News Forum - Transcript

NEWS FORUM

SHOW: News Forum (6:30 AM ET) - LOCAL

HEADLINE: New York Senator Charles Schumer talks about political events happening around the US and elsewhere

ANCHORS: JAY DeDAPPER

BODY:
JAY DeDAPPER, host:

Another deadly suicide bombing in Jerusalem, the road to peace looking more and more like a dead end. Terror in Baghdad, a massive truck bomb destroys the United Nations compound leaving the prospects for a stable, postwar Iraq dim at best. The biggest blackout in American history, what went wrong, who's responsible and who's going to pay to fix the grid? And the California election circus: the Terminator has started running TV ads; the governor is girding up for the fight. But where's the president and where are the prominent Democrats?

Finally, he has raised more money than any Democratic presidential contender, Senator Chuck Schumer. He's got more than $60 million in the bank and no Republican running against him. So what's with all the cash?

Announcer: From Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center, this is a presentation from Newschannel 4, Gabe Pressman's NEWS FORUM. Now your host, senior correspondent Gabe Pressman.

DeDAPPER: And good morning, everybody. I'm Jay DeDapper. I'm in for Gabe Pressman today who's on vacation.

Our guest this morning, Senator Chuck Schumer.

Senator CHARLES SCHUMER (Democrat, New York): Good morning.

DeDAPPER: Thanks for coming in.

Sen. SCHUMER: Glad to be here.

DeDAPPER: We have a lot to talk about this morning. It has been a busy and a tragic week in...

Sen. SCHUMER: Yes.

DeDAPPER: ...parts of the world. I want to talk about Israel first. There had been a spell here of quiet; now this bus bombing and then the retaliation by Israel. Is there anything left of the road map to peace?

Sen. SCHUMER: You know, I never thought the road map made much sense to begin with. The idea of bringing both sides together for peace makes sense, but the Palestinian portion of the road map was come down on Hamas and Jihad. And, you know, George Bush, I give him credit--we're of different parties--but he has understood something, and that is that you'll never have peace till these terrorists, the same types of people who--same type of terrorists who've gone after us, you know, they believe in killing innocent women, children, men--until they're gone. Israel was making great progress in sort of not--you know, not getting rid of them completely, but at least greatly tamping them down and there were many fewer of these suicide bombs, etc. The road map comes up and they say, 'Israel, give up settlements. In return, the Palestinians will come down on Hamas and Jihad.' Abbas told privately all the American leaders he couldn't do it. And so after the road map's in place, they start saying, 'Well, he can't really do it.'

So it was just a matter of time before Hamas and Jihad--thugs, bad people--used their breathing spell to rebuild after the Israelis had really had them knocked on their backs and did things like this. We can get peace in the Middle East. We can get a two-state solution that both parties agree to, because a majority of Israelis want peace and want a two-state solution, but only once Jihad, Hamas, these terrorist groups are gone from the scene. And because the Palestinian--because Abbas, who's a good man, is unable to do it, Arafat is unwilling to do it, you're going to have to let Israel do it.

DeDAPPER: How do you do that, though? Because, you know, we are allegedly in control of Iraq or at least we're the nominal authority in Iraq, we can't stop terrorism there. We didn't stop terrorism on our--on our own soil in one obviously very significant and--and an awful case. And the Israelis, while they tamped it down, didn't stop...

Sen. SCHUMER: You can't.

DeDAPPER: ...the--the--the Jihad. I mean, how do you do that?

Sen. SCHUMER: You can't stop it but you can really eliminate it. And there was a period before the road map went into effect where the number of successful suicide bombings and others greatly declined. The fence that Israel was building makes eminent sense. Not one single terrorist incident has come out of Gaza. Why? Because there's a fence around Gaza. So Israel will build a fence. Will go in and deal with the leadership of these horrible organizations. And will it eliminate them? No. And then something else will happen. Those Palestinians who really want peace and right now are afraid because they get shot, they get totally squelched either physically or certainly in terms of what they can say, will be able to come forward. And it's an irony but by letting Israel show strength, you'll get peace. By saying that, 'Well, violence should stop for return of something else happening' is wrong. We wouldn't do that? We wouldn't say, 'We're going to give in to you, bin Laden, we're going to give into you, Saddam, if you s--do--do less violence.'

DeDAPPER: Mm-hmm.

Sen. SCHUMER: Ending the violence has to be first and has to be a sine qua non and we ought to go back to where we were before the road map started where Israel is having great success in eliminating it or at least greatly reducing it and allowing the Palestinian indigenous people, some of whom, too many of whom, support this violence. But some of whom don't and they could at least rise up.

DeDAPPER: But--but...

Sen. SCHUMER: Abbas is of that latter school.

DeDAPPER: But isn't--isn't--even if you go in and--and it's really a military and an intelligent solution, if you will...

Sen. SCHUMER: It is.

DeDAPPER: ...to tamping that down, and trying to get rid of Hamas and all that, don't you still have, you know, a million people who see no future for themselves. There's no economy. They live in squaller, there's--with walls, now they can't even get into Israel to work, there's no economy in their own country or their own land, as they see it, there's no civil authority left.

Sen. SCHUMER: Right.

DeDAPPER: All right, I mean, don't you have millions or hundreds of thousands of we--ready and willing volunteers for the next leadership of whatever next terrorist organization comes up.

Sen. SCHUMER: Yes. But once the violence stops, the Israeli--remember, Israel is a democracy; Palestinians are not. And once the violence greatly subsides, the Israelis will be willing to make lots of concessions. And most Israelis, the polls show, are willing to have a Palestinian state. Live next to them as long as they can live in peace. But while the violence--what the problem is, is that Jihad and--and Hamas--and there are, by the way, right-wing Israeli fanatics who are the mirror image of them, neither believe in a two-state solution. The vast majority of Israelis do believe in a two-state solution.

DeDAPPER: Do you think the vast majority of Palestinians do, too?

Sen. SCHUMER: Not yet. But when they learn that violence can't get them everything they want and, in fact, leads to too much hardship in their lives, they will, too. There's been a view among too many of the Palestinian average folks is, if we keep this up, Israel is Western, Israel is--you know, they'll be materialistic and they'll give up, similar to the view that bin Laden had of us, you know, that he could keep hitting us, as he did in '93 and '98 and 2000 and we do nothing. And it surprised everybody that we came back with such force later. But when the Palestinian average person says, 'OK. We can't win by violence,' they'll come to the same conclusion that most Israelis have come to, that the two peoples have to live side by side. This is not going to happen in a month and often in the West we're too impatient. Unfortunately, I think, the president, whose instincts on the Middle East are very good, felt the pressure of the road map from the Europeans, from the UN, from these other groups and deviated and went back to what we were doing under George Bush the first and Bill Clinton, which was saying, 'A little bit less violence for a concession.' That's not the way to do it.

DeDAPPER: So what should he do now? What should the US do right now?

Sen. SCHUMER: If I were the president, I would say, 'OK. It is clear that there will be no peace until Hamas, Jihad and these other terrorist groups are gone in terms of effect of power,' both among the Palestinians and among wh--among Israelis. Israel, go ahead and do what you have to do to get rid of them because the peaceful side of the Palestinian pe--population, those who want peace, a minority but a growing minority, can't do it themselves. And then there'll be peace. And people say, 'Well, then if there's no violence, Israel will never give up the settlements.' Israeli people will give up some--a good number of the settlements. They've said so. But only when they feel they don't need them for their security.

DeDAPPER: All right. Let's talk about another part of the Middle East--Iraq. Huge truck bombing this week struck the United Nations compound. We are--the US is in--in control of the country. I mean, we're running the country. We don't seem to have much control. What is--what is this bombing--there's obviously--it's a tragedy, but what does it say about what we're doing there?

Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah. It's my belief from reading all the things that I've been able to read, many public, some not, that we're in a new phase here. We have been making some progress in--in--in dealing with the remnants of Saddam's army and...

DeDAPPER: Security forces, all that--sure.

Sen. SCHUMER: ...you know, the people--security forces, the people loyal to him. But this is new. These are various terrorist groups that are flocking to Iraq in figuring that they can do something there. And it takes a different type of approach. This is guerrilla warfare. This is sort of a little like what's going on in Israel, where you have small groups of people who will then use innocent civilians--we saw what happened to these people at the UN. And it's going to take a little while to redirect what we have to do. And we're going to have to...

DeDAPPER: And what--what is it that we have to do? I mean, you know, we're trying to rebuild a country from scratch...

Sen. SCHUMER: Well...

DeDAPPER: ...a civilian authority from scratch, an infrastructure from scratch, those things aren't moving very quickly, and at the same time now you have, you're saying, terrorists flooding into...

Sen. SCHUMER: Right.

DeDAPPER: ...the vacuum, the chaos. This does not seem like...

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, I'll tell you, one...

DeDAPPER: ...a very good s--situation.

Sen. SCHUMER: One solution ought to be to internationalize this now. The president...

DeDAPPER: How--how can the president go to the UN now, though?

Sen. SCHUMER: ...doesn't want to do that. I know. This is--you know, I supported the president on the war, but I always said it ought to be done in a more multilateral way. I mean, given the choice of doing nothing, which is what some wanted to do, or doing what the president did, I still say we should have done what the president did. But it would have been better had they spent a little more time, had a little more patience, and gotten the nations of the world to support this. The French never would have. They were just out to put a finger in our eye. But with a little patience and a little more time, we could have gotten the rest of the world. We're going to have to do that now. Isolate the French. You may not want to do it through a UN structure, because the French have a veto power, but work carefully and get other countries to be part of this. I'll bet the Germans would be more amenable. The Germans don't want to participate in war after the 100-year history.

DeDAPPER: Sure.

Sen. SCHUMER: That's a good thing. But Schroeder, the head of Germany, wants to be friends with the United States. He never, unlike Chirac, went and put his finger in our eye. Try to get Putin onboard. You know what Putin wants in return, which we haven't given him? He wants an understanding that what's happening in Chechnya is, to him, not much different than what's happening in Iraq to us--terrorists doing the same type of thing. And you--we can build an international coalition. Yes, does it mean that we're going to have to include them in on some of this? Yes, it does. It means that they're going to have to have a little say in what happens in Iraq, etc. But we don't want to be the policemen for the world.

DeDAPPER: And I'll tell you...

Sen. SCHUMER: We do not...

DeDAPPER: ...it can't--can't--we really can't be. All right. What...

Sen. SCHUMER: We can't. So including other countries in, going to them, not eating crow, not saying what we did in Iraq was wrong, but saying, 'Look, we're willing to cut you in on some of the new power. Be part of this.' Makes sense.

DeDAPPER: OK. We're going to take a break and we'll be right back with Senator Chuck Schumer.

(Announcements)

DeDAPPER: And we're back. Senator Chuck Schumer, big blackout last week; the ramifications of which continue to--to happen. There's a lot of questions. Let's start with what went wrong, who's responsible and who's going to pay to fix the grid?

Sen. SCHUMER: OK.

DeDAPPER: Let's start with that.

Sen. SCHUMER: OK.

DeDAPPER: OK. Those are the three big questions.

Sen. SCHUMER: OK. We have about a day or two.

DeDAPPER: We can spend the next 10 minutes--right. What went...

Sen. SCHUMER: OK. What went wrong?

DeDAPPER: Yeah.

Sen. SCHUMER: Basically, it's all related to the same thing. The grid and what specifically went wrong doesn't matter. We have one national electricity system where electricity flows all over, but it's governed in different little pieces. And when you cross those lines, when you go from the Northeast to the Middle West, or from the Middle West into Canada, it's governed by the utilities and sometimes the states. The whole Southeast says, since they have the TVA and all this cheap hydropower, 'We don't want to be part of the national system.' There's a very simple solution, and that is the grid should be national and governed not by the utilities and not by certain states which have their own parochial interest. We just saw what Connecticut is doing with that little cable pipeline from Long Island to--to cross...

DeDAPPER: The--the Cross--the Crosstown cable.

Sen. SCHUMER: ...cable, right. It should be governed by the federal government. I am not against...

DeDAPPER: Not--not owned by.

Sen. SCHUMER: Not owned, but governed. And the federal government should have the ability to come in and say, 'Hey, you want to sell electricity into the grid? You've got to make sure that the transmission wires are OK. And even if yours are OK, you have, as a seller into the grid and electricity producer, a responsibility to maintain it.' We used to do that in individu--before the grid became nationalized, Con Ed both produced power and transmitted it. So Con Ed knew that the production of power, to make any money, they'd have to be able to get it to you. But now the tran--the people who transmit the power and the people who produce it are separate. And the money is made where you produce it. So the producers say, 'We want to make the money, but we don't want to have any responsibility for the grid.' The feds have to come in.

And this is going to be interesting, Jay, because we have the energy bill coming up right when we get back to Congress, Labor Day. The energy bill has been drawn of, by and for the utilities and as a result, very little was done to nationalize or fix the grid. Are we going to come back and do it or are we going to avoid it? And is the president going to give a speech and say, 'Let's set up a commission'? We don't need a commission. We need to nationalize this grid. And it means taking on some of the utilities and saying, 'You have a responsibility.'

DeDAPPER: Was deregulation a mistake?

Sen. SCHUMER: Deregulation was a mistake the way it was done. Fundamentally he--in New York state, we would benefit from good deregulation because I'd love to get some of that TVA power, 2 cents a kilowatt hour, to be able to be sold...

DeDAPPER: Sure.

Sen. SCHUMER: ...to me at my home or to a New York small business or a New York big company.

DeDAPPER: Right.

Sen. SCHUMER: But we sh...

DeDAPPER: All--all power produced by power plants built with federal money.

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, exactly. Some of our money went into it.

DeDAPPER: Yeah.

Sen. SCHUMER: But what we did wrong was we didn't nationalize the grid and we deregulated one side only. So the sellers, like in California, could charge through the roof. You have to deregulate both sides at once by--you know, so you have a lot of sellers before you say, 'It's deregulated but you only have one buyer and he can charge you whatever he wants.'

DeDAPPER: Right. So nationalizing the grid is--is the Democrats solution, or at least one that you're proposing. This energy bill, though, there's a lot of problems with it from the Democrats perspective, drilling in the Arctic and all...

Sen. SCHUMER: Right.

DeDAPPER: ...kinds of other things, not just for the utility industry but...

Sen. SCHUMER: Right.

DeDAPPER: ...for the oil industry and everything. W--nothing's going to get delinked.

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, it should. This grid is a national issue. We saw what happened, 50 million people without power, billions of dollars in damage and loss goods and things like that and we ought to delink it. And we ought not let ideologues on either side say, 'Unless we get our way, we're not doing it.' Separate this issue, make it happen and then debate the other things, not the usual gridlock. The energy bill that came out, though, is just a disaster in that it's...

DeDAPPER: This is both the House and the Senate version?

Sen. SCHUMER: And the Senate. Both are different but both do just what the utilities want and the utilities don't want the grid. And the...

DeDAPPER: So are--are there enough votes or would there be enough votes to stop it on either side?

Sen. SCHUMER: ...oil companies. We'll have to see. The--when we left, no. But we've had an intervening issue and if there was ever an indictment of allowing the present situation to stay where it is, it's what happened last week.

DeDAPPER: Do you trust the Energy Department? They're now overseeing the investigation. Do you trust them?

Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah. Well, yeah, sure. They are part of the problem and they're supposed to investigate the solution. No. We ought to have an independent investigation without any question. I don't trust the Energy Department because they haven't been--they've been asleep at the switch for three years.

DeDAPPER: The president obviously has addressed this. It's obviously on his radar. What do you expect him to do when Congress comes back?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, I just hope it's not another thing and--you know, I'm not afraid to support the president, like foreign policy, when he's right. But all too often on domestic policy, he gives a nice empathetic speech and then does nothing because he doesn't want to take the industry groups on. And that's what I'm afraid is going to happen here and so those of us in Congress who think we have to do something are going to be faced with the choice of trying to hold up the whole energy bill and they'll say 'You're holding up the whole energy bill' and we'll say, 'Yeah, because it's a giveaway to the utilities.' I voted against it last time. It also has a provision in there which requires ethanol to be added to gasoline. If you're from Illinois, that's great. They have a ton of corn. In New York, it could raise our gas prices a couple of cents, all for the big ethanol industry, Archer Daniels Midland and all of them. And it's a lousy bill, it ought to be changed.

DeDAPPER: Let's talk about when you go back--when Congress goes back. The big issue was going to be prescription drug benefits. That...

Sen. SCHUMER: Still is.

DeDAPPER: And still is.

Sen. SCHUMER: Still is.

DeDAPPER: Where--where does that stand? I mean, the Democrats want it; the Republicans say they want it and have put forward a bill. But to some degree, Democrats I know are worried that they're being--that their issue is being hijacked by the Republicans.

Sen. SCHUMER: To me, that doesn't matter. My job is to do good for the people and wherever I go, I can go to Queens or I can go up to the Adirondack Mountains and one of the two or three most important issues, you know, and I'll do a street fair and talk to 1,000 people and you sort of get a good idea there, not a--most people just pass you by, you know, 'Hi'; they're busy with their families, God bless them.

DeDAPPER: Yeah.

Sen. SCHUMER: But people do come...

DeDAPPER: Right. Few people do stuff. Yeah.

Sen. SCHUMER: But people do some over and talk to you and, you know, if I--when you see 1,000, 50 stop and talk to you, you get a pretty good sample.

DeDAPPER: Mm-hmm.

Sen. SCHUMER: And prescription drugs is always number one or number two or number three. And I don't care about credit and I don't care about it. I care about getting a bill that's really going to help people. The Senate bill does. We'll have a better prescription drug program in New York, better than EPIC, better than Medicare Plus Choice, which are the two that have been available to people now, if the Senate bill passes. The House bill I'm worried about. One other good thing in both bills is something, as you know, that I have fought for, which is to get the genetic drugs on the market quickly and that'll affect everyone, not just seniors. Instead of $100 a prescription, $25 when the generic becomes available.

DeDAPPER: So the difference between the House and the Senate bill are--is going to be worked out in conference.

Sen. SCHUMER: Yes, I think so.

DeDAPPER: And--and--and what--what is the--what is the key difference between the--you see?

Sen. SCHUMER: The key difference--well, there are a number of them. One is an ideological fight, because aside from adding prescription drugs to Medicare, the Republicans want to say, 'Let the private system run Medicare.' The Democrats say, 'Let the public system run Medicare.' I'm willing to let them compete. I believe in the public system. I think it'll prevail. But let them compete. The question is, how will the--will the playing field be level? Can the private companies just take everyone who's well and say everyone who's sick goes to Medicare.

The second issue is going to be how good the prescription drug benefit is and is it going to be just controlled by private industry or--going to have to be some limits on it. So that the deductibles don't get too high, so that most of the things are covered.

DeDAPPER: And--and how much it costs.

Sen. SCHUMER: How much it costs.

DeDAPPER: Isn't one of the--I mean, one of--one of the...

Sen. SCHUMER: That's the other side of the coin.

DeDAPPER: One of the issues is that one of the Republican bills wants to essentially pay for it on credit.

Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah, exactly. Which I think is...

DeDAPPER: Are you willing to support that?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, no. I don't like s--I don't like paying for it on credit and I think at least we have to see some place where some of the money is going to come from.

DeDAPPER: OK. We'll take one more break and then we'll come back with Senator Chuck Schumer.

(Announcements)

DeDAPPER: And we're back with Senator Chuck Schumer.

Let's talk politics.

Sen. SCHUMER: Why not.

DeDAPPER: California: Schwarzenegger, Gray Davis, the lieutenant governor out there. What the heck's going on?

Sen. SCHUMER: Beats me. It's California.

DeDAPPER: You thought--you thought New York politics was crazy, huh?

Sen. SCHUMER: First--you know, first things first. They have a ballot of 155 names. Now how do you go through a ballot of a--there are going to be lines around the corner. We have enough trouble with our little clunky voting machines when there's 12 people on the ballot.

DeDAPPER: Going to be 150, yeah.

Sen. SCHUMER: So 150 names, my God. And they rotate. It's not alphabetical.

DeDAPPER: Yeah. It's different in every place.

Sen. SCHUMER: So...

DeDAPPER: Are you--are you going to...

Sen. SCHUMER: ...how are you going to find--'I want to vote for Smith,' hmmmm.

DeDAPPER: The president avoided when he was out there...

Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah.

DeDAPPER: ...campaigning for Schwarzenegger.

Sen. SCHUMER: Right.

DeDAPPER: There are--there are lots of Republicans on the ballot. There's a lot of competition on the Republican side of this ballot.

Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah.

DeDAPPER: The major Democrats, national Democrats have not been out there seen with Gray Davis in any great--in any great way.

Sen. SCHUMER: No. Gray Davis has alienated them.

DeDAPPER: Is--is that a mistake? I mean, do--do you and fellow big Democrats around the country need to get out there?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, I don't know as much about California as the Californians do, but I know Nancy Pelosi pretty well. She's a smart--very smart politician.

DeDAPPER: This is--this is the minority leader in the House.

Sen. SCHUMER: She's the head of--she's the minority leader and she's head of the California congressional delegation. We have a little group that goes to dinner every Tuesday night, some little Italian restaurant and she's been part of it. So we've been friends for years and she's one of the smartest politicians I know. And her view is--different than some of the others, that we--that the Democrats ought to say no to the runoff, but if the--I mean, recall. No to the recall, but they ought to be backing somebody in case because it would be abdicating the field.

DeDAPPER: And the lieutenant governor's on the ballot. But...

Sen. SCHUMER: And the lieutenant governor's on the ballot. So I would tend to agree with her.

DeDAPPER: But--but--but--but in a big race like this, this is the governorship of California, the biggest state in the country on the line. Why aren't national Democrats out there fighting for Gray Davis?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, because I think they think--I mean, again, this is above my pay grade, but I think that what they think is that Gray Davis is basically going to lose. You know, the polls show that his numbers keep getting worse. He alienated everyone under the sun in the sense while he was popular and in power, he made no friends. The public is furious at him because they don't think he leveled with them about the budget. You know, so he's got huge trouble. And I guess what the national Democrats think is, is that Gray Davis is going to have a rough time not being recalled. Why abdicate the field if that's likely to happen?

DeDAPPER: OK. You have your own race coming up in about--What?--14 months before Election Day.

Sen. SCHUMER: Mm-hmm. Is that how long it is?

DeDAPPER: Yeah. First re-election contest as senator. You have $16 1/2 million in the bank, more than any of the Democratic presidential contenders, more than any other sitting senator and you don't have any competition. No announced Republican competition.

Sen. SCHUMER: Well.

DeDAPPER: What's with all the money?

Sen. SCHUMER: Well, the bottom line is, you know, every major race in New York state has cost about two--two, three times that. And I've--you know, I'm a hard-working guy and that's--I didn't get anywhere by good looks or any kind of real brilliance. I work hard. And so I believe in the Boy Scout motto, 'Be prepared.' If I have a tough race--I see Blanche Lambert Lincoln, is a friend of mine. She's from Arkansas. She's a--she's in my class.

DeDAPPER: A senator from Arkansas.

Sen. SCHUMER: Very fine senator. She says, 'Well, I have $3 million, you have $16 million.' I said, 'Yeah. But if we have tough races, you're going to--you're closer to where you have to be than I am where I have to be.' Every major race in New York has cost $40 million. I'm raising it all by hard money so it takes some work because you can't get those big, big contributions. But so far so good.

DeDAPPER: Sixteen and a half million, that's a lot of money, though.

Sen. SCHUMER: Yeah. It's--it is, but again, be prepared. If I didn't have...

DeDAPPER: Hav--did--have you frightened of--have you frightened off any Republican competition?

Sen. SCHUMER: If I frightened off Republican competition, it's not because of the money because Republicans can (snaps fingers), you know, they can get that kind of money. It's because I've worked real hard; I've been to every one of the 62 counties every year I've been senator. I work, you know, upstate, downstate, big issues, little issues and I think the public feels and at least the polls mirror it, that I'm a hard-working, no-nonsense guy who goes to bat for New York.

DeDAPPER: OK.

Sen. SCHUMER: That's been--I would take that any day over any amount of money in the bank.

DeDAPPER: OK. Great.

Thank you for coming in this Sunday. Appreciate it. And enjoy the rest of your weekend.

That's NEWS FORUM for Sunday. Thanks.