Friday, November 6, 2009

MS. IFILL: A world of uncertainty on unemployment, Afghanistan, health care, and domestic politics, tonight on “Washington Week.”

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Although it will take time and it will take patience, I am confident that our economy will recover.

REP. KEVIN BRADY (R-TX): Today’s numbers are further proof that the Obama economic policies are a failure.

MS. IFILL: Cool optimism and hot pessimism on display as the unemployment rate makes a sudden jump. Nervousness at the ballot box too as Obama Democrats in two big states go down to defeat.

GOV. JON CORZINE: There is some little sadness.

MS. IFILL: Will the election results rattle the health care debate on Capitol Hill?

SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI: We’re right on the brink of passing historic legislation to provide quality, affordable, accessible health care for all Americans.

REP. ERIC CANTOR (R-VA): Not one Republican will vote for this bill.

MS. IFILL: And will violence at home –

DR. ROY SMYTHE: An individual jumped up on a desk and started shooting weapons.

MS. IFILL: – and abroad – change the course in Afghanistan.

PRIME MINISTER GORDON BROWN: It is not just the U.S. that is being tested in Afghanistan, nor is it just Britain. It is the whole international community.

MS. IFILL: Covering the week: Jackie Calmes of the “New York Times,” James Barnes of “National Journal,” Ceci Connolly of the “Washington Post,” and Martha Raddatz of ABC News.

ANNOUNCER: Celebrating 40 years of journalistic excellence, live from our nation’s capital, this is “Washington Week” with Gwen Ifill, produced in association with “National Journal.”

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MS. IFILL: Good evening. For a while, it seemed as if all the news was good. Wall Street cracked 10,000. The real estate market rebounded. Even Detroit seemed to be selling cars again. Then today the news that the unemployment rate is at 10.2 percent, the highest since 1983. That’s 190,000 jobs lost.

So I have to ask you, Jackie, the same question I asked Greg Ip at this table last week – is this recession over or not?

MS. CALMES: It’s probably over but these aren’t our father’s recessions anymore. It’s not like when I was growing up in Toledo and if you –somebody got laid off they’d just wait a few weeks and they’d be called back to the same job. It’s not like that anymore. Blame globalization. There’s a lot of reasons. But in the 1990-’91 recession, after it was officially over by the economists’ measure, it took another 15 months before unemployment peaked. In 2001, it took 19 months till unemployment peaked and then started coming down. What that means is if you extrapolate from the belief that maybe the recession ended in June, 2009, that unemployment could still not have peaked by Election Day, 2010. We’re talking about this week’s election. Well, look ahead a year from now and it still may be a political problem for the administration.

MS. IFILL: So that’s what they mean when they say unemployment and jobs are a lagging indicator?

MS. CALMES: Right, absolutely and lagging more than they used to. And the president said in your clip said “we have to have patience.” Well, you can see by this week’s election that there’s a lot of voters that don’t have much patience any more.

MS. RADDATZ: Jackie, isn’t there a lot of hidden stuff here with the jobs too? It’s not just the unemployment. It’s people who want full time jobs but can’t get them?

MS. CALMES: Right.

MS. RADDATZ: So what do they do about that? What do they do about all of this?

MS. CALMES: Well, it’s going to take – truly people training for new jobs that maybe don’t exist yet. And what’s really interesting is this week Congress passed and sent to the president, who signed into law today, an – extended unemployment benefits. The extended 14 additional weeks of federal benefits, 20 if your state has over 8.5 percent unemployment. That 20 weeks means the maximum unemployment benefits you can get right now or 99 weeks. That’s a record. That’s almost two years. That just tells you we have set records for the length of time that people are out of work. It’s longer, there’s more – 36 percent of people who are unemployed right now have been unemployed for more than six months. These are records since data started being collected in 1948. And it just underscores the unease and the dissatisfaction out there because you’re also seeing, on the other end, Wall Street is coming back.

MS. CONNOLLY: Well, I’m wondering. We had that one giant stimulus package or economic recovery package quite some time ago. Every once in a while you hear mention of maybe there should be a second. What sort of options does the administration have at this point?

MS. CALMES: Well, you’re hearing more, especially after today’s unemployment report, about taking additional steps, as it happened. The unemployment bill the president signed today is a stimulus bill. You put – keep money in people’s pockets and they’re going out to the grocery store, the gas station, the hardware store. In addition, it extended a very popular $8,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and expanded it to people who currently are in a home, have been in a home for five years. They can qualify for up to a $6,500 credit.

And then, in addition to that, there is a provision for companies that are losing money, not just small business, as currently, but big – every business that’s losing money can deduct its losses against five profitable years. That means refund checks that are cash in the hand for businesses to invest. So you’ve got these little, well, relatively speaking little things, relative to the $787 billion package you talked to. But there’s going to be more coming, but this runs smack into the sense of rising deficits. Even though technically the bill today was paid for, doesn’t add to the deficit, that’s going to be a hard act to pull off in the future.

MR. BARNES: So, Jackie, that really must restrict the administration’s maneuvering room. Are they going to be able – there’re awful lot of Democrats now who are raising more and more concerns about these deficits. How is that likely to be received on the Hill?

MS. CALMES: Well, they’re going to want to act in additional ways. They’re getting from the Republicans that this means the original stimulus bill didn’t work. The fact is more than half the stimulus bill from last winter remains to be spent out. Much of it will be in construction. Construction has lost a lot of jobs and they haven’t felt the impact yet of the stimulus package. I think there’ll be more impact in the coming year, but you’re still going to have this drag. It’s typical with economic statistics. This week we did have some good economic news, which is that productivity was up for the highest amount in six years, 9.5 percent, which means the people who are working are producing more. The downside of that is that employers who are already skittish about hiring think “I’m just going to make do with the workers I’ve got because they’re already producing about nearly 10 percent more than they were a year ago.” So –

MS. IFILL: Wow, there’re going to be so many ups and downs before we see true daylight. And if this week’s off-year elections proved anything, it was that voters don’t think the recession is over. Eighty five percent of voters leaving the polls in Virginia and 89 percent in New Jersey said they remain worried about the economy. So what can be read – should be read – maybe shouldn’t be read into these outcomes on Tuesday night, Jim?

MR. BARNES: Well, I think what it does show is that Americans are getting a little tired of waiting around for this economic recovery to kick in. Among the voters that you just mentioned, actually half of them said they were very worried about the direction of the economy over the coming year. And among those voters, they voted by almost two to one in New Jersey and three to one in Virginia for the Republican candidates, Chris Christie, Bob McDonnell, who both won and –

MS. IFILL: For governor?

MR. BARNES: – for governor. And so I think if you had that kind of sentiment existed a year from now when the entire House of Representatives is up, a third of the Senate, 37 governorships, you could have a lot of Republican winners.

MS. IFILL: Do we overreach in trying to reach for great meaning in an off-year election like this?

MR. BARNES: Oh, yes. (Laughter.) As Yogi Berra might say, it doesn’t mean much until it means much. And I think that without a doubt in New Jersey, Jon Corzine the incumbent Democratic governor, he had a job approval rating of something like 38 percent. That’s almost a guaranteed one-way ticket to retirement. In Virginia, State Senator Creigh Deeds, the Democratic nominee, he had trouble really defining his positions on taxes and transportation and even how closely he would tie himself to President Obama. And so I think even Democrats acknowledged he might have been a bit of a lackluster candidate.

MS. CONNOLLY: Now, it did seem, Jim, up on Capitol Hill, of course, Speaker Nancy Pelosi was talking about from her perspective it was a good election night because John Garamendi in California won a seat, so they held that one, but also that very interesting election up in New York. Can you tell us a little about that one?

MR. BARNES: Well, how much time do we have? (Laughter.) It was really crazy. Basically, you had a Republican nominee, a moderate Republican who was selected by the local party leaders up there who got shoved aside by an insurgent Republican who was running on the conservative line, forced her to basically step down on Saturday before the election. Then later she endorsed Owens, the Democrat. And I think that –

MS. IFILL: And the Democrat won.

MR. BARNES: – and the Democrat won. And I think what that shows is that when Republicans are fighting amongst themselves, as opposed to keeping the focus on the Democrats, they can still lose.

MS. IFILL: Now, imagine that it turned around and Hoffman, the conservative insurgent had won, wouldn’t we be saying tonight what a great new day for the conservatives in the party, the Republicans are at war with each other?

MR. BARNES: Yes, without a doubt, if Hoffman had won this issue might not have been – had as much visibility as it does. But it’s a pretty big embarrassment when you have the local party leaders pick a candidate. The Republican establishment, the national Republican Congressional Committee, the political arm of the House Republicans, got behind this candidate, ran ads against Hoffman calling him sort of a liberal, a fan of earmarks, that sort of thing, so this was really a messy show.

MS. RADDATZ: Jim, can we move up to Maine and look at the gay marriage bill there and what happened there and what that means for the future?

MR. BARNES: I think that it – I think it means that when the marriage issue is actually put on the ballot, it’s going to have a tough time passing. Now, at the same time it’s very interesting. There was also an initiative out in Washington State where the proposal was there was a law on the books that they passed in Washington that said same-sex couples will have the same benefits as regular old married straight couples. And there was an effort to overturn that. That failed. That failed by a very narrow margin, but that failed. Now, that’s not marriage. So I think what you’re going to find is that in terms of the gay rights progress it’s going to come sort of in fits and starts in different places, largely I think through the courts still but as I said, when it gets onto the ballot box it’s still likely to have some trouble.

MS. IFILL: How about the independents? It seems to me that they is still – there is no Obama coattail, at least not in an off-year election. He couldn’t deliver anybody he campaigned for virtually. But the independents are still out there and they get to decide.

MR. BARNES: They do get to decide. In both of those states, Virginia and New Jersey, in the 2008 presidential election Barack Obama carried independents and that was a big reason why he was able to win Virginia, first Democrat to do that since 1964. On Tuesday, independents in both Virginia and New Jersey voted two to one for the Republican candidate. I spoke earlier today with Russ Schriefer, who is the media consultant for Chris Christie up in New Jersey, and he said really for the first time since 2004, independents are kind of willing – they’re open to voting for Republicans. But he cautioned it’s not a gimme, it’s not automatic. These are independents. Really suggesting – they can move back. There’s still a year to go. They could certainly go back to the Democrats.

MS. IFILL: Or they can stay home, which they often do as well. Thanks, Jim. So my thinking is everything is politics, right? So it’s fair to assume that lawmakers on both sides of the ongoing health care debate were watching the election results closely as well. And as the House prepares to vote on the Democratic leadership’s health care plan this weekend, each side is claiming the other’s plan is dangerous.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH): This bill is the greatest threat to freedom that I have seen in the 19 years I’ve been here in Washington. I don’t know what the outcome of that vote’s going to be, but I can tell you what I am voting no.

SPEAKER PELOSI: The Republican plan ensures about three million more people than now and ours does 36 million people. So that’s a very big difference in that.

MS. IFILL: But does Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, have the votes?

MS. CONNOLLY: Well, Gwen, as she put it succinctly, “we will.” (Laughter.)

MS. IFILL: Which is to say right this second –

MS. CONNOLLY: Truer words have probably not been uttered in the Capitol in quite some time. Most of us in town know that Speaker Pelosi is an excellent vote counter. She happens to be a pretty good horse trader too, from what I understand. And she as well as a number of her deputies have been trying to assemble the magic 218 votes. They will be all Democratic votes. This is entirely a Democratic show this weekend. The Republicans are in lockstep against the Democratic health care bill. That means that she can afford to lose 40 of her Democratic members and it’s going to be real close and if she ekes out a win, it will be eking it out by a vote or two, I would say.

MS. IFILL: Who are these moderate Democrats and why are they so hard to rein in?

MS. CONNOLLY: Well, it’s interesting because she’s got a few problems in the sort of conservative-moderate wing of her party, but some on the left liberal-leaning side as well. And this really is a calibration that she’s been trying to do all along. We saw it for many, many weeks and months over the so-called public option. She seems to have found enough of a middle ground on that. But now you’re seeing flare-ups this week over abortion, whether or not there should be any sort of taxpayer dollars that in any way go toward abortion coverage. She’s trying to balance some anti-abortion as well as pro-choice colleagues. There’s also – immigration is flaring up now in the Hispanic caucus. So all of these various sort of special issues are threatening to take down the bill.

MS. RADDATZ: Ceci, what about the Senate? Let’s take a broader picture here on what’s going on there. Funny, it’s easy to lose track of all this.

MS. CONNOLLY: Yes, it is. At the moment, not much. They – I think are napping this weekend over in the Senate. But it is important to think about the Senate because eventually if the Democrats are successful in the House and you see a bill in the Senate, what we’re doing is we’re heading toward another pretty big fight within the Democratic Party because there are some real differences in approach. The biggest difference which isn’t getting much attention right now is how exactly they would pay for health care reform, specifically what kind of taxes.

That House bill that we’ll see on the floor this weekend includes a tax on millionaires. Over in the Senate, they want to put a tax on high-price, they call them Cadillac health insurance plans. There are other differences along the way, but that one in particular will become a big problem.

MS. CALMES: What do you think the president’s going say to the House Democrats tomorrow when he meets them before they start the debate?

MS. IFILL: Yes, does he come armed to beat them about the head? (Laughter.)

MS. CONNOLLY: Well, everything that we know from President Obama and this White House on this issue in particular is that it’ll be a combination of pep rally for sure, but there will definitely be talk about what they see as the lessons of 1994. Recall when President Clinton made a similar attempt at health care overhaul, he failed – again, because many in his party refused to go along – and as a result, the Democrats lost control of Congress.

MS. CALMES: It didn’t even come to a vote like this in the House or Senate.

MS. CONNOLLY: No, absolutely correct. And of course, there were other complicating factors along the way. It’s never a simple black and white comparison, but that’s the storyline that this White House has been telling its Democratic members for quite some time. We have to hang together or next November we’re really going to be in trouble.

MR. BARNES: So, Ceci, the House bill got some pretty big endorsements this week – the American Medical Association, AARP, the big seniors’ Lobby. How significant is that?

MS. CONNOLLY: They’re both significant. I think right now the AARP endorsement is especially important, not because it will win over votes inside Congress, but because those lawmakers think that they can take that home to the constituents and it’s an inoculation. It protects them. We’ve known for quite some time in this debate that seniors have been very skeptical of health care reform – the most skeptical group. They don’t see much in it for them. But we also know that they vote in very large numbers, especially in off-year elections. So this is what’s known as political cover. And it’s very important to those Democrats. They worked very hard to get that endorsement and they’re going to be parading it around back home next year.

MS. IFILL: Okay, Ceci, thank you for that. I guess you both are working long this weekend.

MS. CONNOLLY: Oh, yeah. (Laughter.)

MS. IFILL: Well, this week’s most consequential elections may have occurred in Afghanistan, or, more correctly, they didn’t occur. President Hamid Karzai got to keep his job because the election was cancelled after his opponent dropped out.

PRES. HAMID KARZAI: Afghanistan has its difficulties. Afghanistan is emerging from 30 years of war and stepping forward towards a more institutional legal order while it’s still struggling against terrorism and the menaces that affect us all.

MS. IFILL: But other menaces abound. As the president decides the level of future U.S. involvement, a horrific shooting at the Fort Hood Army Base raised new questions about military readiness. Is there a connection that can really be made there, Martha?

MS. RADDATZ: One of the things I was watching this week and watching the chief of staff of the Army, George Casey today, and listening to him about stress and stress on the force and we don’t know yet what might have caused the shooter to shoot the others. Whether he was under a great deal of stress, whether as a psychiatrist he saw too much violence and trauma when he was at Walter Reed and heard a lot about it. But what we do know is now there’s even more stress on those troops.

Now they’ve been attacked at their home post in Fort Hood, Texas. Now there’s no place to feel safe. And when you look at those families and when you look at these multiple deployments and you look at the shooting in particular, you have to ask yourself –and I’m sure they are at the Pentagon too – can we send more troops? What can we do? How can we relieve the stress on the force? And one of the things the Joint Chiefs talked about with President Obama – they’re the ones who supply the troops and they have to tell the president what about the stress on the force? Now, I think all those joint chiefs, all of the service chiefs are on board for Stan McChrystal’s plan to add 40,000-44,000 troops in Afghanistan, but it would still be difficult because the soldiers, the Marines, wouldn’t get to spend as much time at home in the long run if these deployments continue and continue.

And what the Army in particular is trying to do is get more what’s called dwell time, get their soldiers home for longer periods of time between deployments. And anything like this, any time you add troops, can make that more difficult

MS. IFILL: So as the president tries to decide counterinsurgency versus counterterrorism, also on his plate is whether he actually has troops who are ready, can sustain this and aren’t stretched too thin. That is an equal part or a significant part of the decision-making?

MS. RADDATZ: Absolutely is a significant part of the decision. I don’t think you’ll get anyone in the Marine Corps, the Army, or anywhere else saying “we can’t do this,” but what the president hears is “we can do this but there is stress on the force.” Look at the suicide rate in the Army. The suicide rate is unprecedented in the Army right now and they’ve made such efforts to try to turn that around. And yet really think about it. Look at these families in Fort Hood. These children who’ve seen their parents go off to war three, four times. I know the president has to think about that. I know the service chiefs have to think about that.

MS. IFILL: In fact he was at Walter Reed today visiting wounded soldiers.

MS. RADDATZ: Yes, he was.

MR. BARNES: So, Martha, when is the decision president –

MS. RADDATZ: Let me check here. (Laughter.)

MR. BARNES: – when is the decision likely to come down and how do you think the president is likely to decide?

MS. RADDATZ: I’m starting to get phone calls. And one time they say it’s going to be Monday. And another time they say it’s going to be after the president comes back from Asia. And I just say, tell me when he makes it; just give me a two-minute warning on this one. I think there was some effort to make the decision by early next week. It could still happen, who knows? But then of course he goes off to Asia midweek. Does he want to go off to Asia right after he makes a decision?

From people I have talked to, who are either in the meeting or know about those meetings, they say the president just simply hasn’t telegraphed what he is going to do. Now, it depends on who you ask. A lot of people do think he’ll ask for all the troops. Listen to other people and you think maybe he’s going to come down somewhere in the middle. I think one thing is almost certain, though. There will be more troops going to Afghanistan. It’s just the number. I think most definitely they’ll send 10,000 at least military trainers to help the Afghan security forces.

MS. CONNOLLY: And Senator John Kerry, of course, has really taken a high profile in this debate –

MS. RADDATZ: As high as he possibly can. (Laughter.)

MS. CONNOLLY: – what exactly is he advocating and is it likely to happen? Is he taking a leadership role here or is it more kind of carping from the sidelines?

MS. RADDATZ: Well, he certainly took a leadership role in dealing with President Karzai and bringing him around to a runoff election that actually didn’t happen, as we know. But I think John Kerry is trying to be the face of this, in many ways probably much to the irritation of the special representative Richard Holbrooke, although perhaps not – Richard Holbrooke says not.

But Kerry has definitely been a face for this. Kerry, from his talks this week is clearly somewhere in the middle. He wants to focus more as you were talking about, Gwen, on counterterrorism, which may mean fewer troops. What we don’t know is how big a voice he has with President Obama. Instead of adding all those troops to do counterinsurgency, he also wants it in just certain areas, like maybe we’ll just go in this area and fight. And one of the things Stan McChrystal said, all this sounds a lot when you talk about counterinsurgency, exactly like his plan. And what he wants to do is go into the population centers and cut down on those smaller outposts and they’re already moving.

MS. CALMES: What is Senator Kerry saying to the president about the number, the total number he thinks should go into Afghanistan?

MS. RADDATZ: I don’t know exactly the number, but I think it’s somewhere between 10,000 and 40,000.

MS. IFILL: Whether it’s for the president or for Hamid Karzai, it’s all about legitimacy and that’s what we’re going to be watching for. Thank you, everyone. We’ll be keeping an eye on that health care vote and on any decision-making involving Afghanistan. You keep track of daily developments every night on the “NewsHour” and keep track of us on Facebook or send questions for our Webcast Extra through our web site. You can find us at pbs.org. And we’ll see you right here next week on “Washington Week.” Good night.

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