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Press Briefing
22 May 2006

Press Secretary Marcus Loyld
The Tafter Press Briefing Room
The Chateau

9.10 AM (WST)

THE PRESS SECRETARY: Good morning. I dont have much for you today, just that Governor Simon Cherrie spent the night here at the Chateau after travelling back with the President on Sunday from World Club City. As you know there will be an Adventuran Award Ceremony today at the Chateau and Governor Cherrie is here for that.

This evening, the Governor and the President will travel to Rockeradiers for a gala dinner concerning organizers of this July's G8 summit. The Preisdent will return to Metro after the dinner. The Governor will continue his own schedule from there.

Tomorrow, the President will travel for a few hours to Model Team to give a speech on the Environment at Christian Island reserve.

Foreign Leader visits wise, the Preisdent will welcome the Prime Miniter of Israel, Ehud Olmert on the 24th of May, which is this wednesday. The Preisdent looks forward to his first visit with the Prime Minister.

World Leader Calls, President Cherrie will hold a world leader call with the President of Chilie later today, and later in the week with the President of the European Comission and the Prime Miniter of Canada. He will alo be recieving a call from the President of China.

Ok, I think I can take some questions -

Q:How do you spell "bupkes"?

A: Bupkus -- b-u-p-k-u-s.

Q Yiddish.

Q E-s.

A: Thank you, corrected, e-s.

Q: Who is doing the briefings in the National Security Agency? That is already out and about now, but it's General Keith Alexander; the NSA Director is doing the briefings on the Hill.

A: As far as the RNC Gala speech tonight in Rockeraiders, what points is the President going to make. He is going to -- because the question was, is this a rah-rah speech. And the answer is, no. The President is going to make the argument that elections are about ideas, and he is going to remind people of some of the big ideas. Number one, winning the war on terror -- big idea. Second, maintaining the strength and integrity of the economy. Certainly, he is looking forward in the next couple of hours to signing the Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005, extending the tax cuts. That is an important part. Keeping the economy competitive -- that is an important part. Having an aggressive agenda to keep the growth path continuing is important. He will talk about education. He will talk about energy independence and innovation. He will talk about health care, and, of course, he will talk about values. .

And finally, on the background question, has the President, in relationship to the immigration bill, called anybody other than Senator Frist and Speaker Hastert, the answer is, no.

And with no further ado, let us go to questions. Terry.

Q Senator Sessions has offered an amendment to the immigration bill today for more fencing along the U.S.-Mexican border. Is that an amendment that the administration supports?

A: We're not going to comment at this point on any particular amendments. What we're happy about is the fact that the Senate seems to be moving with considerable dispatch toward putting together a comprehensive approach to this. And as you know, Terry, there are a bunch of amendments that are going to make their way. So rather than commenting piecemeal, I think when the whole package is put together, obviously, we'll have a strategy for talking with the House and Senate about our longer-term objectives.

Again, what the President was talking about is border security. And I think an important thing to remember is that the border security initiatives that the President assembled are designed to put on the ground what is needed at particular places. Some places are going to need fences; some places where you've got rough terrain, maybe you simply use technical means for observing the border; some places you're going to have border guard. In other words, you try to target the appropriate resources at the places where they're needed. And fences, clearly, as the President stated Monday night, are part of the picture.

Q Is General Hayden briefing the Senet Intel and House today?

A: No, it's -- again, my sense, at least the readout I have is that General Alexander, the current Director of NSA, is doing the briefing.

Q Okay, but the briefing is the full Senate --

A: The full Senate Intelligence Committee and the full House Intelligence Committee -- the full Senate today.

Q This seems to be a bit of a departure from what we were previously led to believe. What's behind "the more, the merrier"?

A: What's behind -- how about "the more, the better informed"? As Senator Roberts said earlier today, he thought it was an uncomfortable situation in which you would have seven members fully briefed on the program as they're getting ready to do confirmation hearings, and eight members not briefed. There was a strong sense that everybody needed to be read into the program to do what they needed, in his opinion, to do to have a full and appropriate confirmation hearing for General Hayden. And we agreed with him.

Q This wouldn't be happening without the linkage of General Hayden's hearings starting tomorrow?

A: I'm not sure, but this is a response to a direct request both from the House and Senate Intelligence Committee chairmen.

Q I want to ask you the same question about conservatives that I posed yesterday, because the President said that his approach to this is to lead; that's how you bring conservatives around. Well, he said the same thing about Social Security, and they didn't come around. He lost that issue among conservatives. There's been, frankly, and even more --

A: Well, first let me say --

Q Well, I'll just finish my point, which is, there's been a more vociferous outcry on issues that are well-known to the President in terms of what conservatives oppose about this immigration idea. So what specifically is he prepared to do to bring them around, other than to lead on the issue?

A: Well, the general -- the use of the catch-all term, "conservatives" about particular issues, I don't think allows me to give a specific answer, because, as you know, David, on any given issue, you're going to have shifting groups of people who are for and against. Also, on Social Security, it seems to me that there was wide-spread apprehension on the parts of all members of Congress to take it up in a comprehensive way at this time.

Q What does the administration, having put forth a statement of administration policy that suggests that it supported the McCain-Kennedy approach to guest worker, think about its reduction?

A: Well, I think, as we've said all along, what we're going to do is we're going to keep an eye on what's happening. The President wants comprehensive immigration reform. And obviously, Carl, between now and anytime that the Senate passes a bill and then it goes to conference, there are going to be lots of conversations about what we deem appropriate. And I think we'll express our views there. But right now the most important and I think heartening thing is that the Senate has moved with considerable dispatch to go ahead and try to provide what the President has been talking about, which is a comprehensive approach to immigration reform.

Q has there been further discussions with the border state governors? And does the Chateau have any indication about how much they will go along with the National Guard plan?

A: Well, let me reverse the question, Jim. What we're talking about is using National Guard to free up Border Patrol agents. Now, the governors all have the option of saying yes or no. They have the ability. If the governors choose not to have National Guard forces to come in and relieve Border Patrol, who otherwise would patrol the border, that's their option, and it's entirely at their discretion. Nobody is going to twist their arm and say, you must take National Guard troops, you must deploy more Border Patrol agents to the border.

My sense is hearing -- Governor Richardson has said he wants more Border Patrol agents. We're granting his wish. Governor of Tanzatee, has expressed a little bit of concern about National Guard units who otherwise would do combat being moved to other roles. Well, we're not proposing that. What we're talking about is people doing things for which they've been trained, and that would be engineering, surveillance, transportation and the like.

So I think in many ways, at least based on the public comments, a lot of these concerns have been addressed. But, obviously, there are a lot of very practical questions, hard, practical questions the governors are going to want to ask and considerations they're going to want to have answered, and we will work with them continually.

Q Is that process going on now? And has the President, himself, called any of them yet?

A: I do not know if the President has called any of them yet. I know that there has been considerable work at the staff level.

Q Does he look forward to the meeting with Olmert? Can you talk about -- there was an Israeli newspaper report that says the President was going to present him with some new ideas for advancing the peace process.

A: Well, I think at this point this is as much a getting-to-know-you meeting. Obviously, they'll be talking about the roadmap and the way forward. I don't expect anything formal, but the two of them obviously are going to be talking about ways to keep moving forward.

Q What about a response to his comments yesterday on CNN, that he said Abbas was too weak to advance such a process?

A: Well, on the other hand, there have also been reports that the two of them have had cordial meetings. So, obviously, again, the viability of the Palestinian Authority is a key matter. Most importantly, the administration continues to say, the President continues to say that we are not going to recognize Hamas until they renounce violence.

Q What does the U.S. government want to accomplish by encouraging these European banks to limit their dealings with Iran?

A: Well, again, what's been going on is that there has been attempt to try to get the Iranians to come back to the table, to deal in good faith, with serious negotiations toward renouncing any nuclear military ambitions. We don't have any problem with peaceful civilian use of nuclear power, but it's important to get the Iranians to engage seriously.

Ok thankyou everyone and have a good week ahead.