Bill: Thank you, folks.
How you doing?
Thank you very much.
Ah, we love it here!
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
Thank you very much.
Well, it's always great to be here in Washington, D.C.
I was gonna be in town anyway to pick up my pardon.
[ Laughter ]
You know, every time we come here, it turns out there's a scandal.
It's always involving Bill Clinton.
Even when he's out of office.
[ Laughter ]
Today, it turned out that we found out that some of the furniture
that the Clintons took as gifts was actually supposed to stay as
part of the White House.
[ Laughter ]
In dispute are a sofa, several chairs --
and this looks bad --
a
staircase.
[ Laughter ]
Now, President Bush refuses to comment on this, which I think is
very big of him.
Especially since he's been sleeping on a futon.
[ Laughter ]
The President is starting this week with his tax week.
He's trying to sell his $1.6 trillion tax cut for rich people.
[ Laughter ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Yeah, I --
[ Cheers and applause ]
I don't know if he's the guy to sell this, 'cause reporters asked
Bush today if he wanted the tax cut to be retroactive.
And he said, "No, 'cause then only Superman could touch it!"
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
All right, let's --
[ Applause ]
Let's meet our special Washington panel.
We love to come here.
We get the big names in politics.
In a dozen terms in Congress, he's risen to chairman of the House Committee on
Energy and
Commerce and Deputy Majority Whip, a blue dog from the bayou of
Louisiana, representative Billy Tauzin.
Billy!
[ Cheers and applause ]
Welcome back, Congressman.
Thank you.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Okay.
That's as big applause as you're gonna get at Howard ever.
[ Laughter ]
All right.
[ Cheers and applause ]
She's a Republican Congresswoman and co-chair of the
Congressional Rural Caucus from the Show Me state of Missouri,
Representative Jo Ann Emerson.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Congresswoman.
Hey, welcome to our show.
Billy: Hey, Jo Ann.
Bill: A comedy Queen, her online column is at boxer rescue L.A. --
that's
boxer the dog, not the Senator, right?
Okay.
Dotcom.
And she'll be touring across the country this spring.
Our pal, Elayne Boosler.
Hey.
Elayne: Hello.
Bill: How are you, sweetheart?
Elayne: I'm sorry.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: And this is the former Vice Presidential candidate and
the distinguished United States Senator from Connecticut --
[ Cheers ]
Joe Lieberman!
[ Cheers and applause ]
Senator, thank you.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Wow!
Look at this.
Look at that.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Joe: Hey, Bill --
Bill: I don't know if they love you or hate Florida.
One of the two.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Joe: I was just gonna ask, can we get them to move to Florida?
Bill: Yeah, you --
wow.
Elayne: That's the popular vote, right there.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: Okay.
Billy: By the way, some of them did vote in Florida.
Bill: Let's do a recount, right here tonight.
[ Cheers and applause ]
All right.
Listen, I want to mention, we came here to Washington because we
love to be among you politicians, but also because in California,
we have no electricity.
[ Laughter ]
And you have it here, and --
you know, I don't mean to come into
this town and cause trouble.
[ Laughter ]
But --
but I really do want to talk about this.
'Cause this has hit us right where we live, here in California.
And I think, to me, the problem is, you know, people say,
deregulation.
That's what caused this energy crisis in California.
It's not deregulation.
It's that politicians, I think, never had the guts to tell
people, like Jimmy Carter did, "Why don't you stop being pigs,
turn off a light and put on a sweater!"
[ Applause ]
Elayne: Well, if Jewish mothers ran for Congress, we would
have heard that a lot more often.
[ Laughter ]
Joe: I think that's what my wife tells me every night.
Elayne: There you go!
Jo Ann: My daughter says, "Mom, turn the heat up."
I said, "Nope, wear a sweatshirt."
And gotta conserve.
[ Applause ]
Bill: Well, that's nice you tell your daughter, but I haven't
heard any politicians say that to the people.
The reason why there's a problem, it's not deregulation.
They're giving deregulation a bad name.
It's because they put a cap on the price people would have to pay.
God forbid we don't kiss the voters' behinds.
Billy: Guess what?
When you put a cap on the price, conservation efforts went down 8%.
That's exactly right.
So demand went up 25%.
Supplies only up 6% in California, and you wonder why the lights are off?
Come on, Bill.
You don't have enough energy.
Elayne: --
Big, ugly, fat SUVs, we won't need any extra oil.
[ Applause ]
Bill: But wait a second.
You're chairman of the House Energy Committee.
Billy: Yes, sir.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: Well, why don't you tell them that?
Billy: Well, we will.
In fact, I'm going to California --
Bill: You will?
Billy: --
Going to California in a couple weeks.
Elayne: Bring a sweater!
Billy: Bring a sweater.
I've just been elected, and I'm going to California in a couple
weeks to do exactly that.
To talk to them about why it takes seven years to license an
electric generation plant in California when it takes two years
in most states.
Why it is that California won't produce the energy it needs in
California?
Elayne: There's no energy in California.
Bill: Okay.
Well, why is George Bush saying that the answer to the energy
crisis in California is to turn the Arctic wildlife in Alaska
into an Exxon station?
[ Applause ]
Because that has nothing to do with it.
Joe: Right.
[ Applause ]
Yeah.
Absolutely wrong, right?
No connection between what's happening in California and drilling
in Alaska, and here's the really stunning fact, which is about
only 1% or 2% of California's energy comes from oil.
So to use that as an excuse to destroy one of the beautiful
natural areas of America, wrong idea.
Shouldn't do it.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: I mean --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Now, you Republicans must know what he just said.
Oil is not the problem.
If they're saying that, how is that integrity?
Billy: Well, let's talk about it.
Bill: What about this restoring integrity?
[ Applause ]
Joe: You looked like a former President there.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: I look like Richard Nixon.
[ Laughter ]
Billy: You're not crook.
You're not a crook.
Elayne: Instead, we just burn all the unproduced screenplays
in California, we'd have heat till the next century.
Billy: You got thermal plants in California that can't get a license.
It's not just dirty energy.
Clean energy can't get licensed.
Bill: Well, let's go back to Alaska, Congressman.
Billy: That's true.
Let's go back to Alaska.
Bill: Why are we drilling in Alaska that has nothing to do
with the problem in California?
Billy: We do drill in Alaska.
Prudhoe Bay right now is producing --
pipeline and delivering oil
to the rest of the states.
In fact, we're today dependent upon foreign sources for almost
55% of the oil that's brought into this country.
We're not doing our job in America keeping pace with the demands
of the dotcom community in California --
Bill: But why is the answer to ruin Alaska?
Why is that the first thing we do?
Billy: Nobody wants to ruin Alaska.
Bill: But you will.
Joe: Yeah, that's what will happen.
Billy: We produce, in Louisiana, 30% of the brand names of
seafood in the country.
30%, and almost all of the offshore gas drilling occurs offshore
of Louisiana.
It goes on --
you wanna catch a fish in Louisiana?
Bill, come with me.
It's on an oil rig.
Elayne: I know, but they're still frying those fish.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: I don't want to catch a fish, but I still would like an
answer as to why Alaska is --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Jo Ann: I want to ask a question.
Bill: So far, I've heard about every state but Alaska.
Jo Ann: I wanna ask you one California question here.
Why is it that all these folks want to breach the dams for
hydropower purposes in California, letting the salmon run, when
hydropower gives you all a lot of energy?
And it's clean, and it can't possibly be environmentally
detrimental?
Bill: I don't know the answer to that, but I still don't have
the answer to the first question.
[ Laughter ]
Joe: Hey, Bill, that's 'cause there's no good answer.
Bill: That's right.
Joe: If we increase fuel efficiency, three miles a gallon on
our vehicles, we'd save more oil than the wildest estimates of
what the Arctic refuge would produce.
So that's the way to do it.
[ Applause ]
Billy: And the first folks who made that argument ten years
ago, when we were 30% dependent on foreign sources, are still
making it today.
Elayne: Why don't you regulate the car companies and get those
things that get 1/2 miles a gallon off the road?
[ Applause ]
Billy: We just --
we just fought a war.
Elayne: I mean you personally.
Why don't you personally regulate this?
Billy: We just fought a war in the Middle East to defend
somebody else's oil fields, because we are not producing it in
our own country.
Do you know that my state, Bill --
this is true.
This is true.
In my state, we sent more young men and women into battle in the
Persian Gulf per capita than any state in America, because they
didn't have jobs in the oil fields of Louisiana.
They joined the National Guard and the Reserve and ended up
getting shipped off to somebody else's country to fight over oil.
All I'm sayin' is, we ought to produce it here at home.
Bill: I gotta produce a commercial.
We'll be right back.
[ Cheers and applause ]
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: Okay.
We're here in Washington, where the city is being overtaken by
the Bush charm offensive, which is working pretty good, isn't it?
I mean, don't you think?
[ Applause ]
Joe: Yeah.
You know, it's like pick up one of Elayne's lines, it's like my
mother's chicken soup.
It can't hurt, but he's gotta do more than that.
Elayne: Oh, I disagree.
Because what he's done all week is invite --
Joe: I thought you were talking about your mother's chicken soup.
Elayne: My mother's chicken soup.
[ Light laughter ]
All week, he's invited Democrats over to watch movies
and have a meal.
And you know what men do after they buy you dinner and a movie.
So --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Joe: Notice none of us want to respond to that.
[ Laughter ]
Bill: No.
You might have to give out the silver spoon award right here on the show.
Joe: Right here.
Right here.
Bill: Well, yeah.
Except what bothers me is that in the last eight years, they
sucker punched Bill Clinton.
And it's like, now, suddenly, "Oh, let's have civility."
Elayne: Yeah.
I totally agree with you.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Jo Ann: No.
I want to disagree.
[ Applause ]
I want to say something.
No, seriously, in Congress, we had tremendous bipartisan group of people.
We worked together on a lot of issues.
[ Laughter ]
Joe: The little --
Jo Ann: You know, you're making --
Joe: Nobody believes that, Jo Ann.
[ Laughter ]
Jo Ann: I'm married to one.
What can I tell you?
Bill: You're married to a Democrat?
Jo Ann: Absolutely.
A liberal Democrat labor lawyer.
[ Scattered cheers ]
I do think Democrats have more fun.
Bill: The makeup sex must be great!
[ Laughter ]
Jo Ann: You'll have to ask him.
Billy: Like Mary Matalin and James Carville.
Bill: Yeah.
Billy: You know, you get punished in Washington for being
bipartisan.
That's the truth.
Look at poor Traficant.
Traficant voted for Denny Hastert for Speaker.
And now he's a caucus for one person.
They won't give him a committee assignment, because he's being punished.
Joe: The problem is not the bipartisan stuff.
Washington's been real nasty the last eight years.
And if there's gonna be a real civility and charm offensive, it's
gotta go both ways.
We gotta try to work to get something done.
Because it's been too nasty in the past.
[ Applause ]
Let's have a truce.
Billy: Not just eight years.
Washington's been an uncivil place for decades now.
It really has been.
Jo Ann: Both sides, too.
Bill: But nobody ever went after a guy the way they went after Clinton.
They went after Clinton the way they went after Al Capone.
Really.
[ Applause ]
It was like, "We're gonna get him.
Now we just got to figure out how we're going to get him."
Joe: Yeah.
Bill: And he wasn't Al Capone.
Look at this headline in "The Weekly Standard," which I know only
six people read, but still --
[ Laughter ]
It says, "Our long national nightmare is over."
I mean --
[ Applause ]
Was eight years of peace and the greatest economy in the world
really a national nightmare?
[ Laughter ]
Is that civility?
[ Applause ]
Billy: The truth is, there was a moment when we finally
started working together.
It was about two weeks.
Elayne: Two weeks before he left.
Billy: No, two weeks in the middle of it.
When we passed welfare reform, the balanced budget, we passed
Medicaid reform.
That was an amazing period of --
Elayne: Imagine what you could have done for eight years if
you would have worked with the guy.
Joe: Some of the great accomplishments of the eight years were
bipartisan, but the truth is that folks on the other side and
others didn't just criticize Bill Clinton, they tried to demonize him.
[ Applause ]
Bill: From the very beginning.
Billy: Like nobody tried to demonize Newt Gingrich?
Elayne: He was a demon!
[ Laughter ]
Billy: Demonizing has been going on.
The truth of the matter --
this is true --
few people know
Democrats on the other side of our party.
It's people.
It's friends.
And few Democrats know Republicans as people, as friends.
I happen to know, I can tell you, there's a lot of good people in
both parties.
But we've been taught to think of each other as enemies around
here, and the parties help us do that.
And that's wrong.
Jo Ann: No, it is wrong.
And it really is the leadership on both sides.
[ Applause ]
It's not the rank and file members.
I mean, we work together on every single piece of legislation
that I have been successful on getting done has been on a
bipartisan basis.
And oftentimes, a bipartisan, bicameral basis.
It's the leadership and it's the parties that are really driving
it because it helps raise money here, raise money there.
And you gotta have a demon.
Is it right?
No.
Bill: With all due respect, I mean, you guys would have to
have bipartisanship now since those guys actually got more votes --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Right?
Billy: Wait a minute.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: I mean --
[ Cheers and applause ]
Joe: Hey, Bill, would you consider running for Secretary of
State of Florida?
[ Laughter ]
Bill: I'd consider going to a commercial.
We'll be right back.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Announcer: Join us this week on "Politically Incorrect," when
Bill's guests will include former presidential candidate Ralph
Nader, country star Naomi Judd, California Senator Barbara Boxer
and rabble rouser Michael Moore.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: All right.
We were talking about civility.
By the way, I noticed that you did get a standing ovation, but
you also got booed by the Republicans, whereas none of the
Democrats booed Republican people.
Elayne: See, I thought it was rude.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Joe: But, Bill, the good news is, there's only two Republicans
here tonight.
Bill: Yeah.
A few more.
Okay.
[ Talking over each other ]
Bill: All right.
We talked about your issues, energy.
Your issue seems to the one people associate you with a lot, is
cleaning up Hollywood, which --
[ Applause ]
I live there.
I actually like the fact that it's a sewer.
[ Laughter ]
And I wonder with all the problems that we have in this country,
why this has to be at the forefront of our agenda, or why it
really makes a difference, or if it's even practical?
[ Applause ]
I mean, you know that there's a lot of skepticism.
People say it's just an easy political platform.
Joe: We feel it's only fair.
You try to clean up Washington, we try to clean up Hollywood.
[ Laughter ]
Here's the deal.
I got into this first as a parent watching some stuff that my kids
were watching.
Secondly, people in Connecticut said to me, "You know, use your
voice and speak out for us.
You can't do it by law."
I don't want to do it by law.
But the sex and violence on TV, movies, music, video games affect
some kids out there who are vulnerable.
[ Applause ]
[ Scattered boos ]
There's that one guy over there.
Bill: Wait a second.
Wait a second.
When you guys were running, you said, "If you don't clean it up,
we're gonna have to step in."
And then when you went out to Hollywood to talk to the people
there, you said, "Well, we're gonna nooching you."
[ Laughter ]
Joe: Some people got upset about that.
But Elayne will understand this.
I want to go back to the Jewish mother.
Elayne: Nooching is worse than death.
Joe: Nooching is worse than death.
[ Laughter ]
Nooching means persistent criticism until you change your behavior.
There's gotta be a lot of responsibility assumed here by parents,
obviously.
Hollywood is not the reason for the problems.
But folks in Hollywood, I think, just have to show a little more
responsibility.
Put some of the stuff on --
right.
[ Applause ]
You know, when we --
when Al Gore and I, last year, talked about
legislation, it had to do with the fact that a lot of folks in
Hollywood are marketing stuff to our kids that they rate as only
appropriate for adults.
Now, that's wrong.
They got the legal right to make whatever they want to make, but
don't market adult-rated stuff to our children.
Elayne: Isn't it amazing how it's changed?
I mean, you're asking Hollywood to stop the violence and the
whole '60s was about us asking the government to stop the violence.
Bill: So I'm guessing nobody here is gonna be watching
"Temptation Island" this week?
[ Laughter ]
I gotta take a commercial break.
We'll be back.
[ Cheers and applause ]
Bill: All right.
Tomorrow, we have Michael Moore, representative Mark Foley,
Juanita Millender-McDonald and Ralph Nader, the man who cost you the White House.
Not really!
We'll see you.
[ Cheers and applause ]