Obama Meets With Republican Lawmakers
RICK SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Let's cut to the change.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Here's what I think is important.</s>SANCHEZ: Not your enemies. And he gives this piece of advice to his Middle East envoy: Stop dictating. Start listening, a major change in approach. Cut to the change number two: The Obama administration tells financially struggling Citigroup it is unacceptable for them to take delivery of a new $50 million corporate jet.</s>SANCHEZ (voice-over): Cutting to the change.</s>OBAMA: The Americans are not your enemy.</s>SANCHEZ: His first sit-down interview goes to a Muslim network. That's how serious President Obama seems to be about beating Osama bin Laden at his own game, winning the worldwide P.R. battle.</s>TIMOTHY GEITHNER, TREASURY SECRETARY: So help me God.</s>SANCHEZ: The U.S. has a new treasury secretary. Could there be a more important job at this time in this administration? We will tell you what his plan is for you. (</s>BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, "LARRY KING LIVE") GOV. ROD BLAGOJEVICH (D), ILLINOIS: And I'm champing at the bit and dying to show my innocence.</s>SANCHEZ: And Hispanics call it a hard face</s>SANCHEZ: From the world headquarters of CNN here in Atlanta, I'm Rick Sanchez. Patricia Murphy joins us now from CitizenJanePolitics.com to help us cut to the change. Some remarkable developments today. First, you have the president of the United States telling a private business, as private as you can be nowadays with these bailouts that have been going on, telling Citigroup that it's -- quote -- "unacceptable" to take that $50 million or $45 million plane that they had ordered. How unusual is it, Patricia, for the president of the United States to tell a private company what they should or should not buy?</s>PATRICIA MURPHY, EDITOR, CITIZENJANEPOLITICS.COM: Well, it's basically unprecedented. But it's also unprecedented that the U.S. government, meaning and including me, and you, and President Obama, we are shareholders in that bank. And so he is saying to this bank, you need to be more careful with the way you're spending taxpayer dollars. This gets back to the fact that the TARP money, $45 billion invested in that bank, nobody knows where it's gone, no transparency whatsoever. So, the U.S. government now is saying to these banks, we're going to assume that every dollar you spend is taxpayer dollars and needs to be treated as such, until you either tell us where it went or until we enact stricter rules to tell you where it's going to go in the future.</s>SANCHEZ: That gets into some real dangerous area. It's almost like the government telling a corporation, we own you. You know what that has people talking -- people like Rush Limbaugh are going to be say, hey, that's nationalizing. That's socialism. Some will even say perhaps that's communism.</s>MURPHY: But we do own them. Every taxpayer owns a portion of that bank and any other bank that has TARP funds. We gave them taxpayer money in exchange for equity in their companies. It was a minority stake, but, because of taxpayer dollars -- that's public money -- these banks need to be more accountable for where that money is going and more transparent as to where it's already gone. Obama has said he is going to work with Timothy Geithner to ask those banks and demand from those banks really more accountability and transparency. We will see that going forward.</s>SANCHEZ: You know, you talk about change. You know what this? You know what this is? I will tell you, because every day we have been focusing on what's different between what we're doing now and what we were doing for the last eight years. How about the fact that you have a president of the United States telling business what to do? I mean, are we sending a message to other fat cats out there that from, now on, the president's not going to be rolling over?</s>MURPHY: The message is, basically, there's a new sheriff in town. And the minute that Obama was sworn into office, his first call, really to the entire country, was more responsibility, more corporate responsibility, more personal responsibility. This is the corporate responsibility he was talking about. So, not only -- when you get taxpayer money, companies, you are going to have a much greater responsibility about telling us where that money goes. And you have to spend it wisely. You cannot buy another corporate jet. You cannot go on vacations. You cannot redecorate your office for more than $1 million if a portion of that is coming from taxpayers. There's basically a new sheriff in town. That's the message.</s>SANCHEZ: Boy, there's a shocker. You shouldn't be using this money for your own good or for your own business' good, especially if it's coming from the people of the United States. Here's something else that has developed today. This is interesting. Barack Obama, while seeming bold with all his other projections about the world and about terrorism and about torture and about big business, as you and I discussed, is courting Republicans, literally courting them. I want you and our viewers to listen to what was said by Republicans after they came out of a meeting today with Barack Obama. Take a listen.</s>REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: We had a very good conversation with the president.</s>REP. CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS (R), WASHINGTON: House Republicans sincerely appreciate the president coming and meeting with us. We are inspired and challenged to work harder.</s>REP. MIKE PENCE (R), INDIANA: We are grateful for the outreach from the White House.</s>BOEHNER: But I think our members enjoyed the conversation. I think the president enjoyed the conversation.</s>SANCHEZ: Sounds like a love affair.</s>MURPHY: Well, except there's not much going on in the backroom. They did not come to any particular agreement. Republicans have actually dug in their heels here. They're basically saying they're not going to support this package when it's voted on tomorrow in the House. They do think they can come to some agreement once the Senate passes it and they get some more Republican stamp on the package right now. But Obama -- this is so important -- he wants the Republicans to own this bill. He wants them to go home to their districts and sell it. He wants them to get American buy-in. This is a massive, massive spending and tax cut package. He doesn't want it just to be a Democratic bill.</s>SANCHEZ: But just to get the thing through, he doesn't really need them. Why -- you know, 71,000 jobs lost yesterday, that's incredible. Just wrap your head around that number, one day, 71,000 jobs. Does Obama really need to be playing the little bipartisan game to get something through, when he's got both houses of Congress on his side?</s>MURPHY: Well, he doesn't need to. And that's why it's so interesting that he's choosing to do so. He's putting himself out there for a potential rejection by the Republicans. If this doesn't work, if the Republicans reject it, if they delay it, then they're going to have a little bit of explaining to do themselves. He wants to -- he really wants to send a message. This is genuine. He wants bipartisan support on this. But this is because it's all about creating confidence in the economy. If you have half of the Congress out there complaining about this bill, saying it won't work, it makes it that much harder for it to work when it's passed.</s>SANCHEZ: Murph, thanks so much. You're good. Always appreciate talking to you.</s>MURPHY: Thanks.</s>SANCHEZ: You tell it like it is. President Obama taking on Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, doing battle directly with them on virgin territory. What do we mean by virgin territory? Telling Muslims around the world, we are not their enemies -- that's a direct quote -- by the way, and that we want to listen to them. What would have been blasphemy a few years ago is now policy? Talk about change. CNN's Michael Ware is going to be joining us in just a little bit. We are going to have that discussion with him. And so will one of the nation's foremost experts on Muslim studies. Oh, and, by the way, just in, those wiretaps of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, they're playing them now for the very first time at his impeachment trial. We're going to dip in, so you will be able to hear them as they're played as well. Stay with us. We will be right back.