E-mail a friendRep. Rahm Emanuel
airdate September 25, 2006
Illinois Rep. Rahm Emanuel is serving his second term in the House and chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee - making him the point man for the party's bid to recapture the majority. A Chicago native and son of an immigrant, he began his career with a consumer rights organization and has worked in local and national politics, including as a senior White House advisor in the Clinton administration. Emanuel co-authored the new release, The Plan: Big Ideas for America.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel
Tavis: Congressman Rahm Emanuel is serving his second term from Illinois' fifth district. He's also chairman of the Democrat Campaign Committee, and in that role has the daunting task of trying to get enough Democrats elected in November to regain control of the House. His new book is called 'The Plan, Big Ideas For America.' He joins us tonight from Washington. Congressman, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel: Well, thank you so much for having me.
Tavis: Let me start with one or two quick questions, if I might, since you used to work for this guy, William Jefferson Clinton. You know what I wanna ask, right?
Emanuel: Yeah, I know I'm more (unintelligible) than you're used to, let me say once you work for him, you work for him your whole life. I've never given up. (Laugh)
Tavis: All right, so as a Clinton loyalist, why don't you answer the question without me even asking, since you know where I wanna go?
Emanuel: I know, well, listen. I when I saw it yesterday, (laugh) I called (unintelligible) I said, I don't know why Chris (unintelligible) all upset, that's how Clinton treated us for seven years straight every morning. (Laugh)
Tavis: (Laugh) So Clinton told you routinely to get that smirk off your face?
Emanuel: No, but I mean look, in all fairness, let's go to the substance. Right to the substance. Look, I worked for him. You could see he was tired after a whole week on his initiative. He gets up, he's doing this interview, and he feels like it's not on the - he gets one or two questions on the interview and bam, on what has been nothing but what he believes, and rightfully, his political opponents who continue to say and spread falsities about what happened under his watch.
In '93, in Somalia, those who said get out now immediately, Bill Clinton actually stayed six months longer, and he fired Les Aspen, 'cause he didn't think he was doing enough job. But wanted to stay, tried to fix that problem, and do it not in a total cut-and-run mentality. But to stay and do it right. Two, he went to war in Kosovo and Bosnia and places where there was Al Qaeda training going on, Al Qaeda activities, and did it without the support of Congress.
If you remember, the vote was 213-213 with leading Republicans and Tom Delay opposing that war, in which we never lost an American. Third is that he did go after Osama Bin Laden both in Afghanistan and in the Sudan, and was criticized at the time for how he did it and when he did it by the very forces who now say, after having spent $310 billion, nearly 3,000 American lives, three and a half years of war effort, 20,000 U.S. soldiers wounded, who all they will offer you is more of the same and barely the green zone is secure.
And so Bill Clinton said look, I made some mistakes, but we did go after him, and we tried to pursue him. So I can understand how he totally reacted, because there's a mythology. Look, you go back to 1983 when Ronald Reagan pulled out of Lebanon precipitously. Nobody wants to bring that up. You wanna, there's a lot to talk about about mistakes, and if you read the book 'Looming Tower,' it tells you about the series of mistakes made over 20 years.
But somehow, they all wanna blame it on one person, Bill Clinton, and then number two, as Dick Clark, who's served four Presidents, three Republicans, one Democrat, talks in his own book, so he served his country, not a President, talks about how Bill Clinton was like a laser focused on this war on terror.
Tavis: Let me ask you one other question before we move on. I saw some commentary earlier today, Rahm, or Congressman Emanuel, that suggested...
Emanuel: No, no, you can call me Rahm, but you have (unintelligible).
Tavis: Yeah, I know you as Rahm, but on TV, I wanna respect you with the title that you have.
Emanuel: The only person I make call me Congressman is my wife. (Laugh) Everybody else is Rahm.
Tavis: All right, Congressman, I'm not your wife, but I'm gonna respect you anyway.
Emanuel: Okay.
Tavis: That said, I read some commentary today that suggested, somewhat tongue-in-cheekish, that Clinton got exactly what he deserved because he knew going on the Fox News Channel that that's what they do. And so the question was, why in the heck is he talking to these guys anyway? You know what their agenda is.
Emanuel: Well let me just say this. As a former staff person, I'm glad I wasn't in the green room to greet him. (Laugh)
Tavis: Well, I have heard that some staffers got cussed out when he came off that conversation.
Emanuel: Well look, in all fairness, I'm sure what he got told by the staff was they promised they were going to do the interview on X, and they played - they did what they did. Now, you gotta always like this, Tavis, I don't know what you're gonna ask. You may ask on any subject, you gotta be prepared for it. But I think the notion, but Bill Clinton, like always, knows the facts, and he gave a very spirited defense, and also said, and what was even great was where he thought he had missed opportunities or made mistakes.
But let me say this. At every time we were trying to advance the war on terror, and specifically on Osama Bin Laden, the very voices now that are screaming were the voices then says, 'You're diverting from the real enemy, China.'
Tavis: Yeah.
Emanuel: That's what they said in the nineties, and nobody likes to go back and be reminded on how they missed the biggest growing threat around the world.
Tavis: Let me move forward, because this conversation, in part, mirrors or serves as, for lack of a better word, a metaphor for what's wrong with the Democrats right now. You can't ever get past Bill Clinton. He looms so large over everything Democratic, and we've spent the first five minutes talking about this guy again. That said, tell me whether or not you agree with my assessment that what you face is a daunting task. To take back the House.
Emanuel: When you said the word in the introduction, daunting, I want you to know I started this job six-three and 250 pounds. And this is all I got left after 18 months. Look, we do have a daunting task, because in many ways, you know already, and your viewers know, that the Congressional map has been gerrymandered around the country. On the other hand, I do believe that like history in 1974, when there was a reaction to Watergate, 1982 when there was a reaction to Reagan's recession, 1986, when we took back the Senate, each of those were big, midterm elections because they were nationalized around the direction the country was being set by the party in power.
This is a national election around whether you wanna stay the course George Bush has set, and the Republicans, or you want a new direction. Whether you want the status quo in the policies they have, or you want a change in those policies. Whether you want a rubber-stamp Congress, or you want an independent Congress that would ask questions of oversight that our constituents are asking, like is the Iraq war making us safer or worse off?
And what I find funny about the recent report that was out yesterday, both in the 'Times' and in the 'Washington Post' about how the National Intelligence Assessment says that Iraq has actually made us worse off on the war on terror, then in fact Congress is complicit, because they never have asked a single question of oversight on this war. And in fact, this report was due in May and was never given to us. And watch how the Republican Congress defend the notion that they're giving up their responsibilities. If they're not gonna use their responsibilities, a Democrat Congress will.
Tavis: But Congressman, you know as well as I do, though, it was Democrats voting with those Republicans who control Congress. They gave this President the authority to go to war. So how do you guys split that hair come election time with the voters?
Emanuel: Well because first of all, there was a lot of Democrats, Tavis, that didn't. And so don't forget them when you say that, number one. Number two is the difference is that this war has been fought with a level of incompetence that 12 generals had to take the unusual role of voicing their criticism of the Secretary Of Defense. That's never been done in American history. Second is in this process, Democrat Congress, time and again, and members of Democrats, even when we don't have the majority, have asked for oversight to was the troop level right?
Do they have the equipment they need? Do they have the policy and the strategies they need to pursue? What happened to the $10 billion that is missing? Is there war profiteering going on? There's a whole level of oversight of an equal branch of government that hasn't been done. So whether you are for or against the war, the role of checking out for the fraud that's happened, the waste that's happened, and the lack of oversight that hasn't happened is something that unified Democrats and then regardless of what you think is right or wrong about the war, the Congress has a job of both on the purse strings and on the oversight. And it hasn't conducted either one effectively.
Tavis: Democrats have consistently been blamed for being against everything, not being for anything. So let me jump right to the plan of what it is you guys are for this time around, and give you a chance to speak briefly on each one of these five key issues that you raise. The first issue is you argue that Democrats are offering a new social contract. What does that mean?
Emanuel: Well first of all, we have a role in the opposition to both oppose and propose. This is my way, with my colleague, Bruce Reed from the White House, of proposing. And when it comes to what I, the basic take on this book, if I can, you have a massive change going on in the economy around the world, both through the information economy and through globalization, okay? And it's affecting businesses all over the place, employers and employees alike.
They're making transitions, some successful. Apple Computer, Intel. Some not so successful. GM. The public sector, though, hasn't kept up with making the changes it needs to happen on education, energy, healthcare, taxes, information technology, to make that adaptation. So on the public sector, we're staying abreast of this globalized economy, and making sure every American can succeed. Second, citizenship is not an entitlement program.
It begins with responsibilities, not rights. And it asks every American to contribute to its country in a way of service at some point in its life. When we did that with Peace Corps, when we did that with AmeriCorps, we met our challenges. Just take the policy, if you can, like education. Today, in this economy, you earn what you learn. That being said, what have we done different to make college education more affordable and more accessible?
And so we lay out a series of ideas, take the five tax credits that exist on the code on college education, consolidate them into a single, $3,000 per child lifetime credit that you can use for four years of undergrad, two years of graduate school, or any time you wanna go back. Second, do the same with Pell Grants and Perkins Loans. Consolidate. Get those savings, and apply them for excess. Third, we subsidize the big banks in supplying those loans.
Abe Lincoln had what was called the land-grant colleges that we still live on today; it was a great investment. Take that $15 billion and make them tuition grants back to the states to provide loans to kids so they can get to college. The number one reason people leave college or don't go or quit is cost and affordability. Update our laws so we make college education more accessible and affordable for everybody.
Second, I was proud to work for President Clinton when we reformed Welfare. Okay? We'd done a great thing by instituting both the notion and the culture around work as well as responsibilities. But if you're gonna ask a single mother with two, three kids to work and take responsibility, you've gotta ask that of corporate America. There's over a trillion dollars in corporate welfare that exists in our budget and tax code.
And we need to make sure that corporate America takes the notion of work and responsibility as serious as a single mother. And basically have a system of ending corporate welfare as we know it. That should be the next generation of welfare. There's a series of policies on energy, how to create a hybrid-based economy. How to change our budget so we have an investment budget on healthcare, technology, and an operating budget that should be balanced. All sorts of things to get our public sector, our government, up to speed to dealing with the changes, so opportunity is available for our next generation of Americans.
Tavis: I didn't wanna interrupt to give you time to make the case, and you've done that. Let me ask you now right quick, where, and I'm not asking you to pull out a map here. But so that folk can understand, this margin between Republicans and Democrats hasn't changed that much over the last few elections on the House side. Tell me where you see picking up these seats that you need to get to take back control.
Emanuel: Tavis, I basically see it as four or five footprints.
Tavis: Okay.
Emanuel: There's a east coast corridor from Philadelphia suburbs straight up to Vermont.
Tavis: Right.
Emanuel: There's the Ohio River Valley that takes Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky, and that has both the economic depression and three very unpopular Republican governors.
Tavis: Okay.
Emanuel: Then you have a snake of open seats, starting from the Midwest going through Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Colorado, Arizona, and a footprint of hotly contested in the southwest seats. That's footprint three. Footprint four is Virginia, North Carolina, straight down to Florida. That is a series of races there, about four in Florida, one in North Carolina, and one in Virginia. And then I always like to joke that in Texas, we have one other footprint.
It's Tom Delay's seat, and that gets its own special footprint. (Laugh) But those are the basic footprints and how I see the districts, and they have kind of similarities. Like in the northeast, you have a little more suburban qualities to those races. And then you do, in the Ohio River Valley, that are more industrial and rural, and so they have a different quality. But over half the districts we're competing in around the country are suburban districts.
The battleground today, because the Republican party's pulled up its roots and become much more of a culturally conservative party, the battleground for both parties is in the suburbs, where you have, because of the Republican party's fiscal mess, their mess in Iraq, and their cultural (unintelligible) and out of step with the values of the suburbs, has given the Democrats a unique opportunity to build on what we've built over the last 15 years.
Tavis: We will see in the next few weeks whether or not the Democrats can, in fact, take advantage of that. The new book by Congressman Rahm Emanuel, former Clinton aide, or as he says, always a Clinton aide. (Laugh) And his former White House colleague in the Clinton administration, Bruce Reed. Their new book is called 'The Plan, Big Ideas For America.' Congressman, nice to have you on, all the best to you.
Emanuel: Thank you, Tavis. Thank you.
Tavis: Take care. Up next on this program, author and former Clinton diarist, Janis Kearney. Stay with us.
Back to September 25, 2006