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December 19, 2006

Special Report Roundtable - December 19

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: No. 1, there's no decision about the next step forward in Iraq. So the idea that there is a decision and a squabble would be wrong. I've also cautioned people that tonally, it is incorrect to say that the president is in any sort of contretemps with the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: And what got all that started was this: A story in the Washington Post, this morning, which we all woke up to, which said that the White House joint chiefs at odds on adding troops, said the story at the beginning. "The Bush administration is split over the idea of a surge in troops to Iraq, with White House officials aggressively promoting the concept over the unanimous disagreement of the Joint Chiefs of Staff chiefs of staff" this -- it sites the U.S. officials familiar with the intense debate.

Some thoughts on this and the whole picture now from Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; Nina Easton, Washington bureau chief of Fortune magazine -- FOX NEWS contributors, each and every one.

Well, Fred, what to make of this story, what to make of the response to it?

FRED BARNES, WEEKLY STANDARD: Well, I'm somewhat familiar with the intense debate and I think that story is not exactly right. I don't think there's any firm disagreement at all. What you have is some qualms about sending troops temporarily to Iraq by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They wonder whether "temporarily" will only sustain your gains, temporarily as well, and they all...

HUME: In other words, if you bring in the troops and flush out these neighborhoods in Baghdad where the trouble's coming, and then hold them for a while and then you leave, the trouble just comes back?

BARNES: Yeah and that's a legitimate worry, I think. And the second qualm the Pentagon has is whether President Bush is prepared to send a large enough surge. In other words...

HUME: To make a difference.

BARNES: Yeah, to really make a difference and those are legitimate qualms. I don't think that there was a substantial disagreement in any way. But these things are going to have to be worked out between the Pentagon and the president if there is to be a surge, and I think there is to be.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: The question is -- can you really do what the mission calls for? If he adopts the so-called Kagan-Keane plan, proposed by Fred Kagan and General Jack Keane, to send in 30,000 more troops. Can you -- is 30,000 enough to secure Baghdad over a period of time?

That involves cleaning out the bad guys, holding the territory, having troops living in the neighborhoods to provide ongoing security, and then when the Iraqi security forces can take over, then you move on to Anbar. This is a two-year operation and the question is, is 30,000 enough to do it?

Colin Powell says this is a city of eight million people; 30,000 or 50,000 is not enough and we don't have enough troops to do it and I don't know whether the -- what the Pentagon position is on that. I would think they would want to be very clear that this time they're going to do better than Operation Together Forward did the last time with a lot fewer troops.

HUME: That's, of course, in the interview I did with Donald Rumsfeld, last week, the day before his final day over there, he said that there has to be a specific military mission -- achievable mission, or he didn't see any point in it. So, obviously the idea has some skeptics at the Pentagon.

NINA EASTON, FORTUNE: And the idea of the surge, by the way, wasn't even included in Donald Rumsfeld's final memo to the president saying "we need significant change in Iraq." You know, this is a -- what you can quibble about, how many quibbles there are between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the administration, but I think there's real concern from the military about the level of strain that's being put on troops now and whether, as Mort said, this mission will work.

I mean, this idea of a surge, I think reflects this flailing of the administration to find a solution, and they're going to an outside solution, coming in, fixing things from the outside when a lot of these other recommendations are a more internal, let's get control of the police, let's get control of the Sadr militias which are corrupting the police. These sort of longer-term, more difficult -- and I can -- you can understand the White House frustration of wanting to come in and get things secure on a more fixed timeframe. But that's not what we're...

(CROSSTALK)

BARNES: ...of a surge is that nothing is possible until you attain security. You can't do anything. You can't -- you can't achieve reconciliation between the Shias and the Sunnis, you can't clean out the Sadr militia, you can't straighten out the police. You must have security first or if you don't have it then the militias are going to thrive because people are going to turn to them for security.

HUME: And the Iraqi security forces are simply not able to provide that security at this point.

KONDRACKE: Right.

BARNES: My understanding is that -- Mort, I'm not positive about this, but it isn't the plan to send in 30,000 troops, but to extend time in Iraq of 20,000 more, so it would be actually an addition over the spring and into summer...

HUME: Increase the overall force by 50,000.

KONDRACKE: Well, according to this chart that Kagan put out, the total combat troops in Iraq, now December, 52,500 would drive from 84,000 so that's about 30,000.

HUME: It's up a little bit now from the normal levels.

KONDRACKE: That's combat troops. Combat troops.

HUME: But see, the normal level -- the base level over there is about 140, I think, 135...

(CROSSTALK)

KONDRACKE: Those are all troops.

BARNES: In any case they would pick out parts of the city. You don't have to do all of Iraq, you don't even have to do all of Baghdad at once. You go from neighborhood-to-neighborhood starting with of mixed Shia and Sunni residents because that's where most of the terrorism takes place.

HUME: So, in end, after all that he's going -- Gates is going to go over there, he's going to hear from Casey and Abizaid who are known to have misgivings about this, so they wouldn't recommend, one presumes. When all is said and done, is this what he's going to end up doing do you think?

EASTON: It sounds like he's moving in that direction and there is that interview today where he...

KONDRACKE: That's what all the reports suggest.

EASTON: Yes.

HUME: The question is will he end up doing it? Can we know -- he's leading in that direction, I'm just trying to get your thoughts on where he'll end up.

KONDRACKE: I don't know where it's going to end up.

HUME: If you don't have a thought, say you don't have a thought -- Fred.

I do have a thought. My thought is I don't know.

(LAUGHTER)

BARNES: My thought is yes, he will.

HUME: All right. Next up with the panel we'll discuss what may happen with healthcare reform in the coming year. Something already has happened and we'll talk about that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP BILL THOMAS (R), CALIFORNIA: Even in this last package on how savings accounts -- we created some real opportunities for savings and investments and frankly accomplishing even more than I thought -- even I thought we could.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: That's Bill Thomas, the outgoing chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee talking about some additions that made to the whole health savings program, which a lot of conservatives liked very much. The president likes it and is going to sign it into law tomorrow. And the question is, so where does this leave us now in this whole issue to grapple with the problem of health care costs and insurance costs and the like?

Back with our panel on this issues. Mort, your thoughts about this. First of all, explain the Health Savings Account Program.

KONDRACKE: OK, the Health Savings Account Program is that you get to put -- it's like an IRA, you put money away, tax free, up to a certain amount of money and you buy a high deductible insurance policy with the money out of that and you pay your healthcare under that deductible amount out of that health savings account and you do that tax free, too, as long as you spend it on health care. What they...

HUME: So in other words, you actually never ultimately never have to pay taxes on the money, right, as long you use it on health care?

KONDRACKE: That's -- well, theoretically, yeah. Now, what the Thomas Bill that was slipped into the final tax package did was to raise the amount that you could save above the amount. Previously you were limited to the amount of your deductible that you could save every year in your tax-free savings account. This is basically a savings vehicle. You could more -- like adding -- You could put more money into this the way you could do it in an IRA account and build it up and protect it tax-free. Now the assumption -- the beneficiaries...

HUME: And so what you have is you have a nest egg for health care when you need it.

KONDRACKE: Right. OK.

HUME: And if you spend it on health care, you never pay taxes on it?

KONDRACKE: That's right. That's right. No, the thing is that this does not help the majority of the 47 million people who lack health insurance, because almost by definition they are strapped for money, and it's the people who can save money, who put money into HSAs. The people who are operating on the edge and therefore don't have health insurance are not going to be benefited by this.

Look, I think it's a fine, you know, fine plan for the people are available, but there are only nine million people who have HSAs and high deductible policies And the one other objection with high deductible policies is that you're stingy about spending money that's in there. That's the advantage of it, because it holds down health care costs, but also you don't get preventative care. You don't go to the doctor if you've got something that might be wrong until something is really wrong and then it's...

HUME: Why?

KONDRACKE: Because you're stingy with your money. It's your money, it's your health savings account.

HUME: So what you're saying is because you're paying for it, you're not going to do it, even though it's your health.

KONDRACKE: Yeah, and it's true, that's the way it works.

HUME: But you can only use it for health care.

KONDRACKE: I Know.

BARNES: Let me unravel the flaws in a great deal of what Mort said.

KONDRACKE: ...Rumsfeld, by the way.

BARNES: That's right, that's what made me think of it. One, there are 12 million people that have high-deductible plans, some have HSAs, some have these reimbursable plans. For most part people are not going to -- individuals are not going to put the money in, it's going to be the companies they work for, and it will save the company's money and it will also save the people's money.

Look, what the surveys have shown, Mort, is not that people are stingy to the extent they're harming their own health care. You know, people aren't likely to do that, but it shows a lot of unnecessary health care, they don't go buy. They buy generic drugs. Mort, you should be in favor of that, rather than more expensive brand names. They don't go to the emergency room because they have a hangnail and things like that. These things work.

HUME: What do you think -- Nina.

EASTON: Well, I think the reason they slipped the HSA into that last- minute legislation was that the -- there was no way Democrats were going to let this through. The Democrats are about to control Congress. Democrats are focused on this whole question of Medicare part D, the prescription drug. They're going to spend -- I'm told they're going to spend the first month trying to get the right for the government to negotiate prices with the drug companies. After that, what's interesting with the Democrats, is they don't seem to be unified on any kind of...

HUME: Bush will veto that.

KONDRACKE: Yeah he will.

BARNES: It won't pass.

EASTON: Yeah, and...

KONDRACKE: It won't pass the Senate, even.

EASTON: Well, I don't know if -- I think it could pass the Senate...

HUME: Well, anyway, it's a good thing for Republicans they get the HSA (INAUDIBLE) when they did.

EASTON: And it's unclear where the Democrats are going to go after this prescription drug stalemate...

HUME: So, we're looking -- you think we're looking for stalemate next year on this issue?

EASTON: Yeah, because they -- the Democrats want pay as you go, and this costs money.

KONDRACKE: I think there's a lot of thought progress. In other words, there are a whole bunch of proposals that are going to be on the table, some already are, on what to do about the 47 million uninsured.

BARNES: You know, that's not the only issue, you know.

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