This has also been posted over in GDP. Clark and Boxer cover a very wide range of issues. It was was such a pleasure to listen to them both discuss the issues in this kind of format. I'm so glad Boxer is my senator!
Mp3 or itunes download here:
http://www.securingamerica.com/ClarkCast 007 - A Conversation with Senator Barbara Boxer
April 23, 2006
Transcription by Melange
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: This is Wes Clark and I'm here today for the ClarkCast on Capitol Hill. I'm very honored to be joined by Senator Barbara Boxer from California. Barbara was elected to the US Senate in 1992 - it was the year of the woman.
Senator Barbara Boxer: That's right.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And what a senator she's proved to be. Before that she had 5 terms in the US House of Representatives and since joining Congress she's been one of the most powerful progressive voices. She's fought for women's rights; she's fighting for the environment, for education and homeland security among many other issues. Barbara, thanks so much for joining me today on this ClarkCast. But can I start by just asking you if you'll give the audience an insider's view of what's going on right now in the Senate? What are the issues and the legislation that you're focusing on right now?
Senator Barbara Boxer: Well the very big one, of course, continues to be the war in Iraq and what can we do because there is such a void of leadership at the administration. It seems like there's just a paralysis over there because the government has not yet been formed, the person who's trying to lead Iraq - al Jaafari - is just very controversial and frankly, I met with him and he's very weak and I think he's very willing to allow the unending presence of American troops to prop him up so…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: At the same time, my impression is the administration really doesn't know how to put together the right package of incentives and leverage and so forth to bring this political process to a close. Is that…
Senator Barbara Boxer: You're exactly right. And the fact is what is the leverage? The leverage is that we have all of our people there and we're getting hurt. There's got to be an end to this and by…if we were doing this the right way, we could exert the leverage but frankly when you have it be known there that Americans don't want al-Jaafari, when Bush doesn't want al-Jaafari, you just lift this guy up. This guy was falling.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly. We put him on a pedestal.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Yes, and we don't want him there but we have to do these things in a back-channel way. I've been on the Foreign Relations Committee for years and one thing I know is the Congress has a very special role to prod and push. The Executive Branch has to be smart about their diplomacy and a lot of it's back-channel.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly.
Senator Barbara Boxer: And they don't seem to know what they're doing so of course I would say, overhanging this whole Senate and the whole Congress and Washington DC is this pall of the war with no plan for success, no matter how many times they say it. So, there's no question that that's something that drives me everyday when I get up and I read about another American dying over there. So many of the deaths and the wounded have come from people from my state simply because we're such a large state.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: It's a terrible tragedy and I'm glad that you and all the other Democratic senators are seized with the issue because one of the things the American people still…I think there's people out there that don't understand that Democrats have not only strong opinions but great ways of leading this country on Foreign and Security policy. We can keep this country safe.
Senator Barbara Boxer: I agree. And, by the way, you personify that if I might say, General. I…your whole life has been spent really protecting America and you understand this. And there's such a difference between the rhetoric that you hear from the administration and their policies which are making us less safe. You know, they stand up and they scare the American people and yet do nothing about protecting our nuclear power plants from a terrorist attack, a chemical plant, the rails, even the air. They could do much more, but anyway…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And it's competence.
Senator Barbara Boxer: We could digress and have this whole ClarkCast about this.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I wanted to ask you. Didn't you come this morning from the ocean subcommittee? You're doing a lot of work on the environment, aren't you?
Senator Barbara Boxer: I did, yes. I'm very fortunate. I'm on two committees that deal with the environment. It really is my signature issue in many ways as well as women's health but one committee is the Environment and Public Works Committee where I'm really about to become the senior Democrat and, if things go well in the elections…let me just say Diane Feinstein and I will become the two…the first two Democratic women to head major committees. It would really be good, so anyone listening out there that cares about
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: That's wonderful. Listen, you and Senator Feinstein both have very strong ideas, very progressive ideas.
Senator Barbara Boxer: She would become head of the rules committee and I'd become head of EPW. The other committee I came from today is Commerce, that has as its jurisdiction the health of the oceans. And the issue we were discussing today has to be…deals with aquaculture which is farm-raised fish.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Now, one of the things about this job and as you got into politics yourself. You know.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You learn everything, right?
Senator Barbara Boxer: Running for president, you've got to know about farm-raised fish and the war in Iraq and you know, a woman's right to choose and all the rest.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I'm very worried about the oceans because I've been doing some of my research on it and I think you're…I don't know how you found it but all of our fish whether they're farm-raised or not in the ocean are affected by some degree of rising acidity due to the carbon absorbtion, I guess, into the oceans, right?
Senator Barbara Boxer: Yes. That as well as chemicals such as PCB's and things that are dumped in there that just don't dissolve.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Senator Barbara Boxer: So yes, and I mean, I think that the oceans…the health of the oceans is an indicator, sort of like the canary in the mine. If the oceans aren't safe and we're seeing fish that are contaminated, this is a direct link to us. And so we have to move on ocean safety. One of the interesting issues about aquaculture which I won't go into, it'll put people to sleep on your ClarkCast and I don't want to do that.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: No, a lot of us eat salmon and we're very concerned about salmon because unless it says 'king salmon from Alaska' or 'wild salmon' it is farm-raised, Atlantic salmon.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Yes, and I will say this, there's a move to vastly expand these fish farms. The administration is answering to the commercial needs but in my view they haven't really listened to the cautionary voices of scientists who are saying if you're not careful, you could do a lot of bad things because a lot of these farm fish escape, okay, and they are carnivores. This is much more than you need to know, but then they eat the food and the wild fish go down in population. It's a very complicated matter and what we have to be is very careful about aquaculture but the whole issue of the environment is crashing down around us. Why; because I have to say since the Bush administration came in, they've been doing nothing but rolling back - rolling back water quality standards, rolling back air standards and at the end of the day…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: There wasn't somebody about to be appointed the other day to an administrative position in EPA who's actually an enemy of environmental protection?
Senator Barbara Boxer: Well I think that's certainly a very clear way to put it. Mr. Wehrum has been involved in almost all the rollbacks. We have proof that he sat down with industry, more of the same where industry is writing regulations and they are really, really endangering the health of the people. In California, we just learned that twice as many people as we thought are dying of air pollution-related cancer. We have…a child born in Los Angeles has a far greater chance of having a decreased lung capacity than in many of the clean air places. This is wrong. This is one country under God…one nation under God, indivisible. We better make sure that we know what we're doing here. So, this Mr. Wehrum…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: We can't take these protections for granted.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Well no, and they're rolling them back and they even go so far as to be so absurd. There was one particular regulation, a new source review which simply said if you're a polluting utility and you want to make a modification to your plant, then you need to show the Environmental Protection Agency that at the end of the day the air will not be worse, the air will be better because you'll make some modifications. Well, the Bush administration ruled, in a ruling that oh, this wasn't true, it doesn't apply to a modification, they can do whatever they want without making the air better. They went to court. The court literally said that their thinking was Humpty Dumpty, it turned everything on its head.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Senator Barbara Boxer: And a conservative court, at that. And it was unanimous. So they have gone too far and this Mr. Wehrum, who they're putting up as the Clean Air Deputy, he has just been involved in all this bad stuff.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: He's the guy that's behind the Clean Skies Initiative, so called and the rest of it, huh?
Senator Barbara Boxer: He is, and watch it when they name things 'Healthy Forest' and 'Clean Skies,' look behind the names. You know. It's not true.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well I've been very worried about the global warming and the lack of addressing it. I was up with Senator Clinton at the Clinton Global Initiative last September and we were on a panel together, talking about global warming and so forth and it struck me as we look at the dimensions of this and the consequences that are possible that this is not even an EPA problem. This is really a national security problem and it's so large that if you don't think of it in terms of the enormous consequences that can happen, you just can't muster the government or the popular resolve to do something about it. Do we have some initiatives now that you're supporting here in the Senate to help us get a better grip while we've still got this administration in office, but at least to put the legislation and ideas out there?
Senator Barbara Boxer: Senators McCain and Lieberman have been working now to try and raise the level of this issue to the place where senators will support at least some type of voluntary and "cap and trade" programs. I mean, these aren't the best, I think we can do better. But let me tell you what I'm working on. As everybody seems to now know, we're in a climate crisis. We're practically there and we're seeing the evidence of it and the warming occurs because the carbon dioxide gets trapped and it doesn't allow things to cool down. And this is…it affects everything. How many hurricanes we'll have. Look, look at the hurricane season. Over the long term when the oceans are warm, they feed this type of…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Senator Barbara Boxer: You know, if you have a hurricane that's a certain level, you can handle it but once they get bigger and bigger and bigger, we know what happens - even with the Army corps not doing what they should have in Katrina.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And she's looking at me when she says “Army corps”…
Senator Barbara Boxer: No, I did not.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: …and I love those Army guys but as we both know, it takes a lot of leadership to get the Army working in the right direction and one of the things we've seen in this administration is they just haven't faced reality about so many of these issues.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Right and I have a request. See, now you're supposed to be interviewing me, but if you become either president, vice president or secretary of defense, or secretary of state, will you please make sure that these army colonels and generals that are assigned to these communities stay longer than just a couple years? Because what I've experienced in my communities at home when I was a local elected official, you get to know one general there who understands the entire flood control situation and then he comes to you and says I'm leaving, I'm going somewhere else. So will you work on that?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I will. It's called the up or out policy but we are trying to…in the Army, we're very conscious of this because it is difficult. These people rotate through assignments so rapidly and I know my friend General Schoonmaker who's the Army Chief is trying to stabilize them now.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Oh good, because seriously what happens is there are so many nuances to the entire flood control situation but obviously if we get to global warming, we won't be facing the kind of crises that we could otherwise face. Now the area that I'm trying to work on; it's a…I think it's a good one and I'm just starting to put it together which is, you know if you look at what the causes of this carbon dioxide are, about a third of it is from automobiles, from the transportation sector.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Right.
Senator Barbara Boxer: That's a big chunk of it and it isn't as if we don't have technology. I mean, not to brag in any way, but this is more of an advertisement. I drive a hybrid car and I not only have one, I have three because I have two in California and I have one in Washington and you know what? They are fantastic and I get over 50 miles to the gallon so I just sort of smile and wave at the gas station. I mean, this is something that has helped us, our family. And yes, to all you men listening out there and to the good general, these cars have pickup.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well that sounds good.
Senator Barbara Boxer: They do have pickup. Because the first question I'm always asked by guys in California is 'oh, but does it have pickup?' It does.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And that's a safety issue in California isn't it? <laughter>
Senator Barbara Boxer: Well, whatever it is, it's a guy issue. But it's fine. I accept it; I don't fight it. The fact is these cars are great because they go back and forth from gas to electric.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So what do we need to do to get American manufacturers to produce them so we can buy American hybrids?
Senator Barbara Boxer: I'll tell you what we can do and I'd love you to take this on. We need to help to create a market for these cars and one very easy way is for this president or future president to just say 'here's an executive order, from now on as I replace the cars in the fleet, they're going to be hybrid.'
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: You know, that's a great idea.
Senator Barbara Boxer: And I've asked the president this and he hasn't answered me.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: These big Lincoln Towncars, why can't they make a Lincoln Towncar hybrid? That would be a great symbol for America, wouldn't it?
Senator Barbara Boxer: They can. Ford is making the SUV's now and they're getting in the 30-range, 35, 38. This is good. So if you create a market and I found out just today because I was getting ready for the ClarkCast that the fleet of the federal government is 400,000 cars. Now, obviously they're not going to replace that all in one but that doesn't even count the fleets of the states, the local governments…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And they're all American.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Yes and we can then say we have this hybrid technology, let's go. My own view is if you start creating the market here, it can drive. I mean, that's what happened with the internet. It started with the government…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly. We can created the technology and we can be the world leaders in the technology because if you turn Americans loose on it, we're still the best in the world at technology.
Senator Barbara Boxer: But the incentives are great and the incentive of a big market like this is huge. It's just like, to switch gears for a minute, another favorite topic, the Medicare prescription drug plan. This administration won't let Medicare use its leverage and its power and its consumer strength of 40 million…no, isn't it? Yes, 40 million Americans on Medicare. If you sit down across the table from a Pfizer executive and say 'look sir, I love your products, they're all great but they're not going on the list until you cut a third off your profit'
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Should be able to do that.
Senator Barbara Boxer: We do it for the VA, for the Pentagon
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly.
Senator Barbara Boxer: So these are the things we have. And the thing that I guess I most regret about this presidency is the lack of leadership that this president has in terms of setting the example for all of us. It's so easy to do. So I want to work on this. I want to see if I can push legislation that would say from now on every new car has to get good mileage when we invest in it here.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think that's a great place to start.
Senator Barbara Boxer: It's good.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: I think that's a great place to start and I hope you'll continue your strong leadership on all the issues associated with Kyoto, and the climate change measures that are big. I think the cap and trade thing is, it may not be great, but it's the best we can do right now.
Senator Barbara Boxer: It's a start.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And, you know, the other thing is I think we also…I hope we'll be able to do more in the way of climate research because there are still people who don't fully appreciate what's happened to the climate. There's still a 'well, you know it's hot every year and cold every year and every year is different' and they don't see it. There's a wonderful movie made by the Discovery Channel called Miracle Planet - three one-hour segments that talk about earth's climate and the changes. You've probably seen this and it…
Senator Barbara Boxer: I haven't seen it but I have to tell you, it ought to be required for our kids and required for senators. I think you're right; we have to explain this. People think global warming is just about warming. It's also about extremes of weather…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly…and energy in the atmosphere and…
Senator Barbara Boxer: Energy in the atmosphere which triggers these storms and so on and so forth. Look, I'm not an expert in it, that's for sure. I'm doing my best to learn. I have wonderful people that teach me, but I think what we need to say to people sometimes, instead of saying “global warming,” I think call it a “climate crisis” and it's going to impact us. How? It's going to cause snow to melt and we won't the polar bears anymore, we won't have skiing anymore…
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Plus our insurance programs for businesses and so forth, our government-backed insurance program is bankrupt after Katrina as I understand it. So we've got to put more money in…
Senator Barbara Boxer: That's a real example for us and of course it gets more deadly than that because they're talking about you know, really horrific things that can happen to our shoreline and the rest and we…because if we don't have snow-capped mountains, what's going to happen without water?
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Exactly.
Senator Barbara Boxer: You know, how can we handle this? So we've got work to do but I'm so glad you're out there.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: And you're doing it and we're so proud of you, Barbara.
Senator Barbara Boxer: And you know what? I love your voice. I love your voice out there General. I want you to keep going, I love what you're doing and I'm just proud to know you.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well thanks. We're proud of you too. You're a great United States Senator and a great voice for reason in this country and I think everybody who's listening has gotten an idea of the range of the issues that you're working up here on a daily basis. Thank you so much for taking time from your busy schedule today in the United States Capitol to be here with us and all these folks listening on this ClarkCast. Thank you so much.
Senator Barbara Boxer: Thanks to you.
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Thank you.
Thanks for taking the time to listen to the ClarkCast. To learn more about Senator Boxer's efforts to bring new leadership to Washington, please visit her website at www.BarbaraBoxer.com and please join the discussion on this ClarkCast at www.securingamerica.com/ccn. Have a safe and productive day. Make a difference somewhere.
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