CQ Transcriptwire
SPEAKERS: GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, HOST
DR. RICHARD BESSER, ACTING DIRECTOR, CDC
SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES KATHLEEN SEBELIUS
SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY JANET NAPOLITANO
SEN. PATRICK J. LEAHY, D-VT.
SEN. ORRIN G. HATCH, R-UTAH
[*] STEPHANOPOULOS: Good morning and welcome to “This Week.”
Justice Souter retires.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DAVID H. SOUTER, ASSOCIATE JUSTICE, U.S. SUPREME COURT: I find the workload of what I do sufficiently great that I undergo a sort of annual intellectual lobotomy.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: As President Obama prepares to make his mark on the Supreme Court, our headliners are the senators who must ratify his choice, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy, and its longest-serving Republican Orrin Hatch.
Then, swine flu continues to spread. Has the worst passed or is it still to come? We’ll ask the federal team in charge.
And Senator Specter switches sides.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ARLEN SPECTER, D-PA.: I’ve decided to be a candidate in the Democratic primary.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: What will it mean for Obama’s agenda and the GOP’s future? That and the rest of the week’s politics on our roundtable with George Will, Gwen Ifill of PBS, Jerry Seib of the Wall Street Journal and Paul Krugman of the New York Times. And as always, the Sunday funnies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JAY LENO: See all those people on the news walking around wearing those surgical masks, huh? Suddenly Michael Jackson not so crazy, huh? Yes.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: By Friday, David Souter’s wish to quit the Supreme Court had become Washington’s worst kept secret, but President Obama stage-managed a bit of a surprise that afternoon when he crashed the daily briefing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: If there’s a job to do, you got to do it yourself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: After thanking Justice Souter for his service, the president described his ideal justice -- a person of intelligence, excellence, integrity and empathy.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
OBAMA: I will seek someone who understands that justice isn’t about some abstract legal theory or a footnote in a casebook. It is also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people’s lives. Whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Which brings us to our headliners, Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and its former chairman, Republican Orrin Hatch.
Gentlemen, welcome to you both. And Senator Hatch, let me begin with you. What did you make of the criteria the president laid out?
HATCH: Well, it’s a matter of great concern. If he’s saying that he wants to pick people who will take sides -- he’s also said that a judge has to be a person of empathy. What does that mean? Usually that’s a code word for an activist judge.
But he also said that he’s going to select judges on the basis of their personal politics, their personal feelings, their personal preferences. Now, you know, those are all code words for an activist judge, who is going to, you know, be partisan on the bench.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Now, he did also say he wants someone who respects the rule of law and the limits of the judicial role...
HATCH: He did say that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So it sounds like you’re saying that you think there’s a tension between following the law and following your feelings when you’re a judge.
HATCH: Well, I don’t think there should be a litmus test or any set of litmus tests when you pick people for the high court, and I suspect that the president understands that. He’s a very bright guy, charismatic, intelligent, likable, and I’m hoping that he’ll pick somebody of great dimension.
We all know he’s going to pick a more liberal justice. Their side will make sure that it’s a pro-abortion justice. I don’t think anybody has any illusions about that. The question is, are they qualified? Are they going to be people who will be fair to the rich, the poor, the weak, the strong, the sick, the disabled, and yet give justice to those who may not be...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Chairman Leahy, let me bring you in on this, because what Senator Hatch is saying there I’ve heard from a lot of other conservatives, this fear that the president’s focus on empathy is a code for bringing a judicial activist to the court.
LEAHY: I’ve known President Obama long enough. He doesn’t need to use code words. He speaks very plainly and very directly. I think that’s why he won such a resounding victory in November.
I talked with President Obama shortly before he did that press conference, and I think I have a pretty good sense out of the meeting with him when I returned to Washington from Vermont -- I have a pretty good sense of what he has in mind for a justice. What I would argue...
STEPHANOPOULOS: What is it?
LEAHY: What I would argue...
HATCH: I would like to know that, Pat.
STEPHANOPOULOS: What I would argue is you walk into the Supreme Court, over the doorway there is a great big piece of Vermont marble, and engraved on it, it says “equal justice under law.” That’s what you want to have.
We’ve had a very activist court. We had an activist court that made a decision that allowed employers to covertly discriminate against women so that women wouldn’t get paid equally. We in the Congress reversed that with a law, in fact, the first law that President Obama signed into law. I think he wants to have somebody to treat people all the same, whether they’re Republicans, or Democrat, men, women, or whatever they may be.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me press on that a little bit, Senator Leahy, because you have spoken with the president about it. I just want to know a couple of things about that. Number one, did you recommend any specific candidates to the president? And number two, because others have not been shy about recommending a potential candidate. Your colleague Senator Schumer has said the president should consider -- highly consider a Latino choice. I think there is a wide expectation throughout Washington that the president will pick a woman. Is that your understanding, and does President Obama risk a backlash if he doesn’t pick a woman?
LEAHY: Well, I think one of the reasons why the president and I get along well is that we have conversations; you don’t hear about them. You don’t read about them afterward.
I will make recommendations, some specific recommendations to him. I’ve also recommended that he sit down with both the Republican and Democratic leadership and talk about this.
Now, ultimately he’s the one that has to make the choice of who he wants to nominate. We in the Senate then have to decide whether we will consent to that nomination, but I think he’s eager to seek the advice of senators of both parties. I think he has some very -- some people that he would like to see -- the type of people he’d like to see.
Remember, he was a constitutional law professor.
STEPHANOPOULOS: I do remember that. Should it be a woman, Senator?
LEAHY: I would like to see certainly more women on the court. Having only one woman on the Supreme Court does not reflect the makeup of the United States. I think we should have more women. We should have more minorities.
I would like to see more people from outside the judicial monastery, somebody who has had some real-life experience, not just as a judge (inaudible) insulated...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me bring Senator Hatch back in on this, because there are a lot of names that are being bandied about right now. Three of the most prominent names that are being mentioned are two appeals court judges. Sonia Sotomayor, she serves out of New York. Also, Judge Diane Wood, serving out of Chicago, another member of the appeals court. And the new solicitor general, Elena Kagan.
And some conservatives have already taken off on these choices. Let me show one. Wendy Long from the Judicial Confirmation Network says Obama could make it even more of a far-left judicial activist court for a long time to come if he appoints radicals like Diane Wood, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. A new justice in this mold would just entrench a bad majority for a long time.”
Do you share that view?
HATCH: Well, I share the view that he should not appoint radicals to the court and I share the view that he should appoint somebody who basically will obey the law...
STEPHANOPOULOS: But are those women radicals?
HATCH: ... and not put their own policy preferences into law. And that’s what bothers me about some of the comments that the president has made. He’s bright enough to know that those comments basically indicate that politics, preferences, personal preferences and feelings might take the place of being impartial and deciding cases based upon the law, not upon politics.
STEPHANOPOULOS: All three of those women were confirmed to their current positions with the support of many Republicans, including you. Are they radicals?
HATCH: I don’t think they’re radicals, but there’s no question that they are on the far left of the spectrum. And to be honest with you, I don’t expect the president to pick somebody in the center or on the far right. But, you know, it would be a slam dunk if he picked somebody who was center-left like Souter. Souter became very liberal, but he also stood for a lot of principles.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You famously said -- you suggested to President Clinton that he should pick Justices Breyer and Ginsburg. You wrote about that in your book.
HATCH: Right.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you have any recommendations for President Obama?
HATCH: No, I’m not going to make any recommendations unless he calls me. If he calls me, I’d be happy to sit down with him. We get along well. I’ve been out to the White House a number of times. I have a great admiration for him and his abilities. I hope that he will pick somebody who will, like I say, not put their own personal predilections into law, but follow the law and do what really is right.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator Leahy, let me bring you back in on this. You heard what Senator Hatch said there. Meanwhile, on the left of your party, you’re hearing a lot of liberals say the president shouldn’t pay any attention to the Republican Party on this pick. He should pick a full-throated liberal, someone who is really going to move the court. One example comes from Nan Aron of the president of the Alliance for Justice. She says, “Even before Senator Arlen Specter announced he was changing parties and Al Franken’s Minnesota victory was clear, Republicans in Congress were losing strength as fewer voters identified with their agenda. They should not be allowed to stand in the way of a nominee who will uphold the Constitution.”
Do you think the president should follow that course? Probably will have 60 votes soon. Pick someone who can get there on Democratic votes alone?
LEAHY: It takes 51 votes to confirm somebody, and I would assume that -- we never filibuster justices of the Supreme Court. We don’t do it for...
STEPHANOPOULOS: You filibustered Justice Alito, didn’t you?
LEAHY: No. We don’t filibuster for either side, and so we have -- there’s going to be a vote, up or down. I fully expect that. I think the last time there was a kind of a successful filibuster was Abe Fortas, and that was a Democratic...
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Democrats did try to filibuster Justice Alito, if I remember correctly, sir.
(CROSSTALK)
LEAHY: There was a cursory vote that everybody knew would not succeed on the motion to proceed.
LEAHY: I mean, now we’re getting down into the weeds. The fact is, Justice Alito, I did not vote for him. Senator Hatch did. He got both Democratic and Republican votes, just as Chief Justice Roberts, whom I did vote for, got both Democratic and Republican votes.
The fact of the matter is, we will have an up-or-down vote on whoever it’s going to be, and I would hope that the president would go with his instincts.
Look what he’s done with his Cabinet. He’s had pretty darned good Cabinet choices, and I think he’s going to make a very good choice here.
You will hear a lot on the far right or the far left who will say who he should or shouldn’t go with. Remember, a lot of the left-wing groups picketed, actually picketed the Senate building that I’m in against me, because I was going to vote for David Souter. They said it would be terrible, the end of the world if we confirmed David Souter. Now those same groups think David Souter was a great justice.
The fact of the matter is that the president will make a good choice just as he has with his Cabinet.
STEPHANOPOULOS: He wants this in place by...
LEAHY: Then we have to vote for it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: He wants this in place by the first Monday in October, as you know, and that would mean that getting this done, he hopes, the White House hopes by the August recess. Is that possible?
LEAHY: Well, one, we certainly will have somebody in place. It would be irresponsible if we didn’t have somebody in place by the beginning of the October session.
I’ll decide when we’ll have the hearing on the person after they have been named and after I consulted with whoever -- maybe Orrin could tell me who is going to be the ranking member...
STEPHANOPOULOS: You set me up there, Senator. I want to bring Senator Hatch back in on this.
LEAHY: On the Republican Party. But I will consult with the Republican leadership as well as the Democratic leadership. I will set a date for this, but I want to make sure everybody has a chance to see who the president’s nominated and have a chance to see their background.
So, Orrin, tell me, who is going to be leading the Republicans?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Go for it, Senator.
HATCH: Let me just say one other thing. Yes, let me say one other thing...
(LAUGHTER)
LEAHY: It’s a good question.
STEPHANOPOULOS: We’re going to get an answer too.
HATCH: I’ll try and answer that, but what is interesting here is that President Obama himself voted against both Roberts and Alito. Now, these are two of the best nominees I’ve seen in my whole time here, and I have had an influence on everybody except Stevens, and so has my friend Pat.
And that worries me a little bit. Pat voted for Roberts. He did vote against Alito, and they did want to filibuster Alito, no question about that, and it was along that vein.
Now, I suspect that Grassley has first choice to become the ranking member on Judiciary.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You actually have first choice if you seek the waiver. You’re not going to seek the waiver?
HATCH: No, I do not -- well, no, of course not. But Grassley has first choice. Then Kyl if Grassley stays on Finance. And if Kyl stays in leadership, then Jeff Sessions . So any of those three could wind up being...
STEPHANOPOULOS: Are you expecting then Senator Sessions to be the ranking member?
HATCH: Well, I don’t know. I know that he and Senator Grassley are trying to work out something, and we’ll just have to see what happens. But I suspect any of those three will be just fine.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Terrific. Thank you both very much for your time this morning.
LEAHY: And I could work with -- I could work with any one of those -- any one of those senators. They’re long-time friends. We’ll work out things.
HATCH: Then why did you give me such a rough time, Pat, all those years?
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHANOPOULOS: You guys continue this off camera. We’re out of time right now. LEAHY: You and I worked out (inaudible).
(LAUGHTER)
STEPHANOPOULOS: And we are going to turn now to the swine flu. It continues to spread, but there are signs that the outbreak is smaller and less severe than first feared. Still, the government is warning against complacency.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNE SCHUCHAT, CDC: In the media, we’ve been hearing a little bit about we’re out of the woods, it looks like this is ending, and I want to say that while reports from Mexico are -- appear to be encouraging and some are cautiously optimistic, we can’t afford to let down our vigilance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: And with that, let me bring in the federal team in charge of this effort: the secretary of health and human services, Kathleen Sebelius ; Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano ; and the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Richard Besser.
And, Dr. Besser, let me begin with you. I know you guys don’t want to take anything for granted, but a lot of scientists who have been looking at this say there are signs that this virus is less potent, less deadly than past pandemics, and that some, older Americans especially, may have developed an immunity to this.
What can you tell us right now, your latest analysis of this virus?
BESSER: You know, what I can say is that we’re seeing encouraging signs. And that’s -- that makes us all very happy.
What we do when we get a virus, we look to see, does it relate to any other viruses? And then we look for things that are called virulence factors, those things that in the past have been linked to more severe disease.
And what we’ve found is that we’re not seeing the factors that were associated with the 1918 pandemic. We’re not seeing the factors that were associated with other H1N1 viruses. And that’s encouraging.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Does that mean it’s less likely to come back in a real strong way in the fall, as the 1918 virus did?
BESSER: We can’t say that. Every virus is new. And what it will do is new. And so you’re hitting a critical point. What will happen during this spring and summer? And I don’t think it’s time to let our guard down. I think we have to continue in an uncertain situation to be aggressive. And that’s what we’re doing.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary Sebelius, let me bring you in on this. Of course, this leads to the question of a vaccine. I know researchers are looking at it right now. Are you prepared to say we should move to full-scale production and distribution?
SEBELIUS: Well, what’s going on right now, George, are two things simultaneously. We know that seasonal flu, year-in and year- out, hits millions of Americans, 200,000 people end up in the hospital and about 36,000 people die every year.
So we are ramping up and accelerating the production of seasonal flu vaccine to make sure that we kind of clear the decks. At the same time, one of the first actions taken by the Department of Health and Human Services was to bring together the scientists: the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, along with the folks at Food and Drug Administration who have the oversight, with the manufacturers to begin the process to develop a vaccine for H1N1.
They’ve identified a virus. It’s being grown and tested as we speak. And ultimately the scientists will tell us whether or not production of that vaccine makes sense.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And isn’t there a trade-off there? I mean, you don’t want to switch to production of the H1N1 vaccine because that could crowd out the ability to produce the seasonal flu vaccine?
SEBELIUS: Well, the good news is we’re in the right seasonal time. We can accelerate the seasonal flu vaccine, which we’re doing right now, to be prepared and ready for what we know will hit this fall and winter.
At the same time, we are in the stages of growing the virus, testing it, and we can be ready to do both simultaneously. This isn’t an either/or.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary Napolitano, the government has given out guidance for the schools on what they should be doing. If someone, as I understand it, is infected in a school, there is more than one case in a school, the school should close for up to 14 days.
But you have not yet given out formal guidance on what offices, factories, and other workplaces should do. What should they be doing?
NAPOLITANO: Well, again, I think using common sense, obviously schools you give guidance on because that’s really a primary place where disease gets passed one to the next.
But we don’t want to shut down the production capacity of the country for a flu when that’s not necessary. What we have been telling the private sector, we’ve been having regular conference calls, whatever, through the private sector, is dust off your plans for how you deal with seasonal flu.
What do you do when you’re absenteeism rate goes up? And what do you do for telecommuting, for example? What do you do to make sure that if you have to restrict some production, you move it to some places -- or concentrate it in some places as opposed to others? You know, every business -- every business-owner has a different way of handling this.
The number one thing is for people who are sick not to go to work. Once they don’t go to work, we can begin the process of containing the spread of the virus.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And you have to get the balance right. And we’ve seen the variety of responses to the crisis. In Hong Kong, they closed off -- quarantined that entire hotel yesterday when there was on infection. We saw an example just the other day of a plane being grounded.
Is that an overreaction?
NAPOLITANO: You know, we take our guidance from the best that science can give us. And we have great scientists at the Centers for Disease Control. And what they told us was if you’re sick you should stay home. If you have a child who is sick, you should keep that child at home.
If you have sick children in a school, you should close that school. But that’s not to let all of the kids go to the mall, it’s to keep them all at home. And that’s the way you begin to mitigate the effect of the spread of this new flu.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Real commonsense standard.
And, Dr. Besser, let me come back to you now. You said we’re not out of the woods yet. We have to be on guard. But what are the signs you’re looking for to say, you know what, this isn’t as bad as we feared, we are going to get through this?
BESSER: A number of things we’re looking for. One is we’re looking for answer for why what we’re hearing coming out of Mexico looks so different from what we are seeing here initially. We’re starting to get some answers there.
Here, around the country, what we’re looking for is how easily does this spread? And what is the severity of disease? And we’re getting answers to that as well.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And it’s not spreading that easily, right?
BESSER: Well, it is spreading. It’s spreading quite easily. And we have 160 reported cases, 21 states, we expect today that we’re going to be confirming cases in far more states than that.
So it does spread very easily. The word out of New York City, where they had a school cluster is it spread very rapidly through that school. But what they were seeing was disease that was not that severe, and when it transmitted to people in the families, they were seeing disease that was not that severe.
And that it encouraging.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Secretary Sebelius, President Obama often talks about the problems he inherited from the past administration. He’s not shy about that at all. Yet President Bush and his team did develop a national strategy for influenza coming out of the whole avian flu experience.
Is this an example where the Obama administration inherited a solution from the Bush administration? And is the strategy you’re following now rooted in the Bush strategy?
SEBELIUS: Well, I don’t think there is any question, the planning that has been done in the last five years has been extraordinarily helpful. States are much more prepared than they were four and five years ago with emergency plans.
The private sector has been engaged in that. In fact, the first time I met Dr. Besser was not involved in this situation, but he came to lead and led a leadership conference that -- co-hosted by Kansas and Missouri with 1,000 people from the private and public sector to talk about a pandemic flu outbreak.
So people have been prepared and ready and I don’t think there is any question that President -- former President Bush had a strategy and resources were put in, and that’s all very good news.
And, you know, the aggressive ability to get out in front of a virus like this is so very important. And I think President Obama made sure that his team was in place early on. That we acted on this appropriately. That we’re working with public-private partnership. And that we’re really ready to do what it takes to keep the American public safe and secure, which is the number one priority.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That hasn’t meant, Secretary Napolitano, you’ve been immune from criticism. You seem to take it from all sides up on Capitol Hill this week. A lot of senators saying you should be shutting the border down right now.
Yet on talk radio, complaints that the media and others are hyping the threat. Take a look.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
RUSH LIMBAUGH, HOST, “THE RUSH LIMBAUGH SHOW”: You look at the degree and the level at which the media is elevating this to a panic, and you have to say, why?
Well, because this is the kind of thing, create crisis and panic. And this has more people clamoring for the government to do something. For the government to fix it.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
STEPHANOPOULOS: Government overreach is the charge. What’s the response?
NAPOLITANO: Oh, I -- you know, I -- no, not at all. When you think about where we were a week or 10 days ago, we had a new strain of flu. We didn’t really know what its lethality was going to be. We didn’t know how quickly it was going to move. And so we had to move. Because once you get behind flu, you can’t catch up. You have to get ahead of it. And we took as our number one guide, what do the doctors tell us to do to act for the safety of the American people?
Now as we go through it every day, we can adjust because they know a little more, they know a little more, particularly they know a little more about what actually happened in Mexico.
So our guidance has been, you know, get prepared for the worst and be able to then adjust as we go through the actual cycle.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But for today, we’re ahead of it?
NAPOLITANO: Today we have done, I think, everything that we could do, yes.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Thank you all very much.
END
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