MSNBC Buchanan & Press Transcript

MSNBC  
SHOW: BUCHANAN & PRESS

June 17, 2003 Tuesday

HEADLINE: BUCHANAN & PRESS For June 17, 2003

BYLINE: Jerry Nachman; David Shuster; Pat Buchanan; Bill Press

GUESTS: Robert Moore; Susan Collins

PRESS: Prescription drug coverage for seniors, fixing the tax cut, civil service reform, they are just a few of the issues in front of the United States Senate these days.

Working on all of them and here to talk to us about all of them: Republican Senator Susan Collins from the great state of Maine.

Senator, thanks for joining us.

I want to ask you, first of all, a personal question, I guess. You have a reputation—you have proven, I think—to be a moderate right of center, but a moderate force in the United States Senate. Sometimes, you run counter to the leadership there. Sometimes, you even take on your own president on some issues. Do you find it uncomfortable in the Republican majority, and are you sometimes tempted to follow the heroic leadership of Jim Jeffords of Vermont?

(LAUGHTER)

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R), MAINE: Well, you started with a softball. I am never tempted. My DNA reads moderate Republican. And I am very comfortable and proud to be a moderate Republican.

PRESS: We want you to know, you are always welcome on our side, if you intend to come this way. All right.

COLLINS: No way.

PRESS: Let's talk about prescription drugs for seniors. Democrats have been saying for a long time it should be part of Medicare. It looks like, Senator, that that's the way it is going to be, and even President Bush will sign that legislation. Is that correct?

COLLINS: I think that, for the first time, we have an unprecedented opportunity to modernize Medicare, to bring it to the 21st century and cover prescription drugs.

If we were designing Medicare from scratch today, we clearly would have made prescription drugs part of the program.

PRESS: Part of it.

COLLINS: And I think this is going to be a tremendous victory for the president, for the Congress, and, most of all, for our seniors and disabled citizens who rely on Medicare, also.

(CROSSTALK)

BUCHANAN: Senator Collins, when we were—just before you came on or just before we introduced you, there's footage of that American killed in Iraq. I think, since Baghdad has fallen, there's 60 dead American soldiers in Iraq. And there must be a couple hundred who have been wounded. I think they wounded 10 just the other day. This war is not over, is it?

COLLINS: It isn't. Even though the major parts of the conflict had been concluded successfully, every day, our troops are in danger. And I think we need to remember that and to continue to support them.

I'm glad to see these operations that the Defense Department is undertaking to go after the pockets of resistance in Iraq, so that our soldiers aren't at risk of continued ambushes.

BUCHANAN: Well, the ambushes seem to be accelerating in number and in lethality, with the deaths and the woundings. How long should the United States remain there? And should we not, as soon as possible, turn this over to elected leaders of Iraq and get out, now that Saddam is gone, wherever he is, and the weapons of mass destruction are gone, wherever they are?

COLLINS: We don't want the country to erupt into chaos. There's still a lot of work to be done to have a civil society in Iraq. It has been repressed for an awful long time. This isn't going to happen overnight.

I'm very eager to see our troops come home, but it isn't going to happen overnight.

BUCHANAN: The job is not done.

COLLINS: The job is not done.

PRESS: One more question I do want to ask you about civil service reform, but weapons of mass destruction. Eight weeks, nine weeks, we haven't found them yet. Don't you think there should be public hearings on the Hill as to what intelligence we had prewar and what we know now and whether or not perhaps the American people were misled?

COLLINS: Well, first of all, I don't think we can conclude anything yet. Iraq is a big country. We know that Saddam used weapons of mass destruction against his own citizens in the past. So he certainly had them at one time. It isn't just the current administration, but the Clinton administration and the United Nations all agreed that he was pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

But to answer your question, I do think it's always helpful to have a set of hearings. I think a lot of these will have to be closed hearings, but some public hearings as well, to evaluate the quality of the intelligence on which we were relying. The Intelligence Committee has begun some closed hearings. The Armed Services Committee, on which I serve, has had a hearing as well.

PRESS: Now, you are a champion of civil service reform. At least you have been holding hearings on that. But a lot of federal employees, when they hear civil service reform, they get nervous, because they think: That means we're going to lose our jobs, we're going to lose our benefits, we're going to lose our protection that we currently enjoy, particularly those serving now in the Pentagon, who think Don Rumsfeld is out to throw them out.

What assurances can you give them that you are just not part of this witch-hunt?

COLLINS: Well, we have drafted a carefully-crafted bipartisan package that was approved overwhelmingly by the Governmental Affairs Committee this morning, which I chair. It will accomplish a lot of the goals that Secretary Rumsfeld has set forth, such as making it easier and quicker to hire qualified people, being able to reward good employees.

BUCHANAN: How about firing unqualified people?

COLLINS: And that as well. That's a real problem.

BUCHANAN: Yes, it is.

PRESS: Yes.

COLLINS: And federal employees don't like that system either.

PRESS: Right.

COLLINS: They work very hard. The vast majority of them are very dedicated individuals. And it's very frustrating to them when they see employees who aren't doing their job.

BUCHANAN: Senator Susan Collins, it's always a pleasure to have you. Thank you very much for coming over here.

COLLINS: Thank you.