04 February 2002

White House Press Gaggle on Air Force One

Bush met with Russian Prime Minister in the Oval Office, Bush defense budget remarks in Florida, FY-2003 U.S. Budget briefings, visit to Pittsburgh on bioterrorism tomorrow, visit to New York Wednesday on homeland defense, Bush to sign 2002 Economic Report, fundraiser for Gov. Pataki, Bush on Arafat, budget deficit, pension reform, Super Bowl, bin Laden

White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer briefed on board Air Force One en route Fort Walton Beach, Florida February 4.

Following is the White House transcript:

Mr. Fleischer: The POTUS of the U.S. had his intelligence briefings this morning. Then he met in the Oval Office for half an hour with the Chairman of the government of the Russian Federation, otherwise referred to as the Russian Prime Minister. They, in that meeting, discussed a wide variety of issues of importance between the United States and Russia, including trade, including NATO, including WTO ascension for Russia, including continued work together on the war against terrorism.

Then the President arrived onto Air Force One, and on arrival, the President called the owner of the New England Patriots, Bob Kraft, to congratulate the Patriots on their victory last night, and he invited the Patriots to the White House at an undetermined date to celebrate their victory.

The President will arrive in Florida at Eglin Air Force Base, where he will make remarks about the importance of the defense budget, whose numbers are being formally released today. Eglin is the home of the Air Force Materiel Command Air Armament Center. It's located between Panama City and Pensacola. It's one of the nation's largest air force bases, covering 724 square miles of landmass, and 97,963 square miles of water ranges in the Gulf of Mexico.

Team Eglin, as it's known, consists of more than 45 associate units and employs approximately 8,500 military personnel and 4,500 civilians.

The President will make remarks about the importance of Congress fully funding his defense requests. And then the President will enjoy lunch with the troops before returning to Washington.

Those are the events for the President today. Mitch Daniels will brief on the budget at 1:00 p.m., as he formally releases it in Washington today. As part of that, the press room here in Florida will have Mitch's news conference piped in. Of course, it will be a full-blown news conference in Washington for reporters to ask questions.

Question: Is that in the briefing room?

Mr. Fleischer: No, it's in Room 450. And it will be piped in here to the press filing center in Florida. In addition, many members of the President's Cabinet will hold news conferences today on their portions of the budget, including, for example, Secretary Martinez will do a news conference with Hispanic press, and many members of the Cabinet will fan out across the country, beginning tomorrow, to some 10 different stops, including visits that the President is doing in Pittsburgh tomorrow, where the President will follow up with his budget release in Pittsburgh, with remarks on bioterrorism and the importance of funding the President's initiative on bioterrorism.

On Wednesday, the President will travel to New York City where he will visit the New York Police Department, the COMSTAT Center, to discuss the first responders initiative and information-sharing, all of which is part of the homeland defense portion of the budget.

Question: Is it in Manhattan?

Mr. Fleischer: It's in Manhattan, downtown. Near the Brooklyn Bridge. And so what you will see is the President this week making the case very aggressively for the items that are in his budget as he travels the country and calls on Congress to pass the spending increases that he seeks.

Let me also draw your attention to one item in the budget, or one page that will be helpful to the reporters. Page 400 of the ERATA has -- page 400 in the budget in the summary tables, and also in the ERATA, has a very helpful walk-through, taking a look at the budget, pluses and minuses over a multiyear period of time, which I think is helpful to give you and your readers and viewers just a broader perspective about budgets are more than just one-year documents. You can see over the last three, four years on average how much different agencies have gotten in their budget funding. So I just point that out to you; I think that will be a helpful page for reporters to get perspective.

Question: What's he doing once we're back in Washington?

Mr. Fleischer: Once he gets back to Washington the President will sign, in the Oval Office with still photographers -- I think it's still photographers -- the 2002 Economic Report of the President. That's a mandatory, formal report that gets sent to the Congress. And he'll have some staff meetings, as well.

Question: What time is that event, the signing?

Mr. Fleischer: That's a 4:00 p.m. event in the Oval.

Question: Is anybody going to be there?

Mr. Fleischer: Larry Lindsey, Glenn Hubbard.

Question: Isn't that the document that has the estimates on deficit and projections, the economic report --

Mr. Fleischer: The budget, of course, does that today. And that's in the Economic Report, as well -- I don't remember.

Question: Ari, in New York there are some fundraisers, right? Wednesday?

Mr. Fleischer: There will be a fundraiser Wednesday for Governor Pataki, as well.

Question: Wednesday night?

Mr. Fleischer: Wednesday evening, correct.

Question: Do you know roughly when he goes on Wednesday morning, and afternoon or evening?

Mr. Fleischer: Oh, 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m.

Question: Is it that early? I don't think so.

Question: Given that the President is getting into fundraising, and this is now his seventh trip to Florida since taking office, would you say that the President is casting an eye already toward his reelection campaign in 2004?

Mr. Fleischer: No, I think it's fair to say that as this election year begins, the President will increasingly be helpful to Republican candidates at the state level, the federal level. That's why the President is hosting a fundraiser for Governor Pataki tomorrow night -- or Wednesday night.

Question: Has he agreed to about 40 events?

Mr. Fleischer: Well, I'm not going to get into exactly how many he's going to do, but it's fair to say that he will do a significant number. Other members of the Cabinet will do their fair share as well in helping to elect people who will pass the President's agenda. So it's an election year, and the White House will be helping the Republican candidates.

Question: Is the President also looking to gain some sort of political advantage by talking so much about defense spending and the need to build up the military in this wartime and anti-terror campaign atmosphere?

Mr. Fleischer: I think only the voters will judge how they vote, for what reasons they vote. But the President made clear in his State of the Union address the defense of the nation is not a Democratic issue, it's not a Republican issue, it's an American issue. That's how he views it. The voters, of course, will come to their own conclusions about who they think can do the most to help protect our national defense.

Question: Is President Bush going to Russia?

Mr. Fleischer: As you know, we always -- if we have announcements to make we'll make them.

Question: Ari, what did you make of Arafat's column in the New York Times yesterday? He's offered to hold talks with Israeli leaders. Is there anything encouraging about that?

Mr. Fleischer: That doesn't change anything for the President. The President continues to believe that Chairman Arafat has got to do more and to act in a concrete, lasting, meaningful, effective way to stop terrorism and to take action against terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Question: Any VIPs traveling aboard now?

Mr. Fleischer: We have Congressman Miller, who represents the district. There will be another congressman who I think will join us there, as well. Let me get you an update on the formal names.

Question: Can you confirm the $11 billion figure on bioterrorism?

Mr. Fleischer: Yes.

Question: And why does he speak on that tomorrow -- kind of isolate that from the rest of the homeland security budget?

Mr. Fleischer: Well, the President has been giving a series of speeches about homeland security, if you remember. He talked about -- went to Portland, Maine, and talked about interdiction of border security. He's talked about the budget for first responders with the mayors at the White House. He'll go to Pittsburgh, where there's a very important research center that's doing cutting-edge work in bioterrorism.

It's all part of showing people how the budget is not an abstract document. The budget is something that touches people's lives. Bioterrorism, unfortunately, became an issue that took lives with the anthrax attacks. So the President wants to highlight the important work being done to protect people.

Question: Is the President going to talk about some of the unpopular parts of the budget that will surely draw fire today? Spending cuts in various areas, for example?

Mr. Fleischer: Well, the budget will be released in its entirety today, and all issues will be known and seen and we'll welcome any inquiries.

Question: What about the deficits, or the projected deficits, or diminution of the surpluses?

Mr. Fleischer: As the President said in his State of the Union, the budget will have a small deficit that will last for a short period of time, so long as Congress has fiscal discipline. But there's no question that the combination of recession and war and the government spending to match has had a negative impact on surpluses.

But what's unusual is that, given the fact that we are in the middle of a recession, it's a remarkably small deficit, compared to previous deficits in recession time. It's also notable that by all projections, it's a return to surplus rather quickly. And that makes it a very different deficit picture from the '80s and the '90s.

One point also I just want to address -- on Friday, you know the President announced his pension reforms Friday, and is very pleased with the reaction he has received from members of Congress. The President hopes that this will be a nonpartisan issue because there are a lot of protections that need to be put in place.

One area that's received some notice is the question of should there be a limit of, say, 10 percent or 20 percent on the amount of money anybody can have in one company's pension plan. And it's an interesting notion; it's a well-intentioned notion. It's something I would urge you all to take a careful look at.

The administration thought about that as it prepared its pension reviews, and the President believes that we can protect people's pensions without taking money away from people who are counting on a strong retirement. If you talk to millions of Americans who work for companies like General Electric, MicroSoft, Southwest Airlines, McDonald's, you'll find that workers are very happy with their pensions. And any proposal that would cap the amount of exposure at 20 percent or 10 percent would mean the government would be going in and forcing people to sell something that they're very satisfied and happy with.

So it's a well-intentioned proposal to afford people protection. But the real-life impact would mean breaking up people's pensions. And there are literally millions of workers who don't want the government to come in and dictate to them and order them to sell the pensions they have, because they work for companies that are not like Enron, they're satisfied with their pensions, and they don't want the government to come in and break up their pensions. They're counting on that money to retire.

So it's a very interesting issue because it really does touch people's pocketbooks in a real way. Viacom, that's another example of companies that have pensions that are funded in excess of 10 or 20 percent. Disney. I raise that seriously because it really is an issue that I think a lot of people relate to and understand what would happen if you capped it at 10 or 20 percent.

Having said that, though, the President does believe his proposal got a good reaction from Democrats, as well. There will be issues in which we have initial differences. But he really believes they will be settled in a nonpartisan manner. This is one where people can, should and will come together. So he was heartened by the reaction.

Question: Is he going to send a bill up to Congress on this?

Mr. Fleischer: The President has already made his proposal to the Congress; they understand it. Whether or not it's put out in statutory form or not, I don't know. But Congress knows where he stands on the pension issues. It's off to a good start.

Question: Did Bush watch the game yesterday?

Mr. Fleischer: He did. It was a very exciting game.

Question: Who was he rooting for?

Mr. Fleischer: I was careful not to ask him that question. I don't know. We did have a request for a half-time update on whether he was eating pretzels.

Question: Was he?

Question: Did anybody watch the game with him, besides the dogs?

Mr. Fleischer: I don't know, I didn't ask him.

Question: Did he eat pretzels?

Mr. Fleischer: I didn't ask him that, either. He looked pretty safe and secure when I saw him.

Question: The New York Times had a story about bin Laden. Is it true that the trail has gone cold for finding him?

Mr. Fleischer: Well, we do not know where he is. Secretary Powell and others said that on the shows yesterday. Our efforts remain just as strong as ever to locate him, and the cooperation and intelligence-sharing we've had with others has been very helpful. But we do not know where he is.

Thanks, everybody. We'll see you down there.