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Morning News

Will Bush Tax Plan Endanger Other Priorities?

Aired February 26, 2001 - 11:38 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: And now, we focus on the president, President Bush, who has a big night tomorrow.

To let us have a look more ahead of that and what the president needs to achieve before Congress, let's bring in our CNN senior political analyst Bill Schneider joining us from Washington.

Bill, good morning. Good to see you.

BILL SCHNEIDER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to see you, Daryn.

KAGAN: Tomorrow is a big night for the president. He goes before the Congress for the first time to present what he would like to see for the budget, including that $1.6 trillion tax cut.

What does he have to get done tomorrow with that appearance?

SCHNEIDER: He has to make the case to the American public and to Congress that his tax cut, which is the centerpiece of his agenda, won't endanger other priorities.

Americans support the tax cut. But they don't give it a high priority. They think other things are just as important, if not more important.

So the president has to make the case that we can still reform social security, ad prescription drug coverage to Medicare, that we can reduce the debt.

The Democrats have talked about eliminating the debt. And I think that the president will say that's really an unreasonable goal. Though we can't eliminate it 100 percent, but we can reduce it as much as possible. And we can do all of those things and still have a room for a tax cut.

He's got to make that case.

KAGAN: Now, the Democrats are out there, doing some pre-spin on this. You heard Senator John Kerry over the weekend, being particularly vocal. He's calling this the president's first significant mistake. The Democrats also have a tough sell to tell the American people, You really don't want that money back, do you?

SCHNEIDER: That's right. The Democrats don't want to caught opposing a tax cut, so they've been sort of raising their bids and saying, Well, we want a tax cut, too; just as not as big as President Bush's.

But what it really is shaping up as is the test of President Bush's authority over Congress: Can he have his way? If he fails the tax cut, if he doesn't get the tax cut passed, he's going to look like a very weakened president. That's why there's a lot of stake in his speech tomorrow night.

KAGAN: Also keeping it on Congress, Bill, the pardons, the pardon controversy that keeps coming out of the aftermath of President Clinton. What is happening here? What is the purpose of all of these investigations? In most of the discussions, you don't hear talk of thing that were illegal; just things that didn't exactly look right.

SCHNEIDER: Well, there is a legal investigation by the U.S. attorney in New York to see if there was any deal made in return for money or votes. But what Congress is doing is simply exposing what could be taken as an abusive power by the former president.

You know, the power to pardon is absolute. It doesn't have to be explained. It's in the Constitution. The only thing that Congress can do to change things is to propose a constitutional amendment. That's very unlikely.

But what they are doing is exposing what many in Congress regard as an abuse of the president's power. The Congress has to be very careful not to turn this into what looks like a partisan vendetta against President Clinton, particularly since there's not a great deal legislatively that Congress can do about it.

KAGAN: Bill Schneider in Washington, always a pleasure to have you along.

SCHNEIDER: My pleasure.

KAGAN: Good to see you.

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