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http://www.nbcnews.com/id/40392979/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/#.WfusDbaZPVo

Guests: Senators Dick Durbin & Jon Kyl
By Meet the Press, Meet the Press - November 28, 2010

updated 12/1/2010 4:12:42 PM ET

MR. DAVID GREGORY: This Sunday, back to work for the president and Congress. But what’ll actually get done in a lame duck session? Will debate begin on the new START treaty with Russia? Who will win the battle over extension of the Bush-era tax cuts? And will the debt
commission’s ideas for slashing the deficit go anywhere? Plus, will North Korea’s deadly attack against the south engage U.S. armed forces into another combat zone after the north warns that a planned U.S.-South Korean military exercise that began hours ago could put the region on the brink of war.

With us this morning, two leaders of the Senate: Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois; and the assistant minority leader, Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona.
Then, as the post-election political battles heat up, battleground 2012 is already taking shape. Who are the potential candidates to watch? And which issues will matter most? Our political roundtable weighs in: The Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne; The Wall Street Journal’s Peggy Noonan; plus, former counselor to President Bush, Ed Gillespie; and Philadelphia mayor, Democrat Michael Nutter.

Announcer: From NBC News in Washington, MEET THE PRESS with David Gregory.
MR. GREGORY: Good morning.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: Just hours ago, those planned U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises began in the waters south of the disputed maritime boundary with North Korea. Joining me now live from Seoul, South Korea, with the very latest on these escalating tensions, NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel.
Richard, what is your sense on the ground there? Is this about to get worse before it gets better?
RICHARD ENGEL reporting:
There are mixed indications. People here, in what is a very snowy Seoul, South Korea, don’t seem like they want a war. But all of the pieces are in place for a very, very dangerous situation. You have American military hardware that has been brought into the region. These joint exercises now under way, which the North Korean government is perceiving as a direct threat. And now, according to North Korean officials, North Korea has positioned surface-to-air missiles near to its coast, it has moved other kinds of longer range missiles onto launch pads. It has also stationed and gotten ready some anti-ship missiles. So it wouldn’t take much for this crisis here, which is just at a rhetoric stage for now, to escalate dramatically further, David.
MR. GREGORY: What do you think North Korea actually wants? I mean, the Chinese, who’ve stepped up now, saying there should be some emergency talks, that’s probably what the administration wanted to have happen. But how do you read North Korea and its desires here?
MR. ENGEL: Analysts we’ve spoken to here believe this has to do with domestic politics inside North Korea. North Korea clearly wants attention, it wants to re-engage in those nuclear discussions, but it also has an issue of transition that it is dealing with. The North
Korean dictator is—had a stroke, he’s ill, and he’s trying to pass on authority to his 27-year-old son. Just last September the son was promoted to a four-star general position. Now the son, according to officials here, has to prove that he is a military man, that he can handle this situation. So, if you look at it from the way it’s viewed here, people are saying this is a war designed and being carried out for the benefit of a 27-year—27-year-old “little prince.”
MR. GREGORY: Before I let you go, Richard, the country here is poised for more WikiLeaks documents, more secret government documents being released by that Web site WikiLeaks, with regard to U.S. relationships with—key relationships around the glode. How, how—globe, rather. How bad is this going to be?
MR. ENGEL: This is devastating. I’ve spoken to many senior U.S. military officials, and they believe that this is—well, they use words like treason, they use words like a major breech of American national security. And they wonder how the, the chief suspect accused of leaking
these documents to WikiLeaks, a, a private first class, could have managed to do this, to bring out hundreds of thousands of first military cables, now diplomatic correspondences, internal documents that are supposed to be just within the, within the ranks of politicians and
diplomats and embassies. How such a low-level person within the U.S. military could have passed this on to a foreign agent who is now putting them online.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
MR. ENGEL: This is a major breech, and a lot of people are wondering will there be an overhaul, a, a re-examination on how America’s protected information is kept secure.
MR. GREGORY: All right, Richard Engel for us in Seoul, South Korea. I appreciate your reporting this morning, Richard.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: Joining me now live from Springfield, Illinois, assistant majority leader, Democratic senator Dick Durbin; and from Phoenix this morning, assistant minority leader, Republican senator Jon Kyl.
Welcome to both of you. A lot to get to, both foreign and domestic. Let’s start with North Korea.
Senator Kyl, how, how does this end? And what should the president do about it?
SEN. JON KYL (R-AZ): Well, I don’t know how it ends, obviously. But what we ought to do is what we’re doing right now, and that is not backing down in terms of having very legitimate exercises with the South Korean government, which we had, had—gave plenty of advance notice of. And, and then see how it, how it plays out. Obviously, we’re not trying to provoke anything there. But with news—the IAEA from the United Nations just released a report a couple of weeks ago detailing how North Korea was proliferating nuclear technology to Iran and Syria. And clearly this is a country that needs to be dealt with, and I think we need to focus a lot more on it.
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator Durbin, how? The New York Times on Saturday had this headline, “China Addresses Rising Korean Tensions, but With a Warning to the U.S.” They want to tamp down what’s happening, they now want emergency talks, but they’re the real power player here in terms of leverage over North Korea. Do they ultimately have to deal with North Korea, rather than the United States?
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL): I spoke with Secretary of State Clinton last night about this, and we both agree that China can play a very valuable role here in trying to bring under control a situation which is very volatile. At this point in time we need to make certain we stand as one
nation, strong in our alliance with South Korea, determined to stop this effort by North Korea to provoke aggression. This sort of thing, I think, really calls on us to be more bipartisan, more constructive in our efforts in Washington.
MR. GREGORY: But should, should any attack on South Korea be viewed as an attack on the United States, Senator Durbin?
SEN. DURBIN: I’m not going to go any further than what the president has said. We have a strong alliance with South Korea. We will stand by them. It is a treaty obligation that goes back over 50 years.

MR. GREGORY: All right.
Senator Kyl, let’s move on to the very contentious issue of this START treaty that you’re in the center of. This is the nuclear arms reduction treaty that the administration has negotiated with Russia, that the president said is a priority for this lame-duck session. You seem to be
the key player here as the opponent here in the Senate. You’ve said, over the past couple of weeks, “I think there is no chance that the START treaty can be completed in the lame-duck session.” Is that still your view?
SEN. KYL: It is, and it’s more a view of reality rather than policy. If the leader of the Senate, Senator Reid, were to allow a couple of weeks for full debate and amendment of the resolution of ratification, then theoretically there would be time. But he has made it clear that he has
a different agenda in mind. And I, I think clearly they’ve got to set some priorities here. Are they going to deal with the funding of the government for the remainder of the fiscal year? They’ve got to do that. Are they going to deal with the issue which is on everybody’s mind, that you mentioned earlier, and that is to ensure that we don’t have a big tax increase, the largest tax increase in the history of the country. These are higher priority items. And if we do those things and then potentially deal with some of the other political issues that Senator
Reid has said he wants to deal with, in that event then there would not be time to do a START treaty as well.
MR. GREGORY: Well, but, Senator Durbin, here’s the issue. Do you—can you get around Senator Kyl? Do you have the votes? You need nine...
SEN. DURBIN: Well...
MR. GREGORY: ...votes among Republicans. Can you get there without him?
SEN. DURBIN: I can tell you that when it comes to this issue, we respect Jon Kyl. I think he’s worked as hard as any other senator, maybe more than any senator, to understand this issue and to be an important part of the policy decisions that we face. But here is the reality. We live in a dangerous world. The failure of the United States Senate to ratify the START treaty immediately is going to pose a danger to the United States and its security. And let me give a historical analogy. It wasn’t that long ago that a Republican president appealed to Congress on a bipartisan basis—it was President George W. Bush after 9/11—to rewrite the architecture of our intelligence agencies with a new Department of Homeland Security. Senator Susan Collins, the chairman of the committee at that time and a Republican, Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, got together and did it. They constructed this new scenario that has made us
safer as a nation and they did it during a lame-duck session. There is no excuse for us to, to ignore this responsibility and to say we’ll wait several months.
MR. GREGORY: Well, Senator...
SEN. DURBIN: While we wait there will be no one—there’ll be no inspectors on the ground in Russia to make sure that their nuclear weapons are safe and treaty-compliant.
MR. GREGORY: The issue is, is, Senator Kyl, what do you need all the time for? The New York Times reported this on Friday about your role, “Privately, administration officials expressed anger and bewilderment at Mr. Kyl, contending that they had given him virtually everything he
sought. Arms control advocates have been more vocal. `My conclusion is’ that `he’s acting in bad faith,’ said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association. `He asked for more earlier in the fall and they’ve delivered.’” Is this anything other than trying to snub the
president, Senator?
SEN. KYL: Of course. Let me reiterate what I said before. Harry Reid, the leader of the Senate, can bring the START treaty up anytime he wants to, but he has a different agenda. He’s made some promises to some political constituencies. He wants to do the Dream Act in order to appeal to certain segments of the Hispanic community. The “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy to appeal to the gay and lesbian community. To appeal to the unions, he wants to do the so-called firefighters federal unionization bill. In addition to various political commitments that he’s made to do legislation in the lame duck session, we have to fund the government for the remaining 10 months of the fiscal year. We have to deal with some expiring provisions like...
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator, you’re not being responsive. What’s your...
SEN. KYL: May I just finish, David?
MR. GREGORY: Well, what’s your issue?
SEN. KYL: David!
MR. GREGORY: Well, what’s your issue with the treaty?
SEN. KYL: As I told you, my issue is that you can’t do everything. I was stating it as a matter of reality, not a matter of policy. How can Harry Reid do all of the things we’ve talked about, deal with the expiring tax provisions and, in addition to that, deal with the START treaty, which by itself could probably take at least two weeks?
MR. GREGORY: How long did the last START treaty take to ratify?
SEN. KYL: We...
MR. GREGORY: How much debate?
SEN. KYL: We, we have three weeks to go before the Christmas recess, and there are, in my opinion, a lot of amendments that have to be raised on this treaty. And as a result colleagues are going to offer those amendments. Is Harry Reid just going to shut it off and say, “We only
have three days”?
MR. GREGORY: I’m sorry, Senator, my question is, how long did the last START treaty take to, to get through Congress?
SEN. KYL: It’s not comparable to this START treaty. The last START treaty was a three-page document. It was agreed to by virtually every—in fact, I think the vote was unanimous, or maybe there was one dissenting vote. That’s not going to be the case with this treaty, in
which there are a lot of issues.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Durbin.
SEN. DURBIN: Well, I can just tell you that we’ve—people across America, who subscribe to cable, ask for refunds when they turn on C-Span and see the Senate sit there day after day doing nothing, lurching from filibuster to filibuster. Come on, let’s be reasonable, let’s be
constructive, let’s be bipartisan. We can get these things done. Let’s roll up our sleeves and do it. Senator Kyl has raised legitimate issues, but the fact is, we can do all of the things he mentioned, debate them and vote on them in a responsible way before we break for Christmas. To do otherwise is really to create a dangerous situation. I agree with
Senator Richard Lugar. It is time for us to step up as a nation and face the reality that we will be safer with the START treaty. And I might say to Senator Kyl, consider the situation in Iran. They just announced yesterday that they were going to fire up their nuclear reactor. If it’s
for peaceful domestic purposes, all well and good. But if it’s part of an agenda to build a nuclear weapon, it’s a danger to the world. Russia has helped us in dealing with this threat in Iran. To ignore and push aside the START treaty at this moment does not help our relationship with Russia in this critical issue of an Iranian nuclear program.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Kyl, I just want to zero in on one point to which I don’t feel like I’ve gotten an answer to, which is, substantively—and by the way the old START treaty took a matter of days, you say it’s not comparable, but that is the reality that it doesn’t take three weeks necessarily. But what, substantively, are you not getting from the White House that you want, to say, “Yes, I can support this”?
SEN. KYL: First of all, let me quote The Washington Post, which directly addressed the question that you asked. “No calamity will befall the United States if the Senate does not act this year.” And in response to the charge that somehow we need to do this for the urgency of needing verification, the Associated Press did a fact check on that allegation and said, “The urgency is political. Even the administration concedes the security risk is not immediate.” So there is not a time pressure to do this now as opposed to two months from now. But specifically to your question, there are a series of issues that relate, first off all, to provisions of the treaty itself and how it deals with missile defense and conventional prompt global strike and some other issues. Secondly, you have the question of modernization, which is the thing that Senator Durbin pointed out that I had been primarily focused on. And third, you have questions extraneous to the treaty but within the context, which is, is this all that’s standing between us today and the administration trying to negotiate even deeper, further cuts, which it’s indicated that it wants to do in its march toward global zero, something that a lot of
us disagree with. So there are a lot of considerations, and if you would like just one or two very specific, one of the things the administration has done with regard to building our nuclear complex back up, replacing the old Manhattan era 1940s buildings, for example, facilities, is to
create two new buildings which are going to be necessary, one in Tennessee, one in New Mexico. And these buildings are very costly. But what they’ve done is to stretch out the cost so that it doesn’t show up in the 10-year projections now to be completed by the year 2023 and 2024. That’s too long. We need those facilities before then. And, as a result, there probably will be amendments or at least an effort to try to get the administration to fund those a little earlier. Every year we delay is a cost of $200 million, money that could be saved if we can get those facilities constructed a little bit earlier.
MR. GREGORY: All right, let me—I want to move on to some of the domestic agenda and some of the showdowns on matters like taxes and spending. But first, we were coming off of this holiday weekend and there was so much drama around the TSA screening procedures, the invasive pat-downs at the airport.
Senator Durbin, is this debate over? I mean, does the administration need to, to come up with a better way to secure Americans at airports from potential plots involving airplanes?
SEN. DURBIN: Listen, we want to respect people’s privacy. But the bottom line is, when you get on an airplane with your family, you want to know this government has done everything in its power to keep us safe. Look at what happened. After all of this furor about the pat-down and the screening and so forth, a grand total of about one percent of passengers across America during this Thanksgiving holiday season basically objected to the process that they were being offered. One percent. And we were tied in knots over this. It is not an easy
assignment to TSA to say, “Keep us safe, but don’t go too far.” I think they’re trying to strike the right balance. Congress needs to continue to ask questions, but the bottom line is we want to be safe when we get on airplanes. We do not want an air disaster because we have gone too far in bending towards some public opinion poll.
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator Kyl, critics have pointed out two things. One, longer security lines are an area of vulnerability for passengers if terrorists were to strike at the actual security line. You know, and this is indelicate, but, I mean, there are also ways to hide explosives on one’s person that even these more invasive security procedures are not
going to deal with. Is there a better way?
SEN. KYL: I think there are some other things that can be done in ddition to what’s being done now, and that is to focus more on the erson than on the weapon. This is what other countries do. They, they profile, not on the base, of course, of race or ethnicity or religion, but on the basis of who looks like they may need a second screening. There are questions asked in other countries that tip people off, who are experienced questioners of people that need an addition screening. We need to share better intelligence. The Customs Department, for example,
has much better intelligence than TSA, and they need to share that with them.
There’s an opportunity for pre-screening for a lot of people that don’t need to be screened every time because they submit in advance to an eye scan or fingerprint, have their backgrounds checked and so on. In other words, there are a lot of things that could be done to reduce the impact. There are about 60,000 people every day, traveling, that get this pat-down procedure. One that—just one other thing, Dick mentioned Susan Collins. We were in the Netherlands right after the Christmas bomber from last year came over. And, and what they do there is use a scanner which uses a mannequin, a woman and a man figure, not a stick figure, but like a mannequin, so that the image that comes up is not of your body or
my body, but just of a mannequin...
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
SEN. KYL: ...but it shows whatever we have on the body. It’s just a matter of software, and TSA says they’re looking at it. And I think there are a lot of other things we can do that might enable them to back off of patting down, you know, the old saying, “little old ladies and kids.”
MR. GREGORY: All right, let me get to a few other issues.
Senator Durbin, President Obama will finally sit down with Republican leaders, incoming Speaker Boehner and McConnell—as well as Senator McConnell, when he comes back to Washington. He’s in Washington, but when he meets with them this coming week. How should he approach this meeting, and specifically on the issue of, of Bush tax cuts and whether they’re going to be extended? Is he, is he in a mind to compromise at this point?
SEN. DURBIN: I think—I don’t want to speak for the White House, but I think their position is one, at least, that I share initially, and that is that we ought to say to the vast majority of America’s middle income and working families, “Your tax cuts are going to be protected
permanently.” That, I think, is the starting point to say to America, “Let’s move forward in a positive way.” There are a lot of areas of debate, and I’m sure Senator Kyl will raise some of his concerns as well. But we need to do this in a way that is responsible. I’m a member of the deficit commission. It’s one of the toughest assignments I’ve ever had. It worries me—this one basic thing worries me. All of the cuts that we are proposing in the deficit commission for the next 10 years equal the Republican proposal in tax cuts. In other words, if the Republicans go forward with tax cuts they want, Senator McConnell’s package, and we make all of the spending cuts that are proposed in the deficit commission, we’ll still have the same basic debt and deficit. We’ll still be borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar that we spend. We’ll still be
indebted to China.
MR. GREGORY: But, Senator Durbin, I understand the position, but what’s the reality? Do you see the president and Democrats here agreeing to an extension of Bush-era tax cuts at the upper level and the middle class level for at least a year, on a temporary basis?
SEN. DURBIN: Well, I think we need to sit down. We haven’t done that yet. And maybe this meeting with the president will kick it off. But I want to put a couple of other things on the table. We do have unemployment running out. By Christmas, two million Americans will lose
their unemployment benefits because they expire, 127,000 of them here in my home state of Illinois. I also want to make sure the earned income tax credit, the child care tax credit, and the making work pay tax credit are part of this conversation. We should be focusing on what it takes to move this economy forward. We should not be worried about the discomfort of the wealthy, but the fact that there are many people struggling to survive every day now because they have no job and no means to keep their family together in very difficult times.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Kyl, are we seeing the, the outlines of a negotiation strategy here, which is, if Republicans are going to extend jobless benefits and insurance for those without a job, that maybe there’d be some negotiating room on tax cuts?
SEN. KYL: Sure. All of the things Dick mentioned are things that have to be done, and that’s what I was trying to say earlier. We have a lot on our plate to, to do before Christmas rolls around here. And all of these things need to be, need to be done. But let me make something very clear. Nobody is talking about tax cuts. We’ve had the rates in existence now for 10 years. All Republicans are saying is keep them in place, don’t raise taxes on anyone. The job creators in this country are the ones that would be hurt the most by an increase in taxes. And so our position is, let’s extend all of the current rates for some period of time. Obviously, we’d like to do it permanently, but if it’s three or four years, that’s fine, too. I think there is an opportunity for us to sit down and negotiate a resolution of this that’s good for the economy
and, and frankly, good for everybody else.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Kyl, could, could you, could you support doing it for the middle class tax cuts, extending those first and then maybe coming back after the first of the year and taking up the question of upper earners?
SEN. KYL: Our position, the Republican position is, and I think we’re pretty unanimous on this is that there should be no tax increase on anybody, particularly in this time of very difficult economic difficulties for people in all parts of the country, and especially for the job creators, the small business folks, who would get hurt the most by a tax increase. They’re the ones who create the, the job opportunities and, frankly, represent about 25 percent of all of the workers in the country. They don’t need their taxes raised and, frankly, that can be done in this lame-duck session if we have the time to do it, we sit down and work it out, and focus our priorities there rather then on some of the other things that I mentioned earlier.
MR. GREGORY: But that’s a no, you would not, you would not vote for a middle class tax cut extension if did not include, did not include upper earners?
SEN. KYL: We don’t believe taxes should be increased on anyone. Those so-called upper earners that you’re talking about are the very small business folks that I’m talking about.
MR. GREGORY: All right. Final question, Senator Kyl and Senator Durbin, you can comment on this. Senator McConnell’s talked about the number one goal of Republicans being to ensure that President Obama is removed from office after his first term. Is that really the accomplishment that you think about Republicans achieving here as they have more power in
Washington?
SEN. KYL: Senator McConnell was talking about a political goal. Obviously, President Obama has as a political goal his re-election, so there’s no big surprise there. What I talked about at the very beginning when you first talked—asked me about what could be done before Christmas was the agenda that the American people want us to focus on. Keep the government operating, deal with the unemployment extension that Senator Durbin talked about, deal with the, with the tax system, make sure we don’t have a tax increase, as we’ve been talking about here. Those are the things that, that we need the most, and I think if we do work in a spirit of good will, we can achieve it. But I would just note, here’s a headline. It doesn’t look like Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, is going to be too encouraging of Dick Durbin and I sitting down together and trying to work these things out.
MR. GREGORY: Senator Durbin, you know this president well. You encouraged him to run for the presidency. As he faces the after-effects of a very difficult midterm election, what is your feeling about what political recovery looks like for him?
SEN. DURBIN: Well, I can tell you that the, the president’s meeting with the leaders, Democrats and Republicans, in the White House on Tuesday. It’s the beginning, I hope, of a very constructive approach. I don’t know what Senator McConnell’s message was from the last election on November 2nd. He said publicly that his goal now was to make sure Obama
was not re-elected as president. I don’t think that’s the message. I think what the American people said was, “Be reasonable. Be constructive.” Let’s try to focus on the big issues that count, getting eight million Americans back to work, dealing with two wars and the men
and women who are fighting them, their families at home; doing things that are basic to make sure this country moves forward in a positive way. Reliving and rehashing the political food fights of the past, not acceptable. And this notion that we don’t have enough time in three
weeks to take up three or four issues, the American people basically look at us and say, “For goodness sakes, we go to work every single day. We have to get work done every day. Why won’t the Senate do the same thing?” I think we can, but we need a much more positive and constructive approach. The president is going to bring us together on Tuesday in an
effort to initiate that, and I think that was truly the message of the last election.
MR. GREGORY: All right. We are going to leave it there. Senators, thank you both very much.