm glad they did. That was just one small part of the political week. It has been hotter than asphalt in Georgia this week. So to keep us hot and fire things up, please welcome Democratic consultant Victor Kamber and Republican consultant Clifford May. Gentlemen, welcome back.</s>NOVAK: Vic Kamber, I don't know if you were listening to me, but I talked about this scoundrel Sam Waksal who is under all kinds of charges, gave money to Hillary, she won't give it back. But this seems to be a pattern by the Democrats. We have Jack Grubman, who is one of the real sleazeballs of Wall Street, who has given $160,000 to the Democrats. Nobody wants to give any of this money back. He gave $100,000 the day he was subpoenaed. He's trying to get soft treatment. What do you think? Do you think the Democrats ought to give that money back?</s>VICTOR KAMBER, DEMOCRATIC CONSULTANT: Bob, as you know, there's a difference between subpoenas, indictments and convictions. The fact that Grubman has been subpoenaed to testify -- so what? He hasn't done anything yet that we know is guilty or illegal. The money certainly hasn't been any issue of illegality. He's not a Mafia figure. He hasn't stolen money; it's not drug money; he's not robbed a bank. I wouldn't give it back. I mean, we need money too much to compete with the Republicans. You have, what, 10 times as much as we do, and you've gotten it from as many crooks as we have or more.</s>NOVAK: I would hope you would stipulate that there's plenty of Democratic crooks out there. But on this question of Grubman, let me quote, and put it up on the screen, what Congressman Richard Baker of the Financial Services Committee -- I think Mr. Baker, both sides of the aisle agree, is one of the really solid citizens on Capitol Hill. He says: "For the Democrats, the party that purportedly fights for the people over the powerful, them to accept Grubman bribe money in exchange for leniency is symptomatic of the hypocritical corruption of the limousine Lincoln Center liberals." You know, Grubman was a guy who was promoting WorldCom's stock at the same time it was being sold down by his buddies.</s>KAMBER: Bob, first of all, let's not make Mr. Baker into something more than he is. He's a conservative Republican, Southerner...</s>KAMBER: Well, to my standards, certainly bad. But he's a conservative Republican, it's a partisan issue. The fact -- Grubman may not be Mr. American in your sense, or mine, potentially. Again, he's not guilty of any crime that we know of yet.</s>NOVAK: Just take the dirty money.</s>KAMBER: He's not been indicted of anything. And if we're talking dirty money, let's just look at where the Republicans and Mr. Bush raised all their money.</s>BEGALA: Well, in fact, Clifford May, let's look at where some of that money came from. It came from a whole lot of CEOs, many of them very honest businessmen, nothing wrong with that. But our president on Tuesday is going to be hosting an economic forum -- I've talked about this earlier today -- he is only inviting people who support his economic policies. And worse, he's really using this as a taxpayer-subsidized fund-raiser. Look at some of the names of the people that he's bringing down there. Glenn Barton -- these are all honest businessmen so far as I know, and they're lovely citizens. They also happen to be humongous donors to the Republicans. Here's a guy who gave 600 grand to the Republicans. Charles Schwab gave almost $1 million. John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco, 435, and this guy Floyd Kvamme, who was a Bush "pioneer," raised at least $100,000, and I couldn't see how much he had personally donated. Isn't it wrong for the president to use a government, taxpayer- subsidized forum as a way to reward campaign contributors?</s>CLIFFORD MAY, REPUBLICAN CONSULTANT: It sure would be, but that's not what's going on here. You're a little misinformed. He's inviting people down there who disagree with him from varying points of view.</s>MAY: As a matter of fact, let me tell you one of the people, because there are any number of union people who I believe are Democrats...</s>BEGALA: That number is one.</s>MAY: Let me mention four, as you just one. How about Doug McCarron, general president of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters.</s>BEGALA: Not anti-Bush (ph).</s>MAY: How about Bill Novelli of AARP? It's not a union...</s>MAY: He's a Democrat. He's a Democrat.</s>KAMBER: I don't know that.</s>MAY: I believe he is.</s>KAMBER: McCarron's been a Bush supporter, he's been a friend of Bush's.</s>NOVAK: Do you know how much money he gave...</s>KAMBER: To Democrats...</s>NOVAK: Just a minute. You can't answer my question if I haven't said. Do you know how much McCarron has given to the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee in the last month, do you know?</s>KAMBER: No, no.</s>NOVAK: I can tell you, $1 million. He's a Democrat.</s>MAY: We've also got Jerry Hood of the Teamsters, he's going to be there. Look, this is...</s>BEGALA: This is as phony as an Arthur Andersen audit. This is Bush going down here and using us -- Clinton invited Paul O'Neill, as I mentioned before, who is now the treasury secretary. Where are the voices of dissent?</s>MAY: One of the things you want to have in an economic summit are CEOs. Right now, there are like 700,000 publicly traded companies. About seven of them have CEOs who are crooks and they are going away in handcuffs for a long time, and that's as it should be. But one of the things you want to be careful about is not saying, oh, we hate CEOs, we hate business. There are a lot of people who don't work for the government, who do work in businesses. They're not bad people. CEOs and business people and entrepreneurs are not bad people. We want their input if we're going to talk about how to grow the economy, make more jobs for people.</s>BEGALA: Let me tell you what a Ronald Reagan economist said about this Bush economic summit. He said -- Bruce Bartlett, a Bush and Bush Sr. economist, said it's politically political, purely PR. The people selected for this event are going to be very, very carefully chosen to make sure nobody gets in there and starts ranting and raving about how the Bush tax cut caused the recession. They'll tell the president what he wants to hear and reaffirm his policies. A Ronald Reagan economist said that.</s>NOVAK: Are you suggesting -- I happen to know Bruce Bartlett. He's a fanatic supply-sider. Are you suggesting that he says that the tax cut caused the economy?</s>BEGALA: I'm saying just what he said in the "New York Times" today, Novak.</s>NOVAK: But he's -- he's -- wait a minute, let's have a little truth here. He's not suggesting it caused it. He says he doesn't want to bring in potty mouths who are going to say it caused the economy.</s>BEGALA: Bush doesn't want any dissent.</s>MAY: Listen, if you think of the way -- the way to grow the economy is to raise taxes, then go ahead, make that case. Herbert Hoover thought that. We've gotten rid of that kind of economic policy.</s>KAMBER: Republican Herbert Hoover.</s>MAY: Yes, and if you want to take old Republican Herbert Hoover policies for the Democratic Party now...</s>BEGALA: How about Clinton economic policies? They were pretty good, weren't they?