April 29, 2005

GWEN IFILL, host: On both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, the nation's capital is in overdrive. At the White House, the president takes to the podium and to the road to declare he is worried about a lot of things, most of all Social Security.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From Thursday) I have a duty to put ideas on the table. I'm putting them on the table.

IFILL: But will the president's ideas fly?

Another worry: armed missiles pointed our way. Does North Korea have them?

While at the Capitol, internal struggles tie the House and the Senate in knots as religious conservatives take aim at the judiciary and even the Supreme Court.

Unidentified Man: (From tape) There is a majority on the Supreme Court that is, and you'll have to pardon me, but this is the way I see it: They're unelected and unaccountable and arrogant.

IFILL: Democrats, who are holding the line against the president's nominees and his Social Security plan, celebrate...

IFILL: ...while Republican leaders do an about-face to allow a full-fledged investigation into one of their own: Tom DeLay. Where will it all lead?

Covering these stories this week, Alexis Simendinger of National Journal; David Sanger of The New York Times; Gloria Borger of CBS News and US News; and Karen Tumulty of Time magazine.

Announcer: Here again is moderator Gwen Ifill.

IFILL: Good evening.

Analysis: Social Security reform

GWEN IFILL, host: A prime-time presidential news conference is enough of a rarity that it often provides a handy framework to analyze everything else that's going on in Washington. So it was last night when the president came to the White House East Room, ostensibly to answer reporters' questions, but really to try to get past them to speak to the American people. With his approval rating sliding, major initiatives stuck on Capitol Hill and the economy way down under the press of soaring energy prices, the president took a cozy stroll in Crawford with major ally and oil producer Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But the headline from last night's encounter was the president's effort to jump-start his plan to change Social Security.

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From Thursday) I propose a Social Security system in the future where benefits for low-income workers will grow faster than benefits for people who are better off.

IFILL: Sounds simple enough, but not so simple if you look at it more closely. Alexis was there last night.

What was the president trying to do? He wasn't walking down the road, holding hands with you guys last night, but what--well, like he was with the Crown Prince. I'm sorry. What was he trying to do and why?

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): You know, you used the word, Gwen, `jump-start.' And that was pretty clear what he was trying to do, to make this a way to change the page, to turn the page a little bit. We all know that he was doing the 60-cities-in-60-days tour and really trying to focus America on the education part of what's wrong with Social Security. And last night, he was trying to stir the pot a little bit, especially with Congress, to try to get some movement on the legislative side of this if he's going to get a bill, and he wants to get it this year.

And the idea was to offer up some new element of the solvency question. Remember, we've been hearing him talk about the personal accounts part. That's supposed to be the dessert you get to make it more palatable to go for the part that we need to deal with on solvency. And so the news element of it was this very carefully scripted, arranged wording with the Hill that the White House did with Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Finance Committee on the Senate side, definitely with the House side, about exactly how much he could add to the question of how to cut benefits in order to create some way to add some solvency answers to the dilemma that Congress is facing. And his version of it is an idea he's been talking about, actually, for some months: progressive indexing. It's a complicated way of talking about you get...

IFILL: Means testing.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Means testing, exactly. And that--you know, the president goes around America saying we're all going to be dealing with some sort of benefit cut because Social Security can't pay out what it's been promising. And he came out last night and said, `But there's another version of cutting benefits that we could manage in a way, indexing wages and prices in a mix.'

IFILL: But I'm puzzled. Up until now, the White House and the president's supporters have been saying he's not going to send a plan or any kind of plan to the Hill because people will just shoot it down. So what changed?

Ms. SIMENDINGER: It didn't change. This was actually part of his thinking about how detailed he could get. And the White House was certainly telling me a couple weeks ago that the president was not going to be putting out a plan. This was not the way he wanted to go because he didn't think that that would be the recipe for success, but that he was willing to show a little ankle. He was willing to go out there and be bold, maybe take the hit. And, you know, what happened right away was the Democrats--supposedly they're the ones who like progressive indexing--this is a sweetener to get Democrats in the room, and they're so far, you know, standing on the sidelines, watching the Republicans spin. And instead, you know, what's happening is, you know, Democrats are saying the president wants to cut middle-income workers' benefits and how terrible this is.

IFILL: He showed a little ankle, they kicked him in the shin.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: They kicked him in the shin. Good way.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (CBS News National Political Correspondent): But wasn't this also designed so that the White House and Republicans could say, `OK, Democrats, you show your ankle?'

Ms. SIMENDINGER: And that happened instantly. If you noticed today, every Republican, the script was, `Where are the Democrats?' The president has been bold--"bold." He's gone out there and, you know, really done something painful, to tell Americans `You're going to get less, but here's a way we can manage it.' And Democrats are all still standing on the sidelines, pretty much standing together.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time magazine): Well, essentially, my understanding is the Democrats are saying, `We're not going to put forward a plan unless you back down off this idea of these personal accounts.' How negotiable is that?

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Well, you know, the president got this question last night from a reporter, `Is this negotiable?' And he went on to answer the question by saying how much he loves personal accounts and why this is a really good idea for future workers. I right away went up to some of the president's aides and senior administrative officials and said, `Did the president in any way want to signal that this is negotiable?' Because he didn't really answer the question. `Absolutely not, but the president wants the debate to continue.' So then, you know, reporters like me are into the weaves of, well, is it carve out or add on? And could there be a mix? And we're asking all these questions. Really all they're trying to do is get the debate going...

IFILL: And if...

Ms. SIMENDINGER: ...find some way to get people talking about the solution.

IFILL: And if I can say that one way they're trying to do it is kind of repackage it slightly by using--I counted it. In the three paragraphs in this presentation, the president used the words `choose,' `voluntary,' `options' and `opportunity' 13 times. Clearly he's saying, `It's up to you, we're not forcing anything on you, this could be an opportunity...'

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Right.

IFILL: `...an option.'

Ms. SIMENDINGER: And I guess I should add that it's Republicans that are divided about the strategy, too. He is really between a rock and a hard place, trying to get Democrats in the room, and he has Republicans who are nervous and ready to flee, as well.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Alexis, the administration officials who were floating this to us a few weeks ago were phrasing it this way: Why let Bill Gates get the same Social Security payment that would go to somebody who's been a public schoolteacher their whole lives? It would strike me that would appeal to Democrats. What's their answer going to be to it?

Ms. SIMENDINGER: You know, the problem that they have with the means testing idea or the idea that President Bush is saying--is `Let's help the poor, let's insulate them from anything that we might do in the future'--is that the Democrats don't believe that going after the middle income when the president has taken the idea of spending more on Social Security off the table--so one of the elements of their debate is the president is saying, `Let's cut the benefits, but we're not going to spend any more.' And actually, Americans are open to that idea.

IFILL: Isn't there--when the fight used to be the Democrats used to be--represent the poor theoretically, and the Republicans, the rich. Well, now all of a sudden, everyone's fighting over the middle, and the other sides are going to have to go wage their own battles.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Absolutely.

Analysis: North Korea's nuclear capabilities

GWEN IFILL, host: Another piece of news yesterday that deserves a second look: the concession by the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency that North Korea has the ability to arm a missile with a nuclear device. David Sanger was at the press conference last night, too, and he asked the president about that. The president's response:

President GEORGE W. BUSH: (From Thursday) Kim Jong Il is a dangerous person. And as David accurately noted, there is concern about his capacity to deliver a nuclear weapon. We don't know if he can or not, but I think it's best when you're dealing with a tyrant like Kim Jong Il to assume he can.

IFILL: When the president tells you you've accurately noted something, it should send chills down your back.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): It's time to be worried. Right. Yeah.

IFILL: Exactly. Was there a significant concession that was being made there?

Mr. SANGER: There sure was. It was very significant. But as with many things in Washington, you had to know the code words before you wandered in. Now Admiral Lowell Jacoby, who is the head of the DIA, had used one of those code words earlier in the day in his testimony. He had this very testy exchange with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. And she was pressing him on this issue, and he came back by saying North Korea now has the capability to mount a warhead on one of its missiles. And its missiles, of course, could easily reach Japan and maybe the Western United States. Now `capability' is one of those interesting words around here because it means they could do it, but it doesn't mean we've seen them do it. And so the president was taking the worst-case scenario out there and saying we had to orient our policy towards that. The difficulty is that right now the policy that he's hanging onto is one of sort of limitless negotiations.

Mr. SANGER: It doesn't sound like the kind of imminent threat that he dealt with with Saddam Hussein, even though many experts believe it's a much more potent threat.

IFILL: I was quite--watching the replay today of that hearing yesterday, I was--I thought it was interesting. Senator Clinton's comments were--questions were--she read them from a piece of paper. She clearly had prepared them. She pressed him by reading it. And in the end, when he said, `Well, yes, ma'am, they do have that capability,' it was like, `OK. Good night,' and she left. That was the end of the hearing. So was this part of a plan on the part of the possible 2008 candidate for president to suddenly establish her bona fides on...

Mr. SANGER: Well, a lot of people believe that she is trying to seem more hawkish than the current Republican administration. And on North Korea, it's not hard to come across as a hawk because in the past few months, they have negotiated by escalating and escalating and threatening to build more weapons and so forth. What I thought was interesting was she was pressing him because she knows, as many in Washington know who follow this, that there is a new intelligence assessment that is just in its final stages on North Korea, and this was one of its conclusions.

IFILL: Ah.

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): David, last night the president went out of his way to talk about the diplomacy, the six-party talks as he described them, and to push back on any suggestion that there are other options, that he's considering anything aggressive. What are the options he has if the six-party talks, as he described them, just go nowhere?

Mr. SANGER: There are all kinds of options, but they range from the bad to the really bad to the really, really bad. One option is to go to the UN Security Council and try to do what has been described to me as basically a quarantine of North Korea, where we would stop the shipments coming in and out. The trick there is you've got to make sure that China is on board, because most of their trafficking goes across their border. There are military options here. The president doesn't want to talk about it, but we're talking about a very confined nuclear location away from population centers, and President Clinton seriously thought in 1994 about taking it out.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (CBS News National Political Correspondent): You think President Bush would think about that?

Mr. SANGER: He could, but it's a lot more complicated now, Gloria, because when President Clinton was thinking about it, North Korea had one, maybe two nuclear weapons. Now we think they have six or eight, and we don't know where they are.

IFILL: Well, and not only that, but theoretically, our military options are limited by being stretched thin in so many other places around the world. So they can hint about it, but they can't actually threaten, can they?

Mr. SANGER: Well, that was my first question to the president...

Unidentified Woman: Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. SANGER: ...which was really why--what is it about our presence in Iraq that limits your options elsewhere?

IFILL: Yeah.

Mr. SANGER: And he denied that our options are limited elsewhere. I think...

IFILL: Well, he's not going to admit it.

Mr. SANGER: You wouldn't expect that he would. But, in fact, it's a problem, and not necessarily a problem just if we use the military option. If we quarantine North Korea and they respond militarily, we're going to need some forces over there.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time magazine): So all the options now are bad. Were there any missed opportunities? Did it have to come to this point?

Mr. SANGER: Well, some people believe that there was a big opportunity in 2002 in January when North Korea--I'm sorry, 2003, in January of 2003--when North Korea decided it was going to pull out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and begin to reprocess the spent fuel rods it already had to make bomb fuel. That might have been the moment to act against them. But you'll remember that in January 2003, we were headed in another direction. We were headed to Iraq. And perhaps there wasn't enough attention to this then.

IFILL: Well, David, you have been all over this story. We can't say you're not paying attention, so thanks a lot.

Mr. SANGER: Thank you.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: The president was well-prepared for him.

IFILL: The president was prepared for that question.

Analysis: Compromise on filibusters

GWEN IFILL, host: Now to the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue. Both sides said they wanted to compromise on filibusters and nuclear options and the president's judicial nominees.

Senator BILL FRIST (Republican, Tennessee, Majority Leader): In the spirit of civility and with sincere hope for a solution, I make an offer. Senator HARRY REID (Democrat, Nevada, Minority Leader): I would say, for lack of a better description, it's a big, wet kiss to the far right, Mr. President. It just is not appropriate. The rules are the rules.

IFILL: Can't they all just get along? The gauntlet had been thrown down earlier in the week, but not by lawmakers, by conservative religious activists who denounced everyone from squishy Republicans to members of the Supreme Court.

But the president disavowed that language last night, and I wonder why that is, Gloria.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (CBS News National Political Correspondent): I wonder why, Gwen. You know, obviously, the president is concerned that this could backfire. Here he is trying to get his judicial nominations through. They're all thinking about a potential Supreme Court nomination coming up in the not-too-distant future. They want to change the rules in the Senate so that you can approve a Supreme Court justice by a simple majority of 50 votes rather than the 60 votes that is now necessary. And you have a lot of social conservatives out there who are suddenly attacking the Supreme Court, tying the question of judges to a question of faith. And the president, when asked about this last night, made it very clear, as you said, he wanted no part of it. He said, `I believe people who oppose my judicial nominees oppose them because they disagree with their judicial temperament,' essentially.

IFILL: Now what we've seen this week is all elected officials, elected Republican officials, I mean, running as far away as they can from that image of the folks from the Family Research Council with the Bible in one hand and the gavel in the other, yet is that because it's just as well to let them push the button on the far right and let the president moderate in the middle?

Ms. BORGER: You mean there could be a right-hand-left-hand strategy?

IFILL: I don't know.

Ms. BORGER: Yeah, maybe. Yeah, sure. You know, I think that is the case, although Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, when he did appear before that group via a video last week--he did say to them, you know, `We have to respect the separation.'

IFILL: He did.

Ms. BORGER: `We have to respect the bench.' And there are people--Tom DeLay, whom we will speak about later, has actually talked about Justice Kennedy, saying it is outrageous, as he called it, that he does research for his opinions on the Internet and that he consults international law, the reason being that he believes that he should only consult the Constitution of the United States. And so there's a sense that these judges are too activist, that they're legislating on everything from prayer in the schools to abortion, and it really has to stop.

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): Gloria, this week there was some trading of deals and then turning down of some deals, some bartering.

Ms. BORGER: Sort of deals.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Right. Sort of deals. Now in the end, does Senator Frist think he has the votes? And what happened with those deals?

Ms. BORGER: You know, it's been my experience, and all of you have covered the Congress, that you usually call for a vote when you think you can win it.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Yeah.

Ms. BORGER: And if he hasn't done that, it means that he probably doesn't have the votes at this point. There are a handful of senators who are what I would call, I guess, traditionalists, who are saying, you know, `Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.' Because guess what? One senator said to me, `In the year, oh, 2008, what if Hillary Clinton becomes president of the United States, and she tries to appoint these judges? Don't you want to have that filibuster option open to you?' So I think that there are a lot of folks who are quite worried about this on the Republican side, but they're so nervous about getting lobbied by the White House, they don't even want to declare that they're nervous because they know that they'll be just descended upon by the White House. So there are some senators that called themselves undeclared as opposed to saying, `Well, I'm sort of thinking one way' or undecided, because if you're undecided, the White House will go after you.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Gloria, in real nuclear strategy, people always worry about the second strike.

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Mr. SANGER: In the nuclear option, not to mix our metaphors too much here...

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Mr. SANGER: ...how could this backfire on the Republicans if they went and did it?

Ms. BORGER: If they went and did it--first of all, they're only going to do it if they think they can win it, number one. I mean, I don't think they can do it, and they can lose. And then it can backfire because the Democrats are going to say abuse of power. You know, this is the Democratic theme, next to Social Security. The other theme is the Republicans are abusing their power. They are taking away the rights of the minority. Now in poll questions, people believe that filibusters should be able to remain, but they also want up-or-down votes for nominees.

IFILL: So you could pick your poll, basically.

Ms. BORGER: So you can kind of pick your poll. But I think that the Democrats could try and make an issue of this, of Republican abuse of power.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time magazine): Well, then, what about the third strike?

Ms. BORGER: Uh-huh.

Ms. TUMULTY: Say the Democrats do that, say they bring everything to a halt in the Senate...

Ms. BORGER: Right.

Ms. TUMULTY: ...and therefore bring everything to a halt, practically, in the government. The last time somebody tried to do that it was Newt Gingrich in 1995, and it didn't work out so well.

Ms. BORGER: Right. Shutting the government down is not a great idea. As you already see in the public opinion polls, congressional approval rating is low. And I don't think anybody in Congress wants it to go any lower. And so if you continue to have these fights--you know, tit for tat--`OK, you're going to do this, I'm going to shut down the Congress'--people may decide that they actually want some legislation passed through the Congress, and that could backfire for the Democrats, as well. So there really aren't any easy political choices here. Bottom line is: The president wants up-or-down votes on his judicial nominees. As he said last night at his press conference, he's going to try and get it.

IFILL: Whither the poor, squishy Republicans? You'd hate to be one of them.

Ms. BORGER: Oh, my God. They're hiding under the tables, I think, now.

Analysis: Ethics scandals involving Tom DeLay

GWEN IFILL, host: Finally, is the Tom DeLay drama only the tip of the iceberg on Capitol Hill? With a nudge from speaker Dennis Hastert, the House cleared the way for an investigation into Mr. DeLay's finances.

Representative DENNIS HASTERT (Republican, Illinois, House Speaker): (From Wednesday) That's all that is in the press today is the ethics stalemate. We need to move forward. We need to get this behind us.

IFILL: That is what is known as a reverse. Powerful lawmakers, powerful lobbyists, powerful interests with a lot of cash on hand; add it all together and you have the makings of a potential scandal that might just be beginning. Karen's been keeping track of all this; in fact, has been writing a lot about the figure central to the scandal.

Ms. KAREN TUMULTY (Time magazine): That's right. And a few weeks ago, had you asked most people on the Hill, including some Democrats, they would say, `Look, you know, most of the country has never even heard of Tom DeLay. This is just a little tempest in Washington.' That's not the way anybody is talking anymore. And, in fact, there are polls out that suggest that Tom DeLay now has 77 percent name ID across the country. It means he's probably the most famous member of the House in recent history outside of Newt Gingrich.

IFILL: Wow.

Ms. TUMULTY: And members are also beginning to hear about this as they go home. They're being stopped in airports, even at their own fund-raisers. And people are saying, `Could you explain what is going on with this Tom DeLay guy?'

IFILL: Can you explain it, Karen?

Ms. TUMULTY: Well, Tom DeLay--a number of things are going on on a number of fronts. And it seems like a new one is opening practically with every single news cycle. To a lot of people, Tom DeLay first became a familiar figure in the Terri Schiavo case. And then, of course, he was the one, as Gloria mentioned, who afterwards had the most--you know, the most inflammatory words to say about retribution against judges.

But on top of that, there have been a series of ethics scandals that have been brewing over the last six months to a year or so. Many of them are connected to one particular lobbyist named Jack Abramoff, who, at this point, has investigations going against him by four different federal agencies and two Senate committees, primarily having to do with his Indian tribe clients and how he handled their money. The problem for Tom DeLay here is that a lot of Tom DeLay's foreign travel was arranged and, in some cases, apparently indirectly paid for by said lobbyist. And as we reported this week on our Web site Time.com, this lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, was also giving very expensive gifts to people in Tom DeLay's office in absolute violation of House rules. So the more people hear about this lobbyist, the more they hear about Tom DeLay.

Ms. GLORIA BORGER (CBS News National Political Correspondent): Now Tom DeLay has, in of course quintessential Washington fashion, tried to distance himself from a man he once called his good friend, Jack Abramoff. So what was their real relationship, Karen?

Ms. TUMULTY: Well, Jack Abramoff was an absolute stalwart in the conservative movement. And as Tom DeLay took power, one of the things he did was brought Washington's lobbying community, K Street it's called here, more into the actual making of laws, both in literally helping people write the laws, but also in raising the money and getting the political muscle behind many of Tom DeLay's favorite causes. And as a result, he worked very closely with Jack Abramoff. As you said, it got to the point where--at one point referred to him as a very dear friend.

Mr. DAVID SANGER (The New York Times): Karen, when the Republicans came to power in the House, they came in precisely on the issue of separating House members from these special interests. That's what term limits were all about.

Ms. TUMULTY: Right.

Mr. SANGER: How do they justify this now?

Ms. TUMULTY: Basically, they came in--also they tightened the gift ban. They put in a lot of ethical reforms, but in the last 10 years, there has been a lot of backsliding, as right now we're finding out. Many, many House members--by the way, these scandals have got a lot of people in the House staying awake at night--we're finding a lot of people weren't filing forms, weren't abiding by regulations. And, again, now that the Ethics Committee is back in business, a lot of people are very nervous.

Ms. ALEXIS SIMENDINGER (National Journal): Karen, I...

IFILL: Karen, can I just say the president stepped out on a limb this week and seemed to embrace Tom DeLay even more than he had to? He took him with him on Air Force One; he said he was a great man every time he'd get a chance. He wasn't always asked about it last night, but he did it all the rest of the week. What's that about?

Ms. TUMULTY: Well, the president has never--of course, the White House also has previously said that while Tom DeLay is a friend of the president, there are different levels of friendship. But what the president knows is that there has rarely been a leader in the House who is as effective as Tom DeLay in delivering the votes when the president needs them. Some--many of the president's victories in the House have been by one vote. And he knows that if he's going to get Social Security through, or just about anything else this year, he needs somebody with Tom DeLay's skills.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Can I just ask in terms of what happens now--ii seems ironic to me that in January they did the rules change in the House in order to protect Tom DeLay from the ethics investigation. Now they've reversed course. They're going to do the ethics investigation, and some people think this will actually help because it will last so long, and it will go underground. Does it help or hurt?

Ms. TUMULTY: It does buy Tom DeLay some time, and he says it buys him an opportunity to go before the Ethics Committee and clear himself. But at this point, these scandals are moving on so many other parallel tracks--the Justice Department, two Senate committees investigating--it buys him time, but it doesn't...

Ms. SIMENDINGER: Totally preoccupying.

Ms. TUMULTY: Right.

Ms. SIMENDINGER: OK.

IFILL: OK. Well, we'll be watching that, and we'll also be watching to see which other members of Congress might get pulled into this trap. It's been amazing.

GWEN IFILL, host:

Thank you, everybody. There's so much to talk about, so little time, as always. If you want to know more, however, you can keep track of daily developments on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" every night. And then we'll fill you in on any leftovers right here next week on WASHINGTON WEEK. Good night.