Reporter Carl Hulse on Covering the U.S. Congress

DATE August 6, 2007 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Carl Hulse, chief congressional correspondent for The
New York Times, on Congress' progress since the Democrats took
over last year
DAVE DAVIES, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, senior writer for the Philadelphia Daily
News, sitting in this week for Terry Gross.

Congress has adjourned for the summer, but not before enacting some
substantive legislation and engaging in plenty of acrimonious debate. The
Senate held an all-night session on Iraq, and Republicans actually walked out
of the House chamber Thursday night. There were major battles with the Bush
administration over Alberto Gonzales and energy policy. But Congress did
manage to raise the minimum wage, adopt a new electronic surveillance
guidelines and get an ethics and lobbying law passed.

For some perspective, we turn to Carl Hulse, the chief congressional
correspondent for The New York Times. He's been covering Congress for more
than 20 years. He spoke to us this morning.

Well, Carl Hulse, welcome to FRESH AIR. Congress finally adjourned for
August, and as we know, in Congress there's always two versions of what
happened--the Republican version and the Democratic version--and then the rest
of us try and figure it out as we can. What did the Democrats say about what
they got done?

Mr. CARL HULSE: Well, the Democrats, of course, say that they had the most
productive seven months in the history of Congress, so that's their judgment.
And they did accomplish a few things. Of course, the Republicans have the
complete opposite view.

DAVIES: What's their view?

Mr. HULSE: That this was the do-nothing Congress, or they're trying to tag
it as the post office Congress, because they've done a lot of post offices,
namings, that sort of thing. And that's a talking point for them now.
Obviously, the truth is somewhere in the middle somewhere.

DAVIES: Right. Well, let's go through some of the areas where significant
legislation was debated and, in some cases, enacted. One, most recently, was
electronic eavesdropping. And activity on that went right into the weekend.
I guess at the end of the session the House amended the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, which we know of because of this controversy, which the
Times generated couple of years ago when they exposed warrantless wiretapping.
Now, President Bush wanted changes in this act. What changes did he want and
why?

Mr. HULSE: Well, the administration was arguing that some recent, actually
still classified, decisions had been preventing them from eavesdropping on
foreign terrorist suspects communicating with other foreign terror suspects
overseas, but with the communication passing through communication nodes, I
guess you would say, in the US. And they said that they needed some revisions
to accommodate that. Of course, that bill got passed. This is not one the
Democrats are going to claim as part of their six for '06 or one of their
accomplishments. They detested the bill, in some respects. Especially in the
House, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker, said the revisions did violence to the
Constitution.

They allowed it to go through late Saturday night because they were really
sort of in a political bind, one member told me. He called it a vise, because
they didn't want to do it, but they didn't want to leave for August and have
something happen and get the blame. So that was approved, but over very
strong objections from the Democrats. So the Republicans would claim that as
a win, really, and it was an interesting situation. Only 40-41 Democrats
voted for that bill. It was obviously mainly Republicans who passed it. And
the Democrats now say that they'll come back before the six-month
expiration--this is an interim bill--and try and fix it. They're very angry
about the way this was sort of rammed down their throats, they would say.

DAVIES: Now this is such a difficult area, both because the technology is
complicated and evolving, and also because so much of it is classified. Now
there, in the past three years, has been this secret court, the FISA court.

Mr. HULSE: Mm-hmm.

DAVIES: Which the government could go and get a warrant for eavesdropping,
and as we've said, a lot of controversy was generated because it turned out
that the government was bypassing the court. Now that this act has been
passed, understanding that it's a six-month law, is it clear what the
government can do in this area of surveillance on American citizens?

Mr. HULSE: Well, certainly not to me, but I think that's the rub here, in
some ways, that the Democrats say that this now can really allow wiretapping
of Americans as long as they're--without a warrant--as long as they're
potentially talking with one of these foreign targets. And that's the
Democrats' complaint. They would say that the DNI, the director of national
intelligence, came to them with a series of fixes, and they agreed to those,
and then when they agreed to those, the administration wanted more and took
this farther. So, you know, there's a dispute about the scope of this.

Also, a big problem for the Democrats and, actually, in honesty, some
Republicans, was that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gets new power in the
way this is set up. And, of course, Mr. Gonzales is not a favorite on
Capitol Hill, and they did not want to give him this.

DAVIES: What new power does he get?

Mr. HULSE: My understanding of this is that he and the director of national
intelligence sort of jointly decide where this wiretapping can occur, or at
least sign off on it. You know, I'm sure they don't make the basic decision.
And this is happening without judicial review.

DAVIES: Yeah, you know, it's just so puzzling, because the laws obviously
have to be written on paper in English in black and white, and yet it's still
not exactly clear what...

Mr. HULSE: Well, it's a classified program, and you can't really tell what
they're doing. And they're talking, you know, about Internet and voiceover
Internet protocol and, you know, things that are way beyond me, obviously.

DAVIES: All right, but the upshot is that the administration gets more power
to conduct surveillance without warrants than it had before Congress acted,
right?

Mr. HULSE: Right. Because of the objections that had been raised to the
program. Now, I don't know if, you know, at the origination of this program,
whether or not they were doing this, and then were stopped, but they
definitely had been stopped somewhere in the interim and now do have new
power, correct.

DAVIES: Well, one of the big things that Congress wanted to get done and at
least enacted legislation about is ethics reform. There'd been a whole series
of scandals over the past few years. Let's go through some of the areas of
concern that Congress tried to address in this ethics and lobbying bill and
see how well it met the task. First of all, disclosure about what lobbyists
do, the kind of money they raise. How far did the law go in addressing the
abuses of lobbyists?

Mr. HULSE: Well, they've got the main thing that they aimed at, which was
bundling. Now, it was watered down somewhat from what they had originally
proposed. This is a kind of a inside Washington trick where lobbyists collect
money from a series of people, you know, obviously there's limits on
individual contributions, but one lobbyist will go and collect from partners
or people at fund-raisers, and then deliver a bundle, literally, is what they
call it, a bundle of checks, so then you call this bundling. There's been no
previous disclosure of this practice. The complaint about it was that it
gives one person, really, the ability to deliver money above the individual
contribution limit and, you know, you can get special influence that way.

So they have set it up so that there's disclosure once a lobbyist exceeds
$15,000 in a six-month period, the congressman or the person running for
office at that point, senator, too, will have to file a report with the
Federal Election Commission disclosing who that person in. So, you know, they
got it. The lobbying bill overall, there's a lot of complaints, you know,
that it was watered down, didn't go far enough. And then on the other side
that it does too much. But this was a pretty significant piece of
legislation. If you go through it provision by provision, there's some
serious new things in there, and revolving-door divisions that's probably
going to cause some people to leave the Hill this year before it takes effect,
really.

DAVIES: Let's get to that in a second, but just to be clear about the
bundling thing.

Mr. HULSE: Mm-hmm.

DAVIES: It is still legal for a lobbyist to go out and collect 40 checks from
their friends and deliver it to a candidate, but now it must be disclosed, so
you know who's wielding that influence?

Mr. HULSE: Yes, that's true. And we'll see how that all works and how they
set up the disclosure. There was a difference of opinion. Originally, the
lobbyist was going to have to disclose it as part of the lobbying disclosure
process. Now it'll be up to the member of Congress through the FEC. And
there'll be some wrinkles there, obviously. But it will be a new disclosure.
Actually, this bill has a lot of new disclosure and databases, public
databases. So, in some ways, it wasn't that it stopped practices, but what
the bill's trying to do is make both the lobbyists and the lawmaker disclose
further and make those disclosure reports more easily publicly available.
Right now you have to go, in some cases, to an office in the Capitol. I mean,
normal person isn't going to do that.

DAVIES: So citizen watchdog groups and bloggers can mine this stuff and...

Mr. HULSE: Yeah, I think there's a real big, new potential for that. One of
the groups that worked on this--I think the name of it is Sunlight Foundation,
and that's their big push is for disclosure, you know, and then people can do
with it what they will. And I do think that, you know, this will take years,
really, to move into effect. But I do think that there's going to be a lot
more googling through these databases, really.

DAVIES: Now, tell us what the law did in terms of addressing these issues
about interaction between lobbyists and lawmakers and their staffs, the
people, you know, leaving Capitol Hill and going right into lobbying firms, in
some cases Congress people pressuring lobbying firms on who to hire. What did
it do about those issues?

Mr. HULSE: Well, the pressure in the lobbying firms, it banned that. That
goes back to the famous--or infamous, however you want to consider it--the K
Street project where Republicans, when they took control of the House in '94,
began to pressure associations and big firms downtown to hire Republicans. So
that practice is actually banned. If members of Congress or senior staff want
to negotiate to leave Congress, they're going to have to disclose who they're
talking to. In the Senate, they made the revolving door two years, so you
can't have lobbying contacts with people on the Hill for two years. And I
think that's going to be--there's a lot of unhappiness in the Senate over
that, really, because the House was able to stay at one year. There was a lot
of objections in the House, to making that tougher. So...

DAVIES: Help us understand that one provision. We're talking about people,
what, staff members who...

Mr. HULSE: Correct.

DAVIES: ...leave Capitol Hill then go to a lobbying firm. First of all, what
exactly is wrong with that, and how is it addressed here?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I think that they, you know, the traditional objection to
it is that you're immediately leaving Congress, or leaving your office, you're
the committee person say, you know, you're the chief committee council, and
that you're immediately going out and then you can turn around and use your
contacts, people that you just worked with very closely about, you know,
issues that you may have handled, and that you would then have an unfair
advantage and can kind of work things through.

DAVIES: And doesn't that arrangement also suggest that, you know, a private
interest might dangle in front of a staff member, `Hey, help us out with this
particular issue and you will get a nice fat job.'

Mr. HULSE: Well, I mean, I think that's what happens. That happened in the
Jack Abramoff scandal. I mean, people--he was basically, according to the
charges against him, he was basically sort of had people working in-house on
these committees with promises of, you know, full employment when they got out
and big money. So in a way they were kind of doing their future job while
they were doing their present job. So they want to ban that. The
one--interestingly, they've tightened up the contacts. You know, there were
some loopholes before that you couldn't talk maybe your office or your
committee. Now you're banned from full contact, lobbying contact, with people
on the Hill, lawmakers and staff. And they've increased the penalties, you
know, I think to $250,000 for a violation of that. So it's pretty serious
now, and I'm not sure people are going to risk it.

DAVIES: So it sounds like you think that there's some significant changes
here in the interaction between....

Mr. HULSE: Yeah, I mean, you know, we'll see. The people in Washington
always find a way around everything, you know? I think what they did was go
and look at some of the practices that have been a problem in the past few
years and try and rein them in. Now, whether or not they can actually do it,
or if there's going to be enforcement of it or all sorts of things, I've, you
know, I can't predict that. I do think that the bill has some potentially
tough provisions in it, and we'll have to see how they're enforced and carried
out, and how smart people are at getting around them.

DAVIES: We're speaking with chief congressional correspondent of The New York
Times, Carl Hulse. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with The New York Times
chief congressional correspondent Carl Hulse.

One of the areas of ethics reform that was a high priority was dealing with
earmarks, this strange practice by which Congress members can add millions and
millions of dollars in spending without ever having to even disclose that they
were, you know, the motivating party behind it. Pork handed out in silence,
if you will. How well did the act address that issue?

Mr. HULSE: You know, I think that's kind of a mixed bag. There's going to
be new disclosure of earmarks. And there already is, and we've seen it coming
out, you know, reports in the House so far listing all the earmarks. The
objection in the Senate from the conservatives was that the parliamentarian,
who was supposedly nonpartisan officer of the Senate, was going to be the one
to judge whether the earmarks had been properly disclosed in these bills or
not. That power was given to the majority leader, and I think the chairman of
the appropriate committee. You know, critics were saying that is obviously
going to lead to trouble.

But, on the other hand, there is significant new disclosure of these projects
and who's behind them. You know, there's always going to be some that don't
get disclosed. So in some ways it's like the databases that I was talking
about earlier that, you know, that the practice is going to continue, the
people are going to continue to do this, but at least there's a way now to see
who it is. You know, I've covered Capitol Hill for 20-some years, and before
you really would struggle to even identify what the earmarks were in these
bills. They were written in such a way that you could not really tell what
they were or who they were. It would sometime take weeks to figure it out.
Now we'll get a list of these.

Actually, and the Times had a story over the weekend that, oddly enough, this
has already driven up earmarking, because people are trying to get, you know,
they see what other people are getting, say, `Hey, I need to get some of
that.' So it always has the unintended consequences and, you know, it could
turn out to cause more earmarking. Members have said, you know, one of the
reasons they don't like to disclose earmarks is because then the people that
they didn't get them for come and complain to them. So we'll have to see how
it works. But there is new disclosure.

DAVIES: One of the other areas that the reform dealt with was additions and
holds on legislation which senators and Congress people were then able to
effectually, without anybody knowing it--and again, this is one things that I
think, just as a citizen, is really shocking, that people can add things to
laws kind of in the middle of the night, and nobody knows who added it, and
they can also, I guess in the Senate, at least, put an anonymous hold on a
legislation, which would delay or even kill something. And again, leave no
fingerprints. Has this issue been dealt with?

Mr. HULSE: Yeah, well, it's funny. You know, these are two things that are
sort of buried in the bill, but that I personally think could potentially be
some of the biggest things. The dead of night provisions, which is what
they're called up here, where in the final conference report--I know Congress
is complicated, but at the end of the process and the House and the Senate get
together and work out the final bill, a lot of times like right before it
comes back to a final vote, they would stick in a provision that nobody knew
about, and the only way you could get it out was to destroy the whole bill.

Now, in the Senate, you'll be able to challenge those specific provisions.
That is actually--it sounds obscure and wonky, but actually it has some
potential to be a big deal, so that's going to be very interesting to see how
it plays out. I don't think people have quite gotten the potential
ramifications of that.

Holds, of course, are just a great Senate institution in a way, because
they're so bizarre. But, you know, if there's a bill that comes along or a
nomination, particularly, and a member doesn't like it, he just call over the
cloakroom and say he's got a hold on the bill, and that doesn't necessarily
lead to the identity of that person becoming known. I actually wrote a story
about this last week and got into some of the funny names for...

DAVIES: Right.

Mr. HULSE: ...for the holds when you call over. And if you put a hold on
some bill because you want to negotiate, that's called the "Mae West" hold,
because, you know, to `come up and see me sometime' and we'll talk about that.
Then there's the "choke" hold, which was meant to kill the bill entirely. And
then the "rotating" hold, which is a favorite of mine, where critics or
opponents switch from person to person so you can't really identify who's
doing it. So now, under this bill, there's still loopholes, but at least
within six days of putting the hold on, six days of the session, you have to
file a little piece of paper that'll then be printed in the Congressional
Record saying why you've got the hold on the bill and who you are. And, you
know, that's new. These have been going on for about a half a century, and
lot of times you'd never know who's putting the hold on.

Senator Tom Coburn has got quite a few holds over in the Senate right now, but
he told me that he wasn't going to be deterred by this. He doesn't care if
people know he's got the hold on it. But if, you know, if there's a situation
where you've got, in the Congressional Record, you know, dozens of holds, I
think it will probably make people less inclined to do it.

DAVIES: So we actually--some of our legislators actually face the prospect of
their official actions on legislation being public?

Mr. HULSE: Yeah. I know that's hard to get a handle on.

DAVIES: Overall, how would you grade this effort at reform?

Mr. HULSE: I would say that--I think it's going to be tougher and more
effective than people initially are giving it credit for. There's a lot of
things in this bill, you know, conventions, which are notorious places for
lobbyists wining and dining members of Congress and, I have to concede,
journalists, and that's going to be tougher under this bill. You know,
there's little things. Now there's provisions that people have been trying to
get through for years on various years, couldn't get them through alone. You
know, there's electronic filing of campaign finance reports in the Senate,
which a bill which had been subject to an anonymous hold. So...

DAVIES: Right.

Mr. HULSE: You know, they did get--they've got some things done. My concern
would be that there's always a way around these things, and people will work
hard to find them and, you know, get paid a lot of money to figure out a way
to do it, so. But I think it's probably better than most people think.

DAVIES: Carl Hulse is chief congressional correspondent for The New York
Times. He'll be back in the second half of the show. I'm Dave Davies, and
this is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Dave Davies, filling in for Terry Gross.

Congress has adjourned for the summer, having enacted a new ethics and
lobbying law and new electronic surveillance guidelines. Today we're talking
about the substance, politics and partisan atmospherics of congressional
action with Carl Hulse, chief congressional correspondent for The New York
Times.

Well, let's talk about Iraq. I mean, probably the most dramatic event in
recent months was the all night debate in the Senate, cots brought in for
senators, not so widely used, I gather. And this sort of seemed to be a
reflection of where Congress is, which is Democrats have a majority for
opposing the war, but not a strong enough majority to do anything about it.

Mr. HULSE: Yeah. That's true. And basically the, you know, throughout the
year--the Democrats sort of started out at a point where they didn't think
they would be able to do anything at all. But as they saw that the public was
siding with them, they kept pushing away on Iraq. But they just never had the
votes to do it. Of course, in the supplemental, they did eventually get a
timeline for withdrawal in the first version of the bill, which the president
then vetoed, and the Democrats backed away, and sent the money to the
president. They just still have not been able to assemble a strong majority
in the Senate, or 60 votes is what you need for almost anything, to enact a
timeline. In the House, they put off tough votes on Iraq. They could've done
it, really, they could've had a series of votes Friday and Saturday, even when
they were trying to rush through at the end, the defense spending bill was up,
but they chose purposefully not to do that.

DAVIES: Why did they do that?

Mr. HULSE: Because at this point, it just seemed like they were going
to--they had decided to wait until September. Obviously there's this report
coming back from General Petraeus and the ambassador there. They think that
that could be a turning point. There's also a political calculation here.
They didn't want to take votes on provisions and proposals that would give
Republicans the ability to go home over this next month and say, `Well, we
didn't want a timeline, but I have voted to force the president to come up
with a plan for withdrawal in the event we have to do it.' So there was a
real, distinct political calculation like, `Well, let's not give them
anything. Let's go home. Let them go home, hear from their voters.' There's
a big anti-war activist program going on the next few weeks in all the
districts of these swing Republicans, and they're really going to try and put
the heat on them, and then hopefully, when they come back in September, others
will be ready to join them.

DAVIES: You know, you hear Republicans accusing the Democrats of manipulating
the process so as to suppress votes on measures that they say would be
meaningful steps towards a new direction in Iraq. The Democrats, of course,
view these measures as nothing more than kind of political cover for the
Republicans. Are the things the Republicans want votes on really new
directions for Iraq?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I think that they would, you know, they're sort of halfway
measures if you would compare them up against a Democrat. There's no formal
plan for withdrawal. Probably the most popular one in the Senate is just a
plan that would incorporate the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group,
which, you know, would suggest to the administration you take a series of
steps that lead to conditions for a withdrawal next year, obviously. And that
has bipartisan support, would've gotten a lot of votes, but the Democrats say
it's a step backwards because you're not really requiring the president to do
anything.

The other plan in the House that would've gotten a lot of votes was one that
just says that the administration has to, within 60 days, come up with a plan
for withdrawal. There was a chance some of--they almost put that on the floor
at the end, but they didn't quite do it. And Democrats just think that falls
short. But there is something to the Republican charge that Democrats didn't
allow votes that would've gotten a lot of bipartisan support. And there were
some Democrats who were unhappy with that, as well, but that's the way it
played out.

DAVIES: And it seems like the Democrats want to hang this albatross of
support for Bush's war around the Republicans' neck for the summer, right?

Mr. HULSE: Yeah, correct. Especially, you know, in that, say, Minnesota,
you know, where Norm Coleman is up for re-election in a state that there's a
strong anti-war sentiment, you know, and that there's a big program up there
to keep the heat out of him. So around the country you'll see this group
called Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, I think the name of it is. You
know, they've got all sorts of events planned and they'll be pushing them.

DAVIES: Well, let's talk about Alberto Gonzales, the man of the hour on
Capitol Hill. You know, for six months, Congress has been investigating the
firings of US attorneys. Gonzales has been worked over thoroughly in
Congress. I guess he sent some letters last week clarifying earlier testimony
that was regarded as misleading. We have Karl Rove ignoring a congressional
subpoena to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee, and some members are
talking about contempt of Congress proceedings and special prosecutors. Give
us a sense of where this stands now. Are we going to continue to see this
battle escalate?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I think it'll continue in some ways. I think the
Democrats, and even some Republicans, are frustrated because it seems to them,
no matter what they do or say or complain or show, that Mr. Gonzales is going
nowhere and he's got the president's support. And they just cannot dislodge
him. As I said earlier, his name figured very prominently in the House debate
Saturday on the FISA change, on the eavesdropping change, because they're so
unhappy with him. I do think that this will continue to play out. You know,
really, the last resort is impeachment. You've heard some people start to
talk about it, but I just don't think Democrats want to go there.

I do think that the fight over executive privilege will continue to play out,
but it's, you know, once it gets in the courts, it's one of things--and this
is what Senator Specter says all the time--that, you know, it'll just outlive
the administration. You can't really get anywhere that way. Senator Specter,
the Republican from Pennsylvania, senior Republican on Judiciary, still keeps
trying to work a deal where they could get some of this testimony in a
compromise with the administration. But the administration, of course, you
remember is insisting on interviews of the key players without a transcript,
and no one in Congress is going to go for that.

DAVIES: How much is this battle over, you know, an important issue, potential
political interference in criminal prosecutions, how much is this battle
affecting the other work of Congress, just in terms of distraction, time
spent, politics?

Mr. HULSE: I think it is, I think it's a distraction, no doubt about it. I
think that it was actually--I mean, it spilled over in a major way into this
FISA dispute, and that shows you sort of the practical implications of these
kind of fights. I do think it's a distraction.

DAVIES: That's the electronic eavesdropping...

Mr. HULSE: Correct, yeah. And, you know, and because of this dispute, made
it much more difficult to get that accomplished, and, you know, Congress can
always find time to do what they really want to do, but there's no doubt that
this is taking up some of the oxygen.

DAVIES: We're speaking with New York Times chief congressional correspondent
Carl Hulse. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Announcements)

DAVIES: If you're just joining us, we're speaking with The New York Times
chief congressional correspondent Carl Hulse about what Congress got done and
didn't get done before it left for its August recess.

Well, one thing that did happen was an energy bill. This is a big issue, with
global warming and gas prices being so high. The president doesn't much like
this bill, and a lot of Democrats are disappointed with some aspects of it.
What did Congress get done here?

Mr. HULSE: Well, the interesting thing about this bill, to me, is that
it's--Nancy Pelosi, it's a huge priority with her. Her name is on the bill in
the House, and she's making this a major issue. The House on Saturday passed
this energy bill, which really concentrates on energy efficiency in some
respects, and, you know, a lot of new standards along those lines. But the
big vote in the House was to add this provision that will require utility
companies to use, I think it's up to 15 percent, of renewable fuels over X
number of years, which would cut back on their usage of coal and natural gas
and that sort of thing. So that got in in a surprisedly easy vote, and then
the bill passed with fairly good margin.

So that, they will now go into conference with the Senate, which passed an
energy bill that had the auto mileage standards in it that have been tough to
get through Congress for the past 20 years or so because of the power of the
auto companies. So now when you go into conference, you have the possibility
of the final bill, including both the new auto mileage standards and the
renewable fuel standard for utilities, that's a big deal. I mean, that hasn't
happened before. And if that comes out that way and is passed, sent to the
president, you know, he probably--he's threatened to veto and probably would
veto it, I would think.

DAVIES: Now, you wrote in a piece a few weeks ago that there's really been a
sea change in Congress on this issue of fuel efficiency standards for American
cars, that the power of the auto industry simply isn't what it used to be.
Why not?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I think that people have just, for so long, listened to the
auto companies say, `We can't do this. We can't do this.' But now that they
see, you know, these advances with hybrids and, you know, battery-powered
cars, one of the--before that vote in the Senate, you know, they had a couple
of these experimental but useable cars that were parked across the street that
get like 150 miles a gallon. And I think people just are frustrated and feel,
`Come on, you have to be kidding me. All that's going on in America at this
point with technology and you can't build cars that get, you know, another 10
miles per gallon?' It just seems--to them, it just seems that the auto
companies need to step up to the plate at this point. I just--I think they've
lost patience.

DAVIES: And you said the president may veto this measure. What does he not
like about it?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I think that the, you know, obviously the sort of
conventional energy industry doesn't like it: coal and oil, natural gas.
There's also--the House would raise money for this program with taxes on oil
companies. So that right there is probably a nonstarter with the
administration. The Senate didn't do that part, but, you know, it's sort of a
new approach on energy, and I just don't think it'll fly at the White House.
And to be honest, there are Democrats in both the House and the Senate who
don't like it. You know, it's the old question of big oil and coal vs., you
know, some of this newer solar wind sources, and it's just a clash at that
level.

DAVIES: You know, I feel like we should give at least passing attention to
the issue of health care. I mean, there seems to be a growing feeling in this
country that the health care system just doesn't work. You've got Michael
Moore's movie being one powerful expression of that notion. And you got a
couple of states that have tried to experiment with expanding health insurance
for their citizens. Isn't pressure building on Congress to do something, and
what's going to happen?

Mr. HULSE: Yeah, I think that health care, you know, perhaps absent Iraq,
could be the biggest issue of 2008. Now, the big health care bill in Congress
right now is the Children's Health Insurance Plan, CHIP, SCHIP, it's called.
And that is going to be a big subject after the August break. Both the House
and Senate--this is part of the Democratic push at the end. Both the House
and the Senate passed expansions of that program to get more kids onto these
insurance plans, you know, the kids whose families aren't quite poor enough
for Medicaid but, you know, are having trouble getting their own health
insurance, working parents, that sort of thing.

Huge, huge fight. Very tense in the House. And the Democrats managed to push
it through, which is actually part of the reason that led to the Republicans
fighting them so hard on other things, because they really didn't like this
bill, and they got it through. The House version of this would finance this
through some reductions and in Medicare, I think for Medicare HMOs. Now, the
Senate had much more bipartisan bill clear there, and they financed their
expansion with tobacco tax increase. And so now these two bills are going to
have to get worked out. The president has also threatened to veto this bill,
but the Democrats think that if they can get a final bipartisan bill, you
know, that has maybe a veto-proof majority in the Senate--I don't know about
the House--through, that it's going to be tough for him and Republicans to say
that they were opposed to expansion of children's health care.

This was a really interesting vote in the House, though, because both sides
thought they got a victory. The Democrats thought that they were able to get
through a bill that expanded children's health care and was going to be seen
that way. Republicans really thought that the Democrats made a huge mistake
by passing this bill that has Medicare cuts in it, and they think that they're
going to be able to use it against them. And they were actually, you know, as
the vote was taking place on the House floor, waving goodbye at the Democrats
saying, `Well, you've made your fatal mistake here.' So it's really an
interesting thing when both sides thought that they had won.

So this will be a major issue for the rest of the year and is a big priority
of the Democrats.

DAVIES: Well, you know, expanding children's health insurance, as important
as it is, is just a piece of the national health care picture. And, you know,
given the acrimony that accompanied the debate over children's health care and
everything else, is there any chance that Congress will undertake a wider
effort at reform next year?

Mr. HULSE: I don't think so. I think this is it. The reason that the
Republican--you know, there'll be other incremental health care bills, but the
reason the Republicans and President Bush are opposed to this bill so strongly
is because they see it as a step towards national health care. So in some
ways, this is the political playing field for that fight right now. And I
think if they can get this through, that this would be their accomplishment.
I mean, the closer--once you get into 2008--you think it was hard to get
things done this year, wait till 2008. Right?

DAVIES: Right.

Mr. HULSE: Once you get into that, almost getting anything done is going to
be impossible.

DAVIES: Well, you know, when the Democrats control Congress, one of the
things they talked about was changing the atmosphere, you know, all of this
bitter partisanship that tends to govern debate there. From the cheap seats,
it doesn't look like it's gotten any better. Has it?

Mr. HULSE: Yeah, I think you can safely say that hasn't quite worked out the
way that they anticipated. It was a very ugly final few days in the House,
particularly, and it had been pretty ugly in the Senate a couple of weeks
before. The tensions on Capitol Hill are really bad right now. You know, I
can't say it's the worst ever or the worst I've ever seen. I've, you
know--but it's bad, and there's some reasons for it. One, the Democrats say
in the House, at the end, they really--they did accomplish a few things. They
were really jamming through, grinding it out, so to speak, this legislative
agenda. And they were running over the Republicans, and the Republicans got
mad over it.

So there was some really, really nasty fights on the floor, you know, stemming
from--there was a dispute late last Thursday over whether the Democrats tried
to gavel down a vote that the Republicans had actually won, and it spilled
over into all these privileged resolutions on the floor and calls for
investigation, and, you know, it's going to go on for a while. There's a lot
at stake here. The Republicans do not like being in the minority one bit, and
they're very frustrated. Now the question is, you know, does this really get
out to the public, and is it an issue with them? It's sort of processy, you
know. And if you're--if the Democrats are still getting some legislation
through, are people going to pay attention to complaints from Republicans who
did sort of the same things, and even worse in some cases, during the time
they were in charge? But it was really, really tense, no doubt about it.

DAVIES: It was expected when the Democrats won control of Congress that
congressional scrutiny of the administration would increase. Has this gone
about as you expected, and has it been an important development in public life
in Washington?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I think it's been probably about what we thought. And
that's what created this Gonzales situation in some respects, is because they
were able to take the complaints and the firings of these US attorneys and get
a real investigation going into it. With the Republicans running Congress, I
doubt if that would've gone anywhere, and, you know, we probably wouldn't be
talking about what we're talking about with the attorney general.

I do think that there's still--they haven't quite gotten caught up with the
oversight of just the executive branch in general, you know. Where else their
big problems. It's a huge, sprawling bureaucracy, and I haven't seen, you
know, sort of the stories turned up out of some of these other agencies that I
had hoped or expected would happen, you know, that have been going on that we
don't know about. I don't think that that means that the executive branch has
been operating perfectly. I think it's just going to--a matter of time for
Democrats to get into those areas.

DAVIES: Is there one area in particular that you'd like to see some change?

Mr. HULSE: Well, I, you know, it's just that you don't really know. I mean,
the oversight of the executive branch had been--I wouldn't say ignored. I
mean, the Republicans didn't totally ignore it, but they certainly weren't
aggressive about it over the past, you know, during the time of the Bush
administration. And you have to think that, with all that's gone on here,
that there are some problems that we just don't know about.

DAVIES: Well, Carl Hulse, thanks so much for speaking with us.

Mr. HULSE: Thank you.

DAVIES: Carl Hulse is chief congressional correspondent for The New York
Times.

Coming up, David Edelstein on "Interview," the new film directed by and
starring Steve Buscemi. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: David Edelstein reviews "Interview," the new film from
director-star Steve Buscemi
DAVE DAVIES, host:

The new film "Interview" is directed by Steve Buscemi, who also answers to
"Boo-shemmy." It's a two-character drama starring Buscemi and Sienna Miller.
Film critic David Edelstein has a review.

Mr. DAVID EDELSTEIN: "Interview" is an American remake of a film by Theo van
Gogh, the outspoken Dutch director who was murdered in 2004 by an Islamic
extremist. It's not politically incendiary, but it's dramatically charged.
It's a psychological duel to the death. Steve Buscemi plays Pierre Peders, a
war correspondent stuck doing puff pieces on celebrities. Sienna Miller is
Katya, the gorgeous, prime time TV soap goddess and horror film actress he's
assigned to talk to. She shows up very late to the trendy restaurant,
feigning ordinariness but radiating entitlement. He wears his contempt like a
boutonniere.

(Soundbite of "Interview")

Mr. STEVE BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) Katya.

Ms. SIENNA MILLER: (As Katya) The one and only.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) What kind of a name is that?

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) It's a Russian name. Katya.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) Were your parents Russian?

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) No, my mother is Dutch, and my father is...

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) Oh, what city? Where's she from?

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Amsterdam?

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) Wow, Amsterdam. Sin city.

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) I've never been there.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) You should go. I've been many times.

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Ah.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peters) Legal prostitution.

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Yeah.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peters) And your father, I'm sorry?

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Do you know anything about me at all? It's all
right.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) No, I mean, they sent me a brief but...

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) But you didn't read it? I mean, it's fine. You just
don't seem to really...

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) Well, no, I'd rather...

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Get to know me.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) Yeah.

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Right.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peders) I'm sorry, I--I have not seen any of your
films.

Ms. MILLER: (As Katya) Oh.

Mr. BUSCEMI: (As Pierre Peters) I know you. I guess I know you more by your
reputation.

(End soundbite)

Mr. EDELSTEIN: Cynical journalist meets star with fortress-like defenses in
sterile setting. That's most celebrity magazine interviews. But this one
goes from awkward to incredulous to hostile. She stomps out, so does he. And
then, through a series of contrivances, Pierre and Katya end up in her
spacious loft, where the cat-and-mouse games really begin.

I've seen a lot of two-character psychodramas in the theater and on screen,
and even the good ones can be a slog. But "Interview," which is co-written
and directed by Buscemi, is riveting as drama and cinema. The movie made me
remember a playwriting seminar I once took where we spent weeks breaking down
one masterpiece, Ibsen's "Rosmersholm," into dramatic beats, small units of
dialogue that end in sudden reversals or shifts in focus. The beats are the
heartbeats of the scene, and Buscemi understands them organically. He
chooses, like van Gogh, to shoot with three cameras, each coming in close so
that the audience is inside the character's relentless struggle for control of
the space, the rhythms, the flow of information true and false.

Because "Interview" begins with Pierre, because we know he's been through wars
and carries shrapnel scars, because we see the overprivileged Katya through
his eyes, we're on his side for much of the film. But as he grows more drunk
and devious, when he peeks at her private e-mails, our sympathies turn. Maybe
Katya isn't so vapid. Maybe her counteroffenses, the way she exploits her
beauty and celebrity, are a mark of sanity.

It's a little disappointing when "Interview" comes to a melodramatic head,
when there has to be a resolution, a hero and a villain, a winner and a loser.
The movie is more tantalizing when it's amorphous, when our sympathies teeter
back and forth between these two flawed people. But Buscemi's grip never
slackens. As an actor, he evinces a thick-lipped, clammy distaste that's
somehow magnetic. He's like a hip ghoul. And as a director, he gives Sienna
Miller a dream showcase.

I wonder if Miller came up short as Warhol darling Edie Sedgwick in the recent
biopic "Factory Girl" because, no matter how hard she tried and how terrific
she was in the big moments, she couldn't be a blank, a nonactress. She's a
stupendous actress. Her Katya is lazy but wily, and she's increasingly turned
on by the game she keeps insisting she doesn't want to play. "Interview" is a
danse macabre in which she's always on point.

DAVIES: David Edelstein is film critic for New York Magazine.

(Credits)

DAVIES: For Terry Gross, I'm Dave Davies.
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