Face the Nation transcripts March 17, 2013: Ryan, Klobuchar, Priebus

(CBS News) Below is a transcript of "Face the Nation" on March 17, 2013, hosted by CBS News' Bob Schieffer. Guests include House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, and a foreign policy panel featuring David Sanger of the New York Times, Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute, David Rohde of Reuters, and Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations.

SCHIEFFER: Today on FACE THE NATION, the president turns on the charm, Republicans embark on a major party overhaul, and relations with North Korea take a dangerous turn.

RYAN: You know, this has been a really big week. We got white smoke from the Vatican, and we got a budget from the Senate!

SCHIEFFER (voice-over): You heard right. Democrats finally came up with their version of a budget, but is it any more realistic than the Republicans'?

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: How are you?

SCHIEFFER (voice-over): Can the two sides ever find middle ground? We'll talk to House Budget chairman and former vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan. And Minnesota's Democratic senator, Amy Klobuchar. And as a parade of Republicans gathered in Washington for a conservative conclave...

SARAH PALIN, FORMER GOVERNOR OF ALASKA: We can't just ignore the obit (ph) -- we just lost a big election. (Inaudible) came in second out of two.

(LAUGHTER)

PALIN: Second position on the dogsled team is where the view never changes and the view ain't pretty.

SCHIEFFER (voice-over): Republican Chairman Reince Priebus will be here to unveil his plan to rebuild his party, and he's talking major changes. Then we'll turn to the new threat from North Korea. We'll look ahead to the president's trip to Israel, with Richard Haass, head of the Council on Foreign Relations; Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute; David Rohde of Reuters and "New York Times" chief Washington correspondent David Sanger. We'll go around the world and back because this is FACE THE NATION.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): From CBS news in Washington, FACE THE NATION with Bob Schieffer.

SCHIEFFER: And good morning, again. The chairman of the House Budget Committee, Paul Ryan, joins us this morning from Janesville, Wisconsin. And I want to wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day, Mr. Chairman. Also, I see you wore your green tie. Full confession, full disclosure here; I thought it was yesterday. There were a lot of people running around in Washington who were wearing the green and celebrating. But turns out it's officially today. So that out of the way.

RYAN: That means you get to celebrate it twice, Bob.

SCHIEFFER: I got it, now I know. Mr. Chairman, let me start with the hardest question of all. You unveiled your budget this week and critics immediately said this was, quote, "a retread of ideas that were soundly rejected in the last election." It does sound a lot like what you were talking about during the election. How do you respond to that?

RYAN: Well, look, our budget is a vision document. It is -- our budget encapsulates what we think is the right way to go -- fundamental tax reform for economic growth, patient-centered health care replacing ObamaCare, getting our budget balanced. It's a responsible balanced budget. And we think a budget is a necessary means to a healthier economy, to more jobs. That's why we're saying let's balance the budget so we can make sure that we don't have a debt crisis, give businesses the certainty they need so they can plan, invest, give families more of their own take-home pay. I hardly think that that's retread. I think that that's what people want. We've been criticized for repealing ObamaCare in our budget. It's not as if we woke up the day after the election and said let's change our principles, turn them in and throw in with government-run health care. We believe that young people, seniors, families, businesses are in for a very rude awakening as ObamaCare is rolled out. It still has nearly two years to go before it's fully implemented and we're showing that there's a better way of going and this is a better plan to balance the budget. And that's what our document does. That's what our budget provides for.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let me just pick up on that. I mean, you know and I know that the votes are simply not there to repeal what you call ObamaCare right now. Republicans say that. Democrats say that. And certainly, the votes are not there if somehow or another Congress did repeal it, the president would almost certainly veto it. And there are no -- there are certainly not enough votes to do that. So aren't you just kind of wasting time by saying-- this is a big part of your savings here is to -- because you say repealing ObamaCare is how you really save money. But isn't that-- some people say it's a fantasy. And I wonder why do you-- why do you continue to say this is what we need to do?

RYAN: Two points: number one, that just goes to show that ObamaCare is a massive budget buster, that it is creating massive deficits in the future. And I really believe it's going to destroy the health care plan, the health care system in America. We believe the law will collapse under its own weight and that people will be eager for alternatives, as the gory details unfold in the future with its implementation. That's point number one. Point number two is the same point could be made for the Senate budget, dead on arrival in the House. It's a $1 trillion tax increase with even more spending. They're not cutting spending. They have some spending cuts on health care providers, washed out by even higher spending increases. And so you could say the same thing with the Senate budget. The point is, each budgets reflect our priorities, reflect our principles, reflect our vision. We believe in balancing the budget. We believe in getting government to live within its means. We believe in pro-growth economic policies, energy exploration, fixing our entitlements before they go bankrupt. And, sure, you could say that the Democrats don't like that, but we're not writing a Democratic budget in the House. We're writing a Republican budget. And same goes for Patty Murray. She's writing a Democratic budget, trillion-dollar tax increase, which kills tax reform, even more spending, meaning they never, ever balance the budget, ever. The real question is, is are we ever going to bridge the gap? I think that's probably where we are going to go with this conversation, which is where we should go.

(CROSSTALK)

RYAN: At least they're passing a budget and that's a good -- I see that as progress.

SCHIEFFER: I couldn't agree with you more on that, because I think it would be -- is hard to pass what the Democrats have put out there today, as -- if I do say so, what you have put out there today. But let me just-- let me just ask you this-- the -- and it is a Democratic-leaning group-- but the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says your budget is going to cost nearly $6 trillion in lost federal revenue over the next decade. And there is no plausible way to pay for it. It's either going to drive up the deficit or you're going to have to raise taxes. Now, what's your answer-- response to that?

RYAN: It's a ridiculous statistic that didn't even measure our budget. They made up their own assumptions to come up with that statistic. We are saying, let's have revenue-neutral tax reform. What does that mean? That means take the current amount of revenue that's coming in through the tax code and replace it with a better tax code, one that the Ways and Means Committee will write this year, meaning lower tax rates with fewer crony loopholes. This is the whole point of tax reform. And there are Democrats who agree with us. The Bipartisan Policy Center, another left-leaning group, says we should lower our tax rates across the board for families and small businesses and corporations and pay for it by plugging loopholes. And you can do so without losing revenue to the federal government, which is what our plan is, which absolutely negates the statistic that you just read to me.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you about this. John Boehner said in an interview broadcast on ABC this morning that we do not have an immediate debt crisis, which is basically what the president said in an interview the other day. Do you believe we have an immediate debt crisis?

RYAN: To borrow a phrase from my friend Erskine Bowles on the Fiscal Commission, we are the healthiest looking horse in the glue factory. That means America is still a step ahead of the European nations who are confronting a debt crisis, of Japan that's in its second lost decade. It's partly because of our resilient economy, because of our world currency status. So we do not have a debt crisis right now, but we see it coming. We know it's irrefutably happening. And the point we're trying to make with our budget is let's get ahead of this problem. Look, we know that in the debt crisis you pull the rug out from under people living on the safety net. You cut seniors in retirement. This is what we're trying to avoid. The purpose of having a reasonable balanced budget like we're proposing is let's prevent a debt crisis from happening in the first place. If we keep kicking the can down the road, if we follow the president's lead or if we pass the Senate budget, then we will have a debt crisis. Then everybody gets hurt. You know who gets hurt first and the worst in a debt crisis? The poor, the elderly. That's what we're trying to prevent from happening. Pro-growth economic policies to get people working to bring in more revenue and get the entitlement system under control so it doesn't go bankrupt so people can seriously plan for the promises that government has made for them in retirement. That's what we're saying, is let's prevent a debt crisis from happening. We know it's coming. This budget does that.

SCHIEFFER: Do you still trust the president? John Boehner said in the interview that he still trusts the president. Do you trust him? And I guess part two of that would be do you trust congressional Democrats?

RYAN: I subscribe to the Reagan school of thought, which is trust but verify. I think the so-called charm offensive, I think that's a good thing. Look, at least the president is now starting to talk to people in the other party. The real question is the sincerity and whether it's going to continue on, whether he'll go back to the campaign trail, focus on 2014, or whether he'll sincerely try to work with us to get a down payment on the problem. My goal and hope with this budget is that now that the Senate is actually doing a budget is that we have this vehicle, this legislative process, which was always intended to work this way: House passes a budget, Senate passes a budget, try to bridge the gap, talk with the president and let's get a down payment on the problem. The goal of the Republican majority is to get us on a path to balancing the budget, is to get a down payment on our debt and deficits to push the debt crisis out, to borrow time with the bond markets. Yes, I believe the president won't pass our budget into law. But let's get a down payment. Let's get a good start on the problem. That, to me, is something that a constructive, bipartisan engagement can accomplish. And that means that this charm offensive needs to be sincere and needs to last throughout the summer.

SCHIEFFER: Do you think that -- that the president is right when he says that some members -- and I think he didn't differentiate between parties -- are just simply afraid to make what they know are the right decisions on some of these things?

RYAN: I've been saying that for years, Bob.

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, look, I'm the guy who put out entitlement reform seven budgets ago. The third rail in politics is, if you touch these programs, you politically die. Look, the program we have is these programs are going bankrupt. We need to be honest with the American people about the problems and the challenges ahead and the solutions that are needed to fix them. And I would argue it's the president who has been missing in action on this front. He knows we have a debt crisis coming. All independent experts show us this. And so he hasn't even given us a budget yet. I mean, the law required that he was supposed to submit a budget the first Monday in February. He still hasn't done it. At least the Senate's doing something now. And so where we have not seen leadership is in the critical areas we need it. The president and the Senate, which now is actually putting a plan out there, but now we've got to get on to the point where we have a problem; we know what it is; let's start fixing it. House Republicans have been offering budgets every year on this. And so, yeah, people have been ducking these tough issues. People have been hoping to use these issues to beat the other party in the next election. Let's get through that. Let's start fixing problems. And I'm hopeful that we can maybe get a downpayment on this problem this year.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, Congressman, we want to thank you very much. We hope we'll be hearing from you many times in the days to come as we continue to cover this story. Always nice to have you.

RYAN: Thanks, Bob. Happy St. Patrick's Day.

SCHIEFFER: Thank you, and the same to you. We did, in fact, invite the administration to give its side on all of this, but White House officials declined to participate today. So we turn now to Minnesota's Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar, who is in Minneapolis this morning. And a happy St. Patrick's Day to you. You are also wearing the green. Senator, what did -- what's your, just, off-the-top-of-your-head reaction to Congressman Ryan?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, first of all, I appreciate Congressman Ryan's dedication to this issue. As he knows, the Senate is now moving forward with a budget. I think this is an exciting time where we can actually get a compromise between Democrats and Republicans, and we have to for this country. Now, I think we need not only to balance the budget in the future but we also need balance in the budget. And that is some of my concerns with some of the proposals that the congressman has put out there. I don't think America can afford 4.5 trillion in additional tax cuts that are in his budget, especially when an average millionaire would get something like $280,000 in additional tax cuts every year. Unless a leprechaun is going to magically jump out and give him a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow today, Bob, I don't think we can afford that. I also am concerned that there is no revenue going forward in that budget when in fact there are some simple things that we could do to bring some revenue into the budget so that we are not balancing this budget on the backs of the middle class. So overall, I think this is a great time of opportunity. I would agree with Congressman Ryan. We literally are standing on a precipice here in terms of the opportunities. Unemployment rates were down to the lowest level -- you have to go back four years just this last month. We have a situation where the housing market is finally coming back. In my state they're making stuff again, exporting to the world. So we have to do something on this debt, but we have to see it as an opportunity and not set us back.

SCHIEFFER: Well, you know, one thing about your budget that jumps out, almost like a leprechaun, it does -- it never balances the budget. Aren't you going to have to do better on that and get closer to balancing the budget if this is going to be taken seriously?

KLOBUCHAR: Well, first of all, the budget does get to that number of $4 trillion in reductions in 10 years. We've already done $2.5 trillion, and so it gets to that number of over $4 trillion.

Second thing, most economists focus on the debt-to-GDP ratio, Bob, and this budget gets you to around that 70 percent number. That would be a fair number where we can really be on that glide path that the congressman was talking about so that we can get people to invest again. And the third point of this is that we don't want to do anything to set us back when we're finally seeing some stability and growth in the economy. We don't want to cause what Chairman Bernanke has called a sharp contraction to the economy by doing things too suddenly. And so what this does, it's a long-term plan, and of course it's a starting document. We know there's going to be a compromise. We know the president proposed some additional cuts at the end of last year. And I think there's a real urgency in Washington, particularly in the Senate, that I've never seen before. People have been talking for years about this. There's some common ground that now people want to get this done.

SCHIEFFER: Do you think that the two sides will at least get together and avoid a government shutdown? It seems to be moving that way.

KLOBUCHAR: I truly believe that is going to happen next week. We can't afford this brinkmanship any more. I think back to New Year's Eve, as, you know, the stroke of midnight, there I was, every woman's dream, with Harry Reid on my left and Mitch McConnell on my right. It doesn't get much better than that.

(LAUGHTER)

But that brinkmanship is not where we want to be. We want to at least get this thing done a week ahead of time so, again, we have that consistency. I think that will happen next week, and then we have to move on to do this larger debt deal so we can seize on these opportunities that we see out there and lead the world.

SCHIEFFER: Can I just ask you, yes or no, do you think, by the end of this year, there will have been a deal?

KLOBUCHAR: I do. The American people just aren't going to stand for this any more. And there are some simple things we can do here. The congressman was bringing up Obamacare. He actually included the savings from that. That's over $700 billion in his own budget. There is an example. We have things that we could do, oil subsidies, $40 billion. They don't need that right now, even though I'm very happy with what's going on in North Dakota with bringing more domestic oil into the market. You look at the home mortgage deduction. We love that. We could set that in $500,000 in value on a home, and that way, if you buy a million-dollar home, great, but you get that deduction up to $500,000. These are just -- negotiating with prescription drug companies. There are so many things that we could do that will bring down our debt and put us in a much better place economically and not do it on the backs of middle-class families.

SCHIEFFER: Senator, thank you so much for giving us the Democrat side this morning. And we're going to take a break and come back and talk to the chairman of the Democrat -- of the Republican Party about some big changes that he has in mind.

SCHIEFFER: And we're joined now by the Republican Party chair Reince Priebus. Mr. Chairman, you have initiated the most public, comprehensive post-election review in your party's history. And my source for that is you.

(LAUGHTER)

I mean, I understand that's how you characterize it. So tell us, what's the headline here?

PRIEBUS: Well, I mean, it is true. I mean, you don't see too many political parties or organizations around Washington that put all their cards face up on the table, and that's what we did. This is unprecedented, and it's something that we had to do. And it's something we worked really hard on. Let me just say real quickly generally what we found out. Number one, I believe our party has had a real quality of context problem. And what I mean is that we have become a party that parachutes into communities four months before an election. And while that's how we operated for years and years, and we've done well compared to ourselves, in comparison to the other side, the Obama campaign lived in these communities for years. The relationships were deep. They were authentic. So, first of all, one of the major things you're going to see tomorrow come out is that, for the first time in our party's history, we're not talking about having a few people down the hallway working on outreach and inclusion. We're going to be announcing a $10 million initiative, just this year, which will include hundreds of people, paid, across the country, from coast to coast, in Hispanic, African- American, Asian communities, talking about our party, talking about our brand, talking about what we believe in, going to community events, going to swearing-in ceremonies, being a part of the community on an ongoing basis, paid for by the Republican National Committee, to make the case for our party and our candidates.

SCHIEFFER: So what does that mean, same message but just more people out there to talk about it?

PRIEBUS: For one thing, Bob, if you're not in the community, if you're not talking to people and the level of familiarity isn't there, then things-- silly things like Todd Akin and some of the goofy things that were said -- when there's a vacuum, the caricature becomes true if you're not there. So if have unscripted moments and you've got no relationship to explain anything, obviously, I believe you're a sitting duck. That's just one thing. Obviously, we've got technology issues...

SCHIEFFER: What about the overall message? Do you feel your message was not as strong as it could have been last time?

PRIEBUS: Well, listen I think we have got to do a better job relating issues to people's lives. I mean, when you're talking about, let's just say the debt, right. it's not just a matter of mathematics, it's a matter of what happens in your life. Are you going to have the money to send your kids to school? Is our government spending too much money servicing the credit card payment on the debt? Are you going to be able to live the American dream? Is your employer going to be able to give you a raise because the government needs more money to run their company. We have to relate things to people's lives. We have to win the math war, which we do a good job of, but we're going to have to learn how to learn the heart war. And that's in presidential elections what is plaguing our party.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you this. I understand that you're also planning some very significant schedule changes for example, the scheduling of your convention. You want it earlier now, as I understand?

PRIEBUS: Absolutely. I mean, these candidates are not taking public financing any more, and I don't want to bore our listeners on campaign finance but here's what I'll tell you, one of the reasons why Mitt Romney was a sitting duck for two months over the summer was that under the campaign finance laws, he couldn't use money he had already raised until after he received nomination for president in August. I believe that our primary process is way too long. I think our calendar needs to be looked at. I think our debate calendar needs to be shrunk. I think we had way too many debates with our candidates slicing and dicing each other. And I think they had to wait too long to get to the convention. I'm calling for a convention in June or July. We're going to set up a commission that's going to make that decision. I'm going to be a part of that. I'm going to chair that commission, but no more August conventions.

SCHIEFFER: And as I understand it, then, fewer debates the year before the presidential year. You'll start them -- when would you like to start them? They started what, in February?

PRIEBUS: If it was up to me I wouldn't start a debate until September if it was up to me.

SCHIEFFER: The year before the...

PRIEBUS: And I would do one a month -- I mean, this is me talking now. I would do one a month. I would have more say over the moderators, more say over the debate partners. I would limit the debate to a reasonable amount. I don't know, maybe seven or eight, but not 23, Bob. It's ridiculous.

SCHIEFFER: We're going to continue this, this is fascinating, in part two. In the meantime, we'll be back in a moment with some personal thoughts.

SCHIEFFER: Elliot Richardson, who served in four cabinet posts in the Nixon and Ford administrations, once said where we stand depends on where we sit. Ronald Reagan brought it even closer to home when he said "most great change begins at the dinner table." So it was that conservative Republican Senator Rob Portman, who has opposed gay marriage in the past, stunned Washington by saying he now favors it. His reason, his son had told him he was gay, and he wanted his son to have the same rights as anyone else. In doing so, Portman became the first sitting Republican to take that position, which caused some in his party to cringe, and brought an undercurrent of criticism from some on the left who said it's about time. Portman said he had never thought much about gay marriage until now, but personal experience often makes yesterday's disinterested observer tomorrow's champion of the cause. People can have differing views on what constitutes marriage, but wanting a fair shake for your kid is about as good a reason to take a public position as I can think of. It is, after all, the principle on which this nation was founded. Back in a minute.

SCHIEFFER: Some of our stations are leaving us now. Most of you, we'll be right back with more from Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus about those big changes in his party that he's proposing, plus our foreign policy panel. Stay with us.

SCHIEFFER: And welcome back to Face the Nation page two. We're back with the chairman of the Republican Party, Reince Priebus. Mr. Priebus, I'm fascinated by this study. I mean you want to move up the conventions now. You're talking about a huge outreach program to minorities. But the scope of this study that you did I find interesting as well. You tell me that you talked basically to 50,000 people, either by phone or in polling, in person or in focus groups.

PRIEBUS: That's right.

SCHIEFFER: What did the focus groups -- what did they tell you about what people about -- think about the Republican Party.

PRIEBUS: Well, they told us what you would think that they would think. That number one, we're a little bit too math focused and not focused on people's hearts so that we don't relate to, I think, average Americans, more than we should. Stuffy, old guys too much. And it really is painful to hear because reality is we've got a very young party. I mean, you just had Paul Ryan on. He's 42; Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Nikki Haley. I mean, it's a young party. But it just kind of shows you we've done a lousy job of branding and marketing who we are. And so one of the things we brought out of this is not just branding and marketing around election time, but year round. When is the last time -- you used to see this years ago. "I'm a Republican because..." We're talking about national marketing and branding campaign as well about our party, what we believe in, everything from college campuses to just civic opportunities, to even going to black colleges, historically black colleges and universities, telling the story and history of our party, the history of equality, the history of liberty and freedom and doing that through the national party on a consistent basis. This is not a short-term view, Bob. I know that everything isn't going to change in a year. But if we don't start now, we're not going to have any more success in four years, eight years, or 12 years. We have a long-term view, and we're not to stop being a supporting actor and start leading this country.

SCHIEFFER: Let me ask you a little bit about what you want to do about the primary system that we have now. I mean, what -- you're saying too many debates. The debates start much too early. You want fewer debates, and you want to exercise as a party more control over them. But what can you really do about the party primaries because the states control that?

PRIEBUS: Well, we can do quite a bit. I mean, obviously...

SCHIEFFER: What do you want to do?

PRIEBUS: Well, what I would personally want to do is I would set a beginning date, maybe January 1, and then I would set a new end date for the primary season, maybe the end of April, no later than mid-May, and then if you have your convention at the end of June or mid-July, you compress the primary process. Just doing that, Bob, you know, is pretty unprecedented. If you can get an April 30 or a mid-May end date, you have just shortened the primary season. You've also compacted it a little bit as well. But under the rule-making process of the Republican National Committee, there's one thing -- that's one thing and one power we do have, which is we can control the method by which delegates are awarded and how they're divvied up by states and state legislatures. So of course we're going to need states to cooperate. This is not going to be done without state parties being on board. But there are lots of options out there. One is after your carve-out states are done, one option was to divide the country in quarters and do a regional rotating primary, redo a different region every two to three weeks. That can be complicated, but that's one of the options that's out there. If by just setting an end date to the primary and just by moving the convention up, just by moving the convention, Bob, are you automatically -- you're automatically shortening the primary process itself.

SCHIEFFER: I take it you think that the debates hurt your party rather than helped people get to know who these people to know who these people were.

PRIEBUS: Well, it hurt them because, number one, when you walked in the door, of course there were six or seven -- there were multiple already on the calendar. It hurt because there was no way to control it. I mean, if have you 10 candidates and nine out of 10 raise their hand and say I'm going to take any two-hour block offered, well, then you have a debate every three days. And you're the only show in town. So, while we were playing footsy debating each other 23 times, what was the other side doing? They were spending potentially hundreds of millions of dollars on data, technology, voter outreach. They're actually getting the job done. We were debating and bailing the Republican National Committee out of debt. I mean, that tells you a lot of the story. So if it gets to technology and all the work that we need to do there and opening our technology efforts up to an open source, setting up an office in the Silicon Valley, doing hack-a-thons across the country, This is going to be huge, Bob. And we're ready to go, and we're ready to go and we're ready to lead.

SCHIEFFER: All right, well we'll be watching. We'll be listening when you outline all of the details tomorrow on the speech I think at the National Press Club. Chairman, thanks so much. We'll be back in just a minute.)

SCHIEFFER: And we're back with some of the most knowledgeable people in the country when it comes to foreign policy, because all the news this week was not just in Rome and back here where congress debated what to do about the deficit. North Korea gave us a little news to be thinking about, some very serious things to think about. Danielle Pletka is vice president of the American Enterprise Institute. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. His upcoming book is, "Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America's House in Order." David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent of the New York Times. And David Rohde of Reuters is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. And I might add, one of the few people here at the table who has actually been a captive of the Taliban somewhere back there. So he has a little on-the-ground experience in dealing with this stuff. Let's just talk about this North Korean thing. David, what's happened? What's this all about?

DAVID SANGER, NEW YORK TIMES: You know, Bob, the North Korea as a problem is not new. The armistice was signed 60 years ago, and it's been an on-and-off thing ever since with violations and so forth. What is new is a new North Korean capability. They've now conducted a third nuclear test. And by all the early indications, this time it really worked. They have sent a missile as far as the Philippines. If you do the math on that, they're about halfway to being able to hit the continental United States. That is why you saw the Obama administration, which has not been a huge enthusiast in the past of antimissile defenses, say it was going to bolster the antimissile defense that's up in Alaska and in California.

SCHIEFFER: And this is no small step, we're talking spending what?

SANGER: Probably going to be a billion dollars.

SCHIEFFER: For a missile defense that won't be ready for what, three years.

SANGER: It will be supplementing. And of course they don't, the North Koreans will be able to hit the United States for a number of years. And remember, this is a missile defense that works fully half the time. When they've done tests against dummy warheads, it has a 53 percent hit rate. So it's not a perfect system by any means. But the idea here is not only to create some deterrents, but to make the point to the Chinese that if they can't get North Korea under control, they're going to begin to see a lot more U.S. forces not only in the Pacific but these missile defenses that the Chinese fear are also designed for them.

SCHIEFFER: Danielle, are we placing too much importance on this? Should we be as concerned as the administration seems to be when they send the secretary of defense out to announce we're going to spend $1 billion to try to make our missile defense better.

DANIELLE PLETKA, AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: I think we should be more concerned. The problem for us is we've been disinvesting in missile defense. We've been disinvesting in the military. And just because a missile can't reach the United States, doesn't mean that it can't reach our allies in Asia who look to us for their security, are increasingly concerned that we're not going to be there for them in the event of a North Korean breakout or, frankly, a conflict with China. So I think we need to be doing a great deal more. And you're exactly right, part of this is deterrence, part of it is causing our adversaries to believe that we are serious. Up until now, and maybe even -- maybe even including now, they don't believe that.

SCHIEFFER: Richard?

RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Well, we ought to make clear to everybody that the next Korean War, if one were ever to happen, is going to be the last Korean War because it's going to end with a unified peninsula, and it's go to be under Seoul, not Pyongyang. And that will hopefully make the North Korean leadership think twice. Also, though, a lot of this message is aimed at Beijing. Probably three-quarter of North Korea's trade still transit Chinese territory. If there's any country that has the capacity not to control North Korea, but to influence North Korea, it's still China. The Chinese always say they have very little influence. They have more than they say they do. We should put pressure on them to do it and there's finally, Bob, we're seeing the first signs of a little bit of Chinese disaffection. At some point they're getting tired of the antics of this country. This is a dangerous ally for China to have. And the more Chinese can pressure them and put the economic screws on them, the better it will be for everybody.

SCHIEFFER: What can we do, David?

ROHDE: I think that the missile defense is one step forward, working with the Chinese as well. And I think we need to more broadly engage, engage in the region with Asia. And this whole issue of North Korea shows that foreign policy matters. We don't want to engage, I understand the sort of post-Iraq and Afghanistan hangover. But the North Koreans are not giving us sort of a time out to sort out our domestic issues. The Iranians are not giving us a time out. They're pouring tremendous amounts of weaponry into Syria. You know, we have to respond to cyber attacks that David has talked about from China. And this is just this latest example of, I think, the administration needs to step up its game, generally speaking, in foreign policy. They can -- you know, they have to chew gum and walk at the same time.

SCHIEFFER: Well, let's just say that they attack South Korea, they fall under the nuclear umbrella, do they not, as does Japan? We have an agreement with our allies that, you know, an attack on them is an attack on us, and we respond with nuclear weapons. Would we do that?

HAASS: There are still 28,000 Americans in South Korea. So initially it would be a conventional war. We're not going to retaliate with nuclear weapons but we would make it clear to the North Koreans that if there were any threat or use of nuclear weapons, then, yes, everything is on the table. Again, we would hope they wouldn't go that far. We would hope the Chinese would not permit them that far. But you're exactly right. We have security guarantees that do not have ceilings on them. It's one of the reasons this is so dangerous.

SCHIEFFER: Talk about the impact of North Korea on Iran and what Iran is doing. Because somebody was telling me just this week, look, North Korea is the model for the Iranians. They say nobody took North Korea seriously until they started talking about nuclear weapons and having one. And we're not going to stop until we get one, too, because we think it's working. They're paying attention to North Korea.

PLETKA: Well, I don't know how reliable the reporting was, but when North Korea conducted that nuclear test, there were reports that a senior Iranian official was present at the test. That wouldn't be the first time. And it would mean for the Iranians that they are further ahead on their program, which we tend to look at in this sort of isolated soda straw way by looking just down at Iran. If they're working with the North Koreans, then they have in fact been able to be present at a nuclear test. That means they are in better shape than I think many, including the Israelis, strangely, want to admit.

SCHIEFFER: You know, I don't think it's any secret, and maybe the president said this during an interview last week, he considers the threat from North Korea right now more significant than the threat from Iran.

SANGER: Well, it's certainly more immediate in that the North Koreans have conducted three nuclear tests. They've got the missile capability. We don't know that they have the ability to take a nuclear weapon and shrink it down and put it on a missile. We also haven't been able to confirm, although we've all heard the same reports, that the Iranians were at the test -- the North Korean test. But even if they weren't at it -- and I suspect it probably would have been difficult for them to send some prominent Iranians there, even if they weren't at it, they look at the North Korean model, and what do they see? We had a succession of presidents from George H.W. Bush through President Clinton and George Bush saying that they would never tolerate a nuclear North Korea. Well, after three tests, we've tolerated a nuclear North Korea. The North Koreans have been quite successful in showing that they are just irrational enough that nobody wants to go deal with them while they've got a nuclear weapon. And when they look out at the world, just as when the Iranians look out at the world, and they say, where are the places where the United States has participated in an invasion? Well, in Iraq 10 years ago this week, a place that turned out not to have any nuclear weapons. And in Libya, a country that gave up its nuclear weapons and tried to have some kind of accommodation with the West. If you're Iranian, if you're North Korean, and you look at that, you say to yourself, giving up the weapons, even after all of these negotiations, may not be the best approach.

SCHIEFFER: Let's talk a little bit about the president getting ready to go to Israel. I think Tom Friedman said just the other day he couldn't recall a less-anticipated trip of a president going to Israel. He said he didn't expect much to happen, David?

ROHDE: It's another sign I think of the sort of minimalist foreign policy we're seeing from the White House. It's almost like he's checking a box to go to Israel. I know the White House will disagree with that. But I think it's -- again, this region is not going to wait for the U.S. It is increasingly unstable. Egypt is having tremendous turmoil at this point. The Syria situation is getting worse and worse. The number of refugees is skyrocketing just in the last few weeks. So I'm curious what he'll do in Israel. It's a vital relationship. It's very important. I also want to I think to see what he is going to signal in Jordan. When I've traveled in the region, there was a sense that he made a great speech in Cairo in terms of appealing to, you know, young people. Many young people I've met want to work for Google, they want engagement with the U.S., not invasions. But there is a sense that the administration hasn't delivered. There is no economic engagement.

SCHIEFFER: Richard?

HAASS: I see it somewhat differently. What's -- it's an important trip to Israel. It's just that the peace process, which for so long dominated U.S. diplomacy towards this part of the world, is not center stage. The new Israeli government is not a peace cabinet. It's not a war cabinet. It's "how do we get the Orthodox in Israel to play a larger role in Israeli society" cabinet. So that's the Israel that the president is visiting. But he has an interesting agenda there. One is, obviously, Syria. There is, obviously, Iran, the issue we have just been talking about, which is the uppermost on the Israeli security screen. There is Egypt. There is Jordan. Essentially the Israelis get up every day and they see that all the givens of their security world have essentially crumbled. The two countries they have a peace treaty with, Egypt is now controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood, and for all we know, in one or two years, so will Jordan. Even Saudi Arabia is not immune. So I actually think it's a very rich strategic agenda for the president to discuss with the Israelis now.

SCHIEFFER: Dani, you are literally just off a plane from Israel. You're just back from there and we appreciate you getting back in time to come be with us. What is the mood over there? What are they expecting?

PLETKA: Well, they echo the theme that we are hearing here this morning, which is, why can't the United States engage more? Exactly as Richard just said, they're looking at their neighborhood and they see huge problems in Syria. They see huge problems in Lebanon that's dominated by Hezbollah. They see a government in Jordan that's under the enormous weight of more than 400,000 Syrian refugees. They have still got Iraqi refugees. They have got al Qaeda in the Sinai. They have got a Palestinian leadership that just yesterday, the leader of -- the president of the Palestinian Authority, the head of Fatah, said there's no difference between us and Hamas. So the Israelis are looking at this and thinking, we don't know what we're going to do. And they're not sure what the president is there to deliver. They don't think the president is going to come and strengthen the deterrent against Iran. They don't think the president is going to come and deliver some sort of intervention to stabilize Syria. So they're not quite sure what he's going to be delivering in the first place.

SCHIEFFER: Well, what do they want? I mean, what would their wish list include?

PLETKA: I think that if they had to speak privately -- and I think a lot of this is going to require private assurances, I think they want to know that the United States is actually going to be there as Iran moves forward, whatever these red lines are, the zone of immunity, whatever they -- the supposed language is about the Iranian nuclear program. The bottom line is that Iran already has enough fissile material to make a bomb. And they want to know is the United States going to act before they have to? I don't think they're going to get a lot of satisfaction.

HAASS: Interesting thing though for the president is he has got to think about the Middle East in the totality of American foreign policy. Here we are, the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War, and one of the lesson we ought to have drawn from the last decade is the United States allowed itself to get overly involved in this part of the world. It distorted American foreign policy. The idea that we would take the aftermath of the Cold War and have two enormous wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan is the opposite of what is serious strategy. We are right to be doing much more in Asia. We ought to be doing much more in North America. We are on the cusp of an energy revolution. And we do need to be doing more at home. The biggest national security threats facing the United States right now are not in the Middle East. They are domestic.

SCHIEFFER: The two Davids, let's talk a little bit about Syria. We've just touched on that. What do you see happening there?

ROHDE: I think you'll still have the same military stalemate. The analogy that I see is the war in Bosnia, which I covered, where there is an international arms embargo, but it's sort of locked in place, the superior weaponry that Assad has. And nothing is going to change until the opposition is better armed. There are press reports now that something has happened. There's now anti-tank weapons and sophisticated weaponry coming in from turkey. And I think more of that will be needed. It's ugly but what ended the war in Bosnia was the Croatians and Bosnians becoming better armed on the ground. And that, unfortunately, is what has to happen in Syria.

SCHIEFFER: How does this one end, David?

SANGER: Well, it's going to end very messily, no matter how this goes. But it's clear that the Obama administration is feeling under much greater pressure now to allow heavy weapons into Syria.

Secretary of State Clinton was arguing for this in her last two months. David Petraeus was arguing for it in his last days as the CIA director. Now the French and the British have argued for it. It's really the administration that's the last one to hold out. And it's holding out because it's haunted by the vision of Iraq, just as Richard said. They're thinking, you know, 10 years ago right now, this weekend, the United States was headed into a war whose ending it did not understand. And they can understand how they get into Syria. They can't understand how they get back out.

SCHIEFFER: Should they have done more?

PLETKA: Of course they should have done more. We have two choices here. Syria isn't going to disappear. So we have two choices. Either we can become more involved or we can help the Syrians win themselves. One of the reasons we went into Iraq is, in the 1990s, we had a policy that theoretically was built on helping the Iraqi opposition. Now, we may like them; we may hate them; at the end of the day, they weren't American troops. You can't ignore the world. You can either work through like- minded proxies and help benefit the good guys -- remember, Syria started with pretty good guys against Assad. Now the opposition is dominated by Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al Qaida-affiliated group. If we had gotten in earlier, maybe we could have helped to influence this. You're exactly right; this is going to end in a mess, and I hope that we don't have to get involved in any way at all.

SCHIEFFER: You think -- we have 15 seconds, Richard. Do you think we will become more heavily involved?

HAASS: We will give some arms to selected members of the opposition. We should. But we should get ready for an extraordinarily difficult aftermath.

SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, thank you all very much for a sobering, I must say...

(LAUGHTER)

... but enlightening discussion. Our "Face the Nation" flashback is next.

SCHIEFFER: Friday marked the 100th anniversary of what's become, for better or worse, a Washington institution, the presidential news conference. That's our "Face the Nation" flashback. Woodrow Wilson called the first one but became so exasperated with the questions he eventually stopped having them. His successors, Harding, Coolidge and Hoover, took only written questions. Roosevelt met often with the White House press, but reporters couldn't quote him directly; same with Truman.

FORMER PRESIDENT DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER: Well, I see we're trying a new experiment this morning. I hope it doesn't prove to be a disturbing influence.

SCHIEFFER (voice over): Eisenhower let cameras in, but his answers couldn't be broadcast until the White House reviewed the transcript.

(UNKNOWN): President Kennedy's news conference, live from Washington. .

SCHIEFFER: It was John Kennedy who first allowed news conferences to be broadcast live and forever changed the presidency. QUESTION: You were quoted as making a rather harsh statement about businessmen.

FORMER PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: Ah, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

You wouldn't want to identify it, would you?

(LAUGHTER)

SCHIEFFER: Kennedy demonstrated that a president's charm and wit could help his cause as much as the substance of his answers.

FORMER PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: I never promised you a rose garden.

SCHIEFFER: President Ford took the news conference outside.

(on camera): Can give us any details on that?

SCHIEFFER (voice over): Great, except when aircraft overhead drowned him out.

Other presidents tried various innovations to put their own spin on the news, but only two things have remained constant.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: Presidents come to dread, if not hate, news conferences.

FORMER PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: I didn't get to finish my answer, in all due respect.

SCHIEFFER: And reporters are never satisfied.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Thank you very much, everybody.

(CROSSTALK)

SCHIEFFER: It's the nature of journalism.

QUESTION: Mr. President, you signed an order.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCHIEFFER (on camera): People always ask me which of all the administrations I've covered are the most secretive and manipulative. I always answer whichever happens to be in office at the time. Each learns from the previous one. Every administration comes to office promising to be more open and transparent, but except after Nixon, I can never remember that happening. Our "Face the Nation" flashback.

SCHIEFFER: Well, that's it for us today. We want to thank you for watching "Face the Nation," as always, and we'll see you, as always, next week right here. And let us not forget to wish you a happy St. Patrick's Day.