OPEC Increases Output; Government Shutdown Looms Before Congress
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: It's noon in Washington, 9:00 a.m. in Los Angeles, 6:00 p.m. in Vienna, Austria and 7:00 p.m. in Jerusalem. Wherever you're watching from around the world, thanks for joining us for this 90-minute LATE EDITION. We'll get to our guests shortly, but first, our top story. Here in Washington there are only four weeks remaining in the 106th Congress. Legislators are negotiating critical spending bills with the White House in order to prevent another government shut down. CNN senior White House correspondent, John King, joins us now with details -- John.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the budget battle, an annual ritual in Washington. Of course, the Congress sparring with the president. This one, though, all the more important. Just four weeks schedule left in this congressional session, as you mentioned. Just 57 days until the election to pick a new president and to decide which party will control the Congress heading into next year. Still unresolved, not just how much government will spend next year, but what will it spend it on, how will the Congress and the president agree to spend the federal budget surplus. Issues like prescription drug benefits for seniors still on the table, Republican plans for tax cuts. So much unresolved that both parties out on the Sunday shows today pointing fingers. The number three man in the House, the Whip, Tom DeLay. He says as American people watch this unfold, if they wonder why things aren't already resolved, Mr. DeLay says the president is to blame.</s>REP. TOM DELAY (R-TX), MAJORITY WHIP: The administration has already telegraphed a train wreck. Podesta, the chief of staff, Lockhart, all the administration has said they'll will go to the election if they don't get what they want. There is only one person that can shut down the government, that's the president of the United States, just like he did in 1995.</s>KING: Now no one seriously expects there to be a government shut down, but the Democrats out in full force today as well. The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, saying if the Republicans are looking for someone to blame, maybe you they should look in the mirror.</s>SEN. TOM DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: Republicans have been the ones who have delayed. We have 13 appropriation bills, as you know. Only two of them have been signed into law, 11 have not been signed into law, some have not even left the subcommittee. So the Republicans are themselves, their own worst enemy in terms of schedule. This schedule has been grossly mismanaged from the very beginning. We have not done a number of things we should have done a long time ago.</s>KING: Now these warring parties will come together here at the White House, on Tuesday. The president meeting with bipartisan congressional leadership. One of your guests, Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader among them. The president will make clear, we're told, that he would like some bipartisan compromises. He would like to pass an increase in the minimum wage. He would like to get that prescription drug benefit for seniors. But we're also told that in a meeting with the Democrats only last week, the president made clear that he understands this is an election year. We're told he turned to Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle at one point and said, you tell me what you need me to do and I'll do it. So the election's overshadowing the annual budget fight. This the last budget battle with the president and the Republican Congress -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: John King at the White House, thanks. And joining us now to discuss the Republican legislative agenda and the budget battle with the White House is the Senate majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi. Welcome back to LATE EDITION. Always good to have you on our program.</s>SEN. TRENT LOTT (R-MS), MAJORITY LEADER: Glad to be back, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Well, I want to get to all of that stuff about the budget and the eventual so-called train wreck, if in fact that happens. But some other developments in the world today. OPEC agreeing to increase oil production.</s>BLITZER: The price of oil is, as you know, this past week was $34 almost $35 a barrel. That's the highest in some 10 years, and it's obviously going to have a dramatic impact as weather here in the United States gets colder. Is there anything the U.S. Senate to do to try to reduce the price of gasoline, heating fuel, other oil-related products?</s>LOTT: Well, this problem has just begun. I think it's going to get worse as we go into the winter. I think the price of home heating fuel is going to be very high and probably going to be some shortages. Because of the cost, they haven't been filling up their reserves. Look, the administration said months ago that we were caught napping in this area, that OPEC has run up the price, it's created problems. But it's bigger than the current shortage or high prices. We don't have a national energy policy. A lot of what we need could be supplied domestically. But we've allowed ourselves to get dependent on these OPEC countries that can cut down the supplies, can drive up the cost anytime they want to. And, Wolf, the worst part of all is we're getting like 500,000 barrels a week, I guess it is, from Iraq. So we're getting oil from Iraq, which we're refining and then using to put in our planes to fly over Iraq to try to keep them from causing all kind of havoc in the Middle East. The insanity of not having a national energy policy, of being dependent on these foreign countries, is a real problem. And this 800,000 barrels that they're talking about it's less than 1 percent of the world's needs. You've got strikes going on in France, and they're problems in Great Britain. You know, this is a serious problem.</s>BLITZER: So you're saying the U.S. should take the initiative in preventing Iraq from exporting any oil, even if the money they get all goes for humanitarian purposes?</s>LOTT: I'm just saying that it shows the hypocrisy. Here we are more or less pleading with them to keep supplying us with oil while we're refining it and using it in airplanes to have over-fly to keep them from attacking the people in their own country or their neighbors. What I'm saying is: We shouldn't be dependent on these OPEC countries. Obviously, they're wanting to make more and more profits. I think it's dangerous for us to be dependent on them the way we are. We do have a petroleum reserve, but it's for national emergencies. What I am saying is: We should have more oil and gas usage in this own country -- our own country. Natural gas is very clean. We've got clean coal that comes out of a lot of places in this country, nuclear power. But the president vetoed a bill that would have dealt with a place to put nuclear waste. We have a major problem here. And one of the things I'm expecting a Bush administration is, we're going to step up and address the needs of this country's energy problem.</s>BLITZER: All right, let's go back to the big issue, which is on your agenda right now, and that's, namely, the next four weeks passing these appropriations bills, these spending bills, to avoid another government shutdown. John Podesta, the White House chief of staff, was asked earlier on "Fox News Sunday" whether or not he had a message to deliver to you. And this is what he said.</s>JOHN PODESTA, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Senators accusing of us of engineering a train wreck, as you know, as near as I can tell, the engine's still in the roundhouse and the boxcars are still on the siding. It's pretty hard to have a train wreck if the train's not moving.</s>PODESTA: There's a lot work that needs to be done partly because so little has happened in this Congress.</s>BLITZER: Obviously putting the blame on you, the Republican majority in the Senate and the House, for delaying these spending bills, setting up potentially the kind of disaster you don't want to occur.</s>LOTT: Well, surprise, surprise. You know, John King told the story that really sums it all up. This is all about partisanship and politics at the White House. The president says, tell me what you want, we'll do it. In the Senate, we have faced delays, roadblocks, all kinds of efforts to stop us passing appropriation bills. We have already done nine, we'll get tenth one done this week, but they certainly haven't been helpful in that effort. We need to get work completed and we will. You're talking about funding for education, for veterans, for agriculture, defense, so these are very important issues we need to find a fair middle ground. We need to come to a conclusion, we need cooperation, we haven't been getting that from the White House by the way.</s>BLITZER: You're going to be meeting with president on Tuesday, ..</s>LOTT: Yes.</s>BLITZER: ...the bipartisan leadership going over to White House. What are you going to tell the president?</s>LOTT: Well, it's good to hear from you Mr. President, I hadn't heard anything from you two months, you know for seven and a half years, for better or worse. We did communicate on how to get our work done and that has stopped other than calling about his trade interests, there's not much communication. But what I will say as Mr. President, you know, we're for reforms, we are for finding middle ground that will allow us to do a number of these issues and we've got a long list of things that will intend ...</s>BLITZER: All right, we're going to get to some of those specifics.</s>LOTT: So, we'll work with him, we have to, I mean he's the president, and we're the Congress, but we are co-equal branches, and we'll have to see how we can come together.</s>BLITZER: You know that when used go with Newt Gingrich when he was Speaker, he use to leave those White House meetings and he would acknowledge that the president is a charming fellow and used to be able to run roughshod over him. Are you going to allow the president to do that to you?</s>LOTT: No, we're not going to do that. I'm from across the river there, I know him well and we have a very common background and I've been meeting off and on with him now directly as majority leader for four years. You know, a lot of things may happen, but I wouldn't be seduced by him.</s>BLITZER: The spending caps, these are the levels that people want. There's a front page story in "The New York Times," you probably saw it this morning saying that you're ready to go above that $600 billion spending cap, in fact there's a quote ...</s>LOTT: Not from me.</s>BLITZER: Well, Slade Gorton, the Republican from Washington state is up for re-election this year. He's quoted in "The New York Times" as saying, quote, "the caps are irrelevant, nobody pays any attention to them anymore," end quote. Is he right?</s>LOTT: The caps are not irrelevant, we may have to go above them for a number of reasons and one of them is his particular bill. He's got an important bill, the Interior bill, it's parks and lands in it. But, we've got major fires out West. It's probably going to cost us in emergency assistance, FEMA assistance.</s>BLITZER: That's not part of the caps, the emergency spending.</s>LOTT: Well, but you're either going to have to raise the caps or you're going to have to say, this is an emergency which we have to vote to designate. It'll be about a billion or a billion and a half in damages out West, fires cause in my opinion in a lot of ways, because of the bad policies of this administration. You know, the ideas of Gore as you shouldn't even have trees removed from forests that are diseased or downed, so there will be some areas where we're going to have to agree to go higher. In fact on education, Republicans in the Congress have our education numbers $300 million above where the president is. We think that's a high priority. We think that for a variety of reasons we need to put some more money into education. We have a particular housing problem, we have section 8 housing where we've got to come up with more funds than we knew at the time we did the budget, and it's a significant amount. So it's a matter of being realistic, but finding fair common ground, and not expected -- the president expecting us to just collapse to his positions, we will have to concede some, but I hope that we'll stand our ground too.</s>BLITZER: Is it fair to predict that if all the spending bills are not passed, you will support continuing resolutions, the stop gap measures that will keep the government going at last year's funding in order to prevent what most people say was a disaster for the Republican Party, the 95 government --</s>LOTT: And by the way, I was not a part of that, I was not majority leader at that time and didn't think that was particularly wise at the time, there's no use going back to that and pointing fingers at it. Here, I have a little different attitude than a lot of people. A lot of people are saying and the White House, the Democrats think, oh, all we got to do is threaten to keep him here, and they'll give us whatever we want. My attitude is, look let's keep working. If we reach the end of the fiscal year and we haven't got all of these bills done, let's pass short term or medium extension of the continuing resolution and let's keep working.</s>BLITZER: All right.</s>LOTT: If we need to stay here, we'll stay here. There will be no government shutdowns because we'll keep sending continuing resolutions till we get our work done.</s>BLITZER: And presumably the president will sign this.</s>LOTT: I hope he will and if he doesn't, than he's the problem, not us.</s>BLITZER: Let's talk about some of the specific issues, the House Speaker Dennis Hastert says he's ready to go along now with an increase in the minimum wage by a dollar two years. You ready to support the administration on that?</s>LOTT: As long as it is connected to small business tax relief and we don't wind up doing it in such a way that it costs people that are entry level, low income, cost them their jobs or really hurt or put small businesses out of business. I think if we put them together, we can get that done.</s>BLITZER: What about a patients bill of rights. As you know, the Democrats almost passed it the last time, they lost by one vote, but now there's a new Democratic Senator Zell Miller of Georgia. Could be a 50-50 tie and you know who would break that tie on a patients' bill of rights.</s>LOTT: Well look if they're willing to work with us ..</s>BLITZER: For our viewers who may not know, it would be the vice president, who's the president of the Senate. You don't want Al Gore to come in and break a tie like that.</s>LOTT: It won't come to that. I hope they will work with us, there's been a conference going on with the Speaker involved, conferees in the House and Senate, they've made some real progress. I think we should continue to try to come up with a reasonable program that will have reasonable requirements of HMO's, give patients the protection they need, give doctors input, but we should focus on appeals within these managed care facilities and outside, if those appeals don't work out, liability is still there. The question once again is, do the Democrats and Vice President Gore want an issue, or do they want results? If they want results, we can get it done. I talked to one of the supporters of the patients' bill of rights this morning that's kind of on the other side and I said, you know, if we did this or that or the other could we make this go forward. He said, yeah, I think we could do that. So that's the question, do they want to continue to have roadblocks on getting work done?</s>LOTT: Or do they want real reforms on a whole variety of issues, including patients' rights with managed cared?</s>BLITZER: What about permanent, normal trade relations with China? This has been delayed, as you know, for sometime. It is supposed to come up for a vote in next couple weeks or so. Some of your Republican colleagues want to attach some amendments, what they call riders. Senator Fred Thompson of Tennessee wants an amendment that would, in effect, force the bill to go back to the House, where it could be in trouble. Once again, he wants to make sure China doesn't export weapons to Pakistan and other developing nations.</s>LOTT: Well, first of all, Wolf, surprise, surprise. The Senate might make a little change to what the House did and have to go back for the House to have to consider --</s>BLITZER: But that would, in effect, delay it for a long time.</s>LOTT: Well, look, it was delayed so that the Senate, hopefully, would complete its appropriations bills. But because of the roadblocks that the Democrats threw up with hundreds of amendments, filibusters, just absolute delays of every kind, we didn't get them all done. The other thing I was trying to do was to work out some agreements to consider the Thompson issue separately. It is a very important issue. China is involved in nuclear weapons proliferation. They have been involved with Pakistan, other countries, I suspect even North Korea, providing very dangerous technology and materials to these countries. We should not ignore that. Neither should we ignore their record of human rights and/or religious persecution. Having said that, the opponents of the bill have blocked every effort I've made, sometime even with the support of Senator Daschle, to try to come up with a way to handle it separately, the Thompson issue. We have not succeeded. So we're going forward. We're going to do the China trade bill this coming week. Senator Thompson will offer an amendment. I will support that, because I think it's very important. And I'm not going to be on the record saying that we shouldn't watch and monitor what China does with nuclear weapons proliferation. I don't think most senators would want to do that. But I think when the smoke clears late this coming week, hopefully, but not later than early the next week, we'll get over the hurdles, get over the filibusters, get over the amendments. We will pass the China trade bill by a wide margin. I have concerns about it, but what we're trying to do is to open up the Chinese markets. That is in interest of American jobs, automobile workers in America, farmers, business industry. I hope they'll trade fairly with us and that the WTO will do its job, which, by the way, they're not doing with our European allies.</s>BLITZER: All right, Senator Lott. We have to take a quick break. We have a lot more to talk about, including more issues. Just ahead, Governor George W. Bush changes his campaign style to regain his lead among voters. We'll ask Senator Lott about Bush's new role as the supposed underdog when LATE EDITION continues.