Will U.S. Ratify START?; Tax Vote on the Agenda; Afghan War Takes Global Stage
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: Happening now, President Obama calling it Congress' highest national security priority -- imploring the passage of the nuclear arms treaty that he says is needed to protect the United States. Is he fighting, though, a losing battle? A once bankrupt General Motors comes roaring back to Wall Street just 17 months after taxpayers were forced to bail out the crippled car giant. Can the White House take the credit? And her self-declared miraculous victory deals a potential blow Sarah Palin and the Tea Party machine. Just ahead, I'll speak with the Alaska senator, Lisa Murkowski, about her dramatic write-in candidacy and much more. I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM. But we begin on Capitol Hill right now, where there's dramatic new movement on those Bush era tax cuts. Let's go to our senior Congressional correspondent, Dana Bash. She's getting some details on what they're planning, the Democratic leadership, right now. What are they doing -- Dana?</s>DANA BASH, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, Democratic leaders in both the House and the Senate have decided to schedule votes after Thanksgiving to extend those Bush era tax cuts for those making $250,000 or less. Now, these decisions came hours after Democratic leaders met at the White House with President Obama, where we are told this was talked about extensively. And until now, it's important note, it was unresolved how or whether Democrats would move forward on this thorny issue of tax cuts. And it is clear now that Democrats at least want to try to start to put up a measure that they -- most of them, at least, believe is the right way to go, to deal just with the middle class tax cuts, something that they were reluctant to do -- didn't do before the election. Now in the House, the House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, told our Deirdre Walsh, that this is something that they're going to go forward with, because, he said, at least that will be available for members to have a vote on. In the Senate, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, came out of a very long meeting with senators about this issue and said that not only are the Democrats going to have their vote on middle class tax cuts, but they are going to allow Republicans, also, to have what they have been demanding, which is an extension of all Bush era tax cuts for middle -- so-called middle income levels and higher permanently. So we're going to see a lot of -- a lot of developments after Thanksgiving. Very interesting that Democrats have decided to do this. Just one other note that I think is -- it's also interesting. You heard the president talk from the campaign trail on about what he wants, which is to extend the middle class tax cuts permanently, both in the House and the Senate. The Democratic leaders are saying that they don't know if what they're going to put forward will be permanently extending the middle class tax cuts or maybe just doing it temporarily, because their caucuses are still split on that.</s>BLITZER: What about this compromise that's been so widely reported, that they extend the tax cuts for everyone for two years and then punt down the road and then, two years from now, they come up with some other plan?</s>BASH: You know, Wolf, it is entirely possible that, ultimately, that might be something that we may see talked about, because although Democrats are going to push these measures in the House and the Senate, it's not clear whether or not they have the votes to do it, even though they still maintain big majorities, the Democrats. So that is something that we're going have to look for. It's possible that these votes could come up in the House and the Senate, may -- or at least in the Senate, in particular, may not pass. And then they are going to have to sort of get to the point where, OK, it's time to compromise. That might be a compromise. But again, people, even now, are still not ruling out the possibility that even with these votes, ultimately, they might have to deal with this in January, because they won't be able to -- to come to some -- come together, either by votes or by compromise.</s>BLITZER: Well, they -- all the tax rates go back to the Clinton era level if they don't do anything by the end of this year. And then we'll see what the new Congress would do. All right, Dana. Thanks very much. Meanwhile, the man who's set to be the next House speaker has a different take on how the tax cuts should be handled.</s>REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I believe that we ought to extend all of the current tax rates for all Americans.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think this Congress will do</s>BOEHNER: You'd better talk to -- to those in charge.</s>BLITZER: In the next hour, the current House majority leader, the Democrat, Steny Hoyer, will be my guest right here in THE SITUATION ROOM. We'll discuss all these issues. Surrounded by his vice president and secretary of State and several distinguished former secretaries of State, President Obama issued an urgent warning to Congress that the United States simply cannot afford to gamble on the need to effectively monitor Russia's nuclear stockpile. And he didn't shy away from using his Republican predecessors to help make his point.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It is a -- a national security imperative that the United States ratify the new START Treaty this year. There is no higher national security priority for the lame duck session of Congress. The stakes for American national security are clear and they are high. Let me also say -- and I think the -- the group around the table will confirm -- that this new START Treaty is completely in line with a tradition of bipartisan cooperation on this issue. This is not a Democratic concept. This is not a Republican concept. This is a concept of American national security that has been promoted by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and now my administration.</s>BLITZER: Let's bring in our senior White House correspondent, Ed Henry. He's over at the White House. Is the president likely to prevail during this lame duck session and get the Senate to ratify the START Treaty?</s>ED HENRY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, it's totally unclear. And that's why the president's international credibility is really on the line right now. He sealed this deal with the Russian president back in the spring. You know, Russia has been very helpful in moving U.S. supplies to Afghanistan for the war. Will they suddenly become uncooperative? That's a big issue. Second, his political credibility. He mentioned Reagan, Bush, others who were able to get 80, 90 votes on treaties like this. He can't even get 67 right now. His credibility is on the line. And Republicans like Jon Kyl have been holding out their support by saying, in part, that they want to see the U.S. nuclear stockpile modernized. So the president coughed up over $4 billion. That's still not enough, apparently. And so you wonder if there's something else at work here. Are the Republicans testing this president right now, not just on START, but more broadly? Today, you'll remember, was the day the president was supposed to have that Slurpee Summit here at the White House. And Mitch McConnell, one of the Republican leaders who was one those folks who said he was really busy, he couldn't make it over today, what did he turn out to do? One of the things he did was give a speech to the Federalist Society, the conservative group. So you've got a lot of Democrats today wondering was it so important to give a speech like that, but he didn't have time to meet with the president? Are they testing this commander-in-chief right now -- Wolf?</s>BLITZER: I know there's a lot of suspicion of that right now, Ed. Let me turn the corner to the second time we saw the president today. And he came out just after 4:00 p.m. Eastern to talk about General Motors, this new stock option -- this stock program that went out today. And he said this. Let me play this clip.</s>OBAMA: Last year, we told G.M.'s management and workers that if they made the tough decisions necessary to make themselves more competitive in the 21st century, decisions requiring real leadership, fresh thinking, and, also, some shared sacrifice, then we would stand by them. And because they did, the American auto industry -- an industry that's been the proud symbol of America's manufacturing might for a century, an industry that helped to build our middle class, is, once again, on the rise.</s>BLITZER: He's going to try to keep this momentum going right now. What's next?</s>HENRY: Well, this is a perfect metaphor, really, for how the first two years have gone. If you think back, the auto bailout started with President Bush. He was still in office and gave them loans -- money -- without any guarantee, any strings attached. Then this president took office. They were still in -- in desperate shape. He made the tough decision to bail them out. And -- and a lot of Republicans are saying, look, now you're on the road to socialism. This helped them shape public opinion in saying he was spending too much money, giving the government too much power. And instead, where are we, two years now? GM is going to pay the taxpayers back and then some. The president probably saved, according to private estimates, about 1.4 million jobs. And auto sales, by the way, are on the rise. So it's largely been a success. But he's gotten very little credit. What's next is you're going to see the president, when you talk to his top aides, get a lot more aggressive, do a lot more of this public speaking, to say, look, here's the tough decision I made, here's how it's wound -- how it wound up. We'll see whether or not it works. So far, a lot of his public campaigns haven't actually panned out -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, Ed. Ed Henry at the White House. Let's get the war in Afghanistan right now, which is about to take center stage at this weekend's NATO summit. Only hours from now, President Obama is scheduled to leave for Lisbon, Portugal to participate in the meeting. Our Pentagon correspondent, Chris Lawrence is there ahead of the president's arrival -- Chris, what are your sources saying about the timetable for the start of a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan?</s>CHRIS LAWRENCE, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, one of the things we're hearing is that they hope to get out of this by the end of it, they want to have President Karzai -- they hope to have him sign some sort of agreement that lays out some rather specific benchmarks to get us to 2014, which is the ideal date that U.S. forces would like to end combat operations in Afghanistan. We're also told that as certain areas are identified for transition, they may flood those specific provinces with a vast increase in manpower, money, resources, to try to get it over that tipping point, to be able to turn it over to the Afghans. But I think the overriding message that's going come out of this conference is that if you're sitting at home and you think that the U.S. effort in Afghanistan is winding down and 2014 looks like a -- an end date, everything that we've been hearing is that the U.S. presence will continue well beyond that, that even if the troops are no longer, say, designated as combat troops, they may be in a situation like they are in Iraq right now, where there's still tens of thousands of troops, but they're designated as trainers. We're also being told that even when that happens, there will again be an extensive U.S. involvement here in Afghanistan well beyond 2014.</s>BLITZER: Having said that, though, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, he recently made some waves when he suggested he wants to see a dramatically reduced U.S. military operation in Afghanistan.</s>LAWRENCE: You know, we're being told that -- that he spoke with -- with General Petraeus before they left Afghanistan, sort of buried the hatchet, so to speak. And some of the U.S. officials we've spoken to say they are eager to sort of move on from that and push forward. But some of the European officials say, you know, this has happened before, where President Karzai makes -- makes what they consider sort of an outlandish statement and then sort of backtracks off of it later. They say several of them plan to make the point to him personally while they are here in Lisbon that he cannot make these public statements, that he -- that while they're in this transition period, he has to support the transition, not undermine it -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right. Chris Lawrence in Lisbon, Portugal for us. We'll check back with you. Thank you. New polling shows that most Americans believe preserving programs like Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid much more important than reducing the deficit. So will Republicans who campaigned on debt reduction follow through on their promises? I'll ask a leading fiscal conservative, Republican Congressman Mike Pence. He's here in THE SITUATION ROOM. Also, scathing criticism for the Obama administration over the verdict of the 1998 embassy bombing case. We're going to tell you what it might mean for future terror trials. And anti-UN protests in Haiti -- why do some people there blame peacekeepers for a deadly cholera epidemic?