FRIDAY

• Home
• Video
• Podcasts/RSS 
• Local Showtimes
• Past Shows
• Blogs
• About the Show
• Tell Tavis
• Features
• Mobile

RELATED LINKS

• Sen. Lincoln's official site
• Article on Sen. Lincoln
• Article on Senate Hunger Caucus

E-mail a friend

Tavis: Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas became the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate back in 1998. Now in her second term, she serves on two key Senate committees - Finance and Agriculture. She joins us from Washington. Senator Lincoln, nice to have you on the program.

Senator Blanche Lincoln: Thank you, Tavis. It's great to be with you and your viewers.

Tavis: We're delighted to have you. I want to spend our time tonight, the balance of our time talking about President Bush's new budget. As I intimated a moment ago, let me start our conversation if I might by reading a couple quotes from a piece I read by Paul Krugman in the "New York Times." I think it was last Friday. Let me read what he had to say about how he views this Bush budget and get your thoughts on it. He writes and I quote, "His latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. It offers the Democrats an opportunity if they are willing to take it. It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. Is Mr. Krugman being alarmist here or is he right on point?

Lincoln: I think he is kind of on point, and I think he's trying to point out that, you know, all Americans want to contribute to dealing with this horrendous deficit that has evolved in our country. We're all alarmed by it. We know that it's not fair to our children or to the future of our country. But if we're going to address that issue, it's got to be done in a fair way, and President Bush's budget does not deal with it in a fair way. He doesn't come at it in a balanced way. He's asking disproportionately, a greater share of that burden to be levied on working families. And, you know, it's just--it's not balanced. It's not the way that we should be going about looking at dealing with the deficit. And it's a little bit disingenuous, too, I think, from the president's perspective where he's saying everybody's got to tighten their belts, you know. Cutting back on government. Making government leaner. Making these cuts is going to help the deficit. We could eliminate the entire non-defense discretionary spending, government spending, and we still would not be eliminating the deficit spending that we have in this country. So to say that he's actually going to do anything by making all these cuts in terms of deficit reduction, particularly while he's putting a heavier burden on working families, I think it's out of balance and I think it's a little disingenuous to tell people that he's really doing something, when we're really not making those great strides. And yet we are taking away some programs that are vital to working families.

Tavis: I don't envy any president, Democrat or Republican, who has to balance a budget, who has to come up with a plan to cut a deficit. I don't envy any president in that position, because somebody has to experience cuts when you start talking about trying to balance a budget and trying to cut the deficit. I guess what I'm having trouble juxtaposing is how the Democrats let this president--lets him get away with talk about cutting the deficit in half and suggesting that there are at least 154 government programs that have to be cut to bring the deficit down, and yet here sits a Republican president who has never, ever vetoed a spending bill.

Lincoln: Well, and what's more is he's talking about 150 programs that he thinks are not essential or 150 programs that he doesn't think are important. But when you get out into rural America and you're actually with working families who do depend on rural water programs or the CDBG dollars that help their local communities in terms of adult daycare, or, you know, senior centers or community health availability, or after school programs. These things are critical to working families. I mean if you think about it-- and my state is such a great example, Tavis, because we are a snapshot of where the rest of the country is going to be in the coming years. We're disproportionately elderly. Those elderly are disproportionately low income and they live in rural areas, where they're more difficult to serve. We also have working families that are the low income working families, which is where the trend is going if we don't do something about reinforcing education. But we're seeing in this budget unbelievable cuts in rural education programs and the kind of programs that support families so their kids can go to school and they can go and participate in higher education, whether it's a technical school or a community college or a four-year university. So it's not moving us in the right direction in my opinion. Again, I don't think it's fair to say to people that this is a balanced approach to dealing with the kind of deficit that we have in this country. It's not at all, because on a parallel track, this president is also talking about making permanent tax cuts to the ultra wealthy. So if in fact he thinks he's going to cut the deficit by this small measure in his budget, where you're not even putting a dent in the deficit spending, all the while on a parallel track, he's talking about you know, permanent tax relief for the ultra wealthy. It just doesn't make sense.

Tavis: He has been out stumping, as we all know, to revamp, revitalize, up end, pick a word, change Social Security as we know it. What kind of numbers has he presented in this budget? How is he going to make that happen? Because to change this program over costs money in and of itself, a trillion dollars plus, to make this wholesale changeover. Where is the money to do what he said he wanted to do in his State of the Union speech with regard to social security?

Lincoln: Well, you make an excellent point and that is the budget that he's presented is also--is missing a few things. He hasn't accounted in this budget for the cost of social security and the reforms that he wants to make, or as you say, any reforms that are going to have some upfront costs in terms of modernizing and reforming social security. He doesn't include the Iraq costs that are involved, some of our military costs. He doesn't include in that the making permanent the tax cuts or some of the tax cuts that we're going to find ourselves hitting up against a wall on, like, for instance, the AMT, the alternative minimum tax reform. So he hasn't included any of those really high-end dollar budgetary items in his budget calculations. So again, it's just not a balanced nor is it a real true picture of what we need to do. We need to sit down at the table and look at everything, put everything out on the table and figure out how in a fair and balanced way all Americans can participate in helping work to eliminate this debt. But more importantly, making sure that we don't dismantle something I'm very proud of: a program like social security. I mean, think of what it has meant to this country, the seniors that have not had to live in poverty because, you know, our government had the foresight to design a program. Does it fit today's needs or the needs of the 21st century? Maybe it does need to look at some reforms in making sure that we can make it solvent way into the 21st century. But there is certainly not a crisis at hand that would make us want to act abruptly and do something that in long term could be harmful to a program that has, again, kept seniors out of poverty, it's assisted disabled and survivors children, those who have had a disability or who have had social security. So there is a lot there that we need to be looking at.

Tavis: Let me go back to Mr. Krugman's quote that I started this conversation off by reading. He suggested, as you recall, that this presents an opportunity for the Democrats if they are willing to take it. Now, I don't know what was inside Mr. Krugman's his head, but I do know that presidents present and past, when they get to these situations where the budget is hanging in the balances, with all due respect to you, start picking off U.S. Senators one at a time by agreeing to give them what they want, the pork that they need to go back home to their districts so that they are able to say to their constituencies they got what their states needed. The question is, how resolved are the Democrats to fight the president on his budget priorities? Are you as resolved on the budget as you are fighting him on social security?

Lincoln: Well, I think that the president's budget as he has presented it to us was painted with such a broad brush that Democrats will be pretty united. There is a lot of things left out of this budget, as I mentioned before, that are not accounted for, that are going to contribute tremendous amounts of debt in the future and end up on the shoulders of our children. So I think that there's a lot there that can keep Democrats united, and there's a lot that Democrats can point out to constituencies all across the country, but particularly constituencies like mine who come from rural states, who are very dependent on a lot of these different programs that are good programs, that are well run, that are bringing clean water to people's homes. I mean, there's a lot of things a lot of people don't realize we still do in this country.

Tavis: There are Republican Senators clearly who represent rural states, who represent states where there are farmers. I mean I'm no rocket scientist here, but I can't believe that Mr. Rove and Mr. Bush are really going to push hard, really spend any of their political capital on fighting Senators over the needs of farmers in America. I mean, I know it's in the budget here that they are going to get cut, but I can't imagine they're going to waste any real capital on fighting that fight, are they?

Lincoln: You mean, that the Senators aren't going to fight?

Tavis: No, that the president at some point--

Lincoln: You think he'll give in to us.

Tavis: Oh, yeah. They'll take that off the table pretty quickly, don't you think?

Lincoln: Well, I don't know. I think we make a lot of sense when you talk about how disproportionately rural states get hit from this budget, whether it's the Ag programs that are vital to their economy. One out of every five jobs in my state has some relationship to production agriculture. So, I mean, there's a tremendous link there to our economies. But there's also other rural programs, whether they're conservation programs, health care, rural health care. He zeroed out the AHEC program, which has helped us get some of the health care needs met in our rural communities, working with teaching hospitals. You know, there's some things in there that were just eliminated.

Tavis: OK, in 30 seconds, what do the Democrats have--what's the message that the Democrats have to deliver to get the American public to see on whose backs the president is balancing this budget? What's your message?

Lincoln: I think first and foremost, we have to say all Americans are willing to come to the table and make a contribution in eliminating this deficit. But it has to be balanced. And as long as this president says he's going to cut education for our children, health care and access for our elderly, rural programs for the salt of the earth and the fabric of the American communities out there in rural America, all the while, he's talking about making permanent a tax cut to the ultra wealthy, it's just not balanced. And the American people can see that. Arkansans can. They're very smart people and they know.

Tavis: Senator Blanche Lincoln is the youngest woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate, representing the rural state of Arkansas, as you've heard. Senator Lincoln, thank you for your time. I appreciate it.

Lincoln: Thank you, Tavis. Look forward to being back with you soon.

Tavis: Look forward to having you back. I suspect in the coming days that we'll get a chance to hear the other side of the argument about the president's budget with somebody who represents a more Republican point of view. We'll see about that in the coming days. Up next on this program, though, actor and musician--this guy's had a great year. Mos Def. Stay with us.