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SPEAKER 1: Next week, Dave Durenberger wraps up 16 years as a US Senator from the state of Minnesota. It has been an eventful 16 years. Early in his career, he was being talked about as a possible candidate for national office.

Later, he was denounced by his fellow senators for ethical violations and still faces prosecution by the Justice Department. Through it all, Durenberger has been widely praised as one of the Senate's most thoughtful policymakers.

Well, Senator Durenberger did not run for re-election this year, so next week he's going to be leaving the Senate and returning to private life. Senator, Thanks for coming by. I really appreciate it.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yeah, thanks for the comment about riding off into the sunset. I'm not built to do that.

[LAUGHTER]

SPEAKER 1: Well, what are you going to do?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well it's like the third phase of my life or maybe the fourth phase of my life, something like that. I'm going to live a life. I'm just 60 and figure I got a whole life ahead of me.

Professionally, in Washington, I'll probably spend half my time associated with as a senior consultant to a consulting firm called APCO. And that's an acronym for Arnold & Porter Company. They do business, government relations, consulting, and so forth.

And I'll be sort of a strategic planning kind of person. Here, a couple times every month, I'm going to be back here at the University of St. Thomas, the Graduate School of Business, helping them start a national institute on health policy, which we're all very excited about here in Minnesota and teaching.

My first four hour course is Friday night, the 6 of January. I'm excited to find out if there's any of my father or mother in me.

[LAUGHS]

SPEAKER 1: Both of whom were teachers.

[LAUGHTER]

Any mixed emotions about leaving the Senate?

DAVE DURENBERGER: None. No, it's all very, very positive. I've had a marvelous experience. It's been a great honor. I'd would recommend it to anyone who felt they were qualified to do it. I'd also recommend that they do it for a relatively short period of their lives.

I mean, I think what I ended up at was an extended term limits, 16 years. And I think that's about right. Maybe 12 years would have been just as right. But it is an important thing to do and an important part of one's life to serve in that particular way.

And I have no regrets about the opportunity that I've had. It's just nothing but positives and pluses, and that's why I'm looking forward. Wouldn't you be kind of a King, though, if you would have stayed on?

I mean, with the Republicans in control of the Senate. Now, and as a matter of fact, they're in control of the House, too. And well, I'm not sure. I just had a wonderful visit this morning with one of my former colleagues, a State Senator, Wayne Popham.

And he said, he left the state Senate along with a number of the rest of our friends at the end of the 1960s, early 1970s. And that was a period of time of a certain kind of a Republican and a more sort of a progressive reach across the aisle Republicans here in Minnesota.

After that, politics in Minnesota got very politicized at the state legislative level. In Washington, we had the period of time in which being a Democrat was a be-all and end-all, but then you had to be a certain kind of Democrat or you weren't a Democrat.

Then during my period, I think we were in the more bipartisan, you couldn't get anything done unless you did reach across the aisle. And now I think we're probably at the end of that, and we're headed into a new phase in which Republicans will dictate what kind of a Republican you need to be in order to move the country ahead.

And then, eventually, we'll get back to this bipartisan thing again. But I am basically a bipartisan. I'm proud to be a Republican. But the kind of Republican I am is somebody who gets paid to get things done, not just to have an ideological view as how to do them.

SPEAKER 1: What's going on with the Justice Department prosecution? Are they moving ahead?

DAVE DURENBERGER: It's like the orange triangle, this giant slow moving vehicle that sucks you up and won't let you out. They've been moving on this now for-- the department has had this thing for 4 and 1/2 years. It's incredible. We think they have no business having it. There is at least a separation of powers issue.

In other words, the issue that's involved here is, how does the Senate reimburse somebody for their expenses? And the United States Senate decided that issue in July of 1990, and you've already referred to that.

The Justice Department has no business in this issue. They haven't found anything new different or anything like that. They're just they're prosecuting me on the same issue that the Senate dealt with 4 and 1/2 years ago. So we argue 9th of January our case to the Circuit Court of Appeals on the separation of powers issues because we have to. It's a constitutional issue.

Hopefully, sometime in the future, whoever is running the Justice Department will make the decision to dismiss this case.

SPEAKER 1: Is there any indication that they're just going to let it go once you actually leave the Senate?

DAVE DURENBERGER: No, I think if they were just going to let it go, they would have done it after the federal judge in Omaha dismissed the case on similar constitutional grounds a year ago. They should have dropped it then. They didn't. So I just think it's one of these things they don't know how to handle. I mean, they just they don't know how to say no and get rid of it.

SPEAKER 1: Our guest today is Minnesota Senator Dave Durenberger, who is on the-- well, the last go-round here. This is his last week as a US Senator with a new Congress. He moves on to private life. Let's go to our first caller, who is from Saint Paul. Jim?

JIM: Hello, Dave Durenberger, I'm very proud to be able to get a chance to talk to you. I'd like to let you know that I'm basically a Democrat, but I've always supported you. And I think during the Reagan years, you did not always follow the Republican line. You were not always supporting his things. And I really liked your independence. I like to compliment you for that.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Thank you.

JIM: Also, I've never held any of the negative things written about you against you. The positive things that you've done have far outweighed any of those things. But I have one lingering question is, could you explain why you voted for Clarence Thomas?

I just really believe that there was plenty of reasons to doubt about his ability to be a Supreme Court justice, and it seems to me like it's a glaring question about your judgment.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yeah. Thanks. And I'd be glad to do that. I knew Clarence Thomas as a person. I knew Clarence Thomas. I mean, I know him as a person. I knew him before this as a person. I knew him as a staff member on Senator Danforth's staff on the Hill in the late '70s, early 80s.

I knew him as the head of EEOC, and so I knew something about his ability. Whether or not he would have the judgment, if you will, that is required to be a United States Supreme Court justice, that is something that is up to the president, in my particular view.

Where I weigh in as a United States Senator is whether or not he by character, that there is something in his background and so forth that would disqualify him. That's where the whole issue of the Anita Hill accusations came up. That was a genuine issue for the United States Senate to deal with. We did not deal with it in a genuine way. There was sort of like a kangaroo court, almost a circus environment around in which both Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas suffered a great deal.

I don't know that there was any other way to do it, given the late nature of the charges, but I would not vote against the president or against Clarence Thomas because of the way my colleagues in the Senate handled that particular case.

I still believe Clarence Thomas is a fine man. I believe he will be a good justice. He won't be one of the greats, but he will be a very good justice of the Supreme Court and will add a dimension to the thinking of the other judges as well.

SPEAKER 1: Yvonne, you're next with a question for Senator Durenberger.

YVONNE: Good morning, Senator Durenberger.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yes.

YVONNE: Always an honor and a privilege to speak to you.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Thank you.

YVONNE: I have one question and then a comment, if I may. You have done so much for the state of Minnesota with so much class and so much dignity. I would like to know, what is your proudest accomplishment in your 16 years? It's a hard question, I know.

Well, it is. And I thank you very much for the complement and Jim as well, the previous speaker. Just I can't tell you how much it means to hear you say those things. And, I guess, that's my proudest accomplishment. I sat down when George Thies, who's now died, unfortunately, of a heart attack December 2 back in 1980, 1983.

I sat down with George when he was my first chief of staff, and I said, George, here's what we want to do in the United States Senate. And I said, our first priority is to individual Minnesotans who haven't any other place to go but their United States Senator.

And I think my staff and everybody who's worked with me over 16 years has done such an incredible job of living up to that commitment. And I can think of Romanian refugee kids, adoptees. I can think of the moms, the wives, the husbands, the dads of the folks that went over in this war, which could have been a horrible disaster in Desert Shield and Desert Storm.

I think of the kid that lost his legs from Hibbing in Grenada. I think of all kinds of individual experiences. There's a dad up in Alexandria, Minnesota, who comes to see me every time I get anywhere near Alexandria to tell me that I saved his son's life.

There was a story in one of our newspapers this morning about a Navy, chaplain's assistant and one of his kids. That's what makes all the difference in my life. It's that one on one where you can really help and be a difference to one person at a time.

SPEAKER 1: That's interesting because I suppose a lot of people would think, well, boy, it's the big picture, high profile stuff or the bill you passed or--

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well, it's something like that. But it's really the--

SPEAKER 1: The day-to-day day constituent service, as it's called.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Absolutely. Tim's on the line from St. Cloud. Go ahead.

TIM: Yes, Senator Durenberger.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yes.

TIM: I have a question. I actually two-part question. One, were you on the bipartisan committee actually on the universal health care reform just a few months ago?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well, I was in two bipartisan efforts. The one that came closest to success was the mainstream effort, which was yes. And that's the one you're referring to Democrat and Republican senators. And we had house members of both parties. Also, we almost had a deal together right at the very end.

TIM: Yeah, basically, I guess my only question, I just wanted to hear-- I'm a Republican myself, and I just wanted to hear your thoughts and ideas into the universal health care, if you think it is a good idea or where you stand on that?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Sure. And I'll be very brief, although it's a very complicated subject. The biggest problem we have in America today is the one that everyone experiences, and that's the cost of providing access to health care. There are a number of Americans that don't have health insurance and should have health insurance. That's a coverage issue. But the reason they don't is the cost.

And so as a Republican and on the bipartisan mainstream, our objective was to do what we could to change the national and state government rules that are increasing the cost of health care for every single American, and then move to the direction of universal coverage.

And so that's a very important principle. Start by getting rid of the legislatively mandated benefits, mandated providers, all of the things that the medical system has put into effect to protect itself from competition, from your choice as an individual, and so forth.

Add to that ways in which individuals can be rewarded for taking responsibility for their own health, and so forth. And that requires changing the rules of the game, so to speak, that government has set up to impede choice and to impede responsibility and to impede rewarding good people for doing good things.

Get rid of the bad rules. Put new ones in so that the incentives are right. That will get the cost down, I think, to 10% of the gross national product or less. Then move in the direction of reforming Medicare, Medicaid, tax policies, and so forth, so you can have universal coverage for every American.

I believe both can be done, and part of the rest of my life is going to be dedicated to getting that done.

SPEAKER 1: Do you think it's going to be done anywhere in the near future, given what's happened in the last couple of years?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yeah the problem-- and Ken reflects it in his question is that the public never got into the act on health care reform. It was like something got to do in Washington, DC. And until we can get average Americans and average Minnesotans involved in understanding what is health care? What's health care reform?

How do you do it? What's everyone's role? And everybody does have a role in this, including people in government. We're not going to get the job done as soon as we do that. And I think we'll do that in the next two years. We'll get much more education, much more understanding. Then you can start the process.

Health reform is taking place already out there, as everybody knows. I mean, your health plan or choices are changing every year. What we need to do now is to straighten out the government rules so that the cost will come down and coverage can go up to somewhere near universal.

SPEAKER 1: Robin's on the line from Minneapolis with a question for Senator Durenberger. Go ahead.

ROBIN: Yes, Senator.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Hi, Robin.

ROBIN: How are you?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Good.

ROBIN: Well, in addition to health care, you've also been quite active in getting national and community service as an opportunity for thousands of American youth. And I was wondering that since the new Congress seems bent on cutting the budget so much, is this act in jeopardy of not getting continued funding? And what would you do if it was in danger?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well, thank you for the complement. I was involved. And I've been involved, I guess, for all the 16 years with volunteer on issues of volunteerism and volunteerism and then making sure that the Bush administration put together what they call the Points of Lights Foundation, but it accentuated community service.

Also, with the help of Minnesotans, made sure that what the President Clinton promised as national service would become national and community service so that the orientation is community, it isn't just nationhood.

And Republicans have not been good supporters of any government role in community service. Fearful, sometimes appropriately, that somehow the government's going to take over the community service, and then it's no longer service. It's something everybody has to do rather than a choice.

So there's a danger, as Robin points out, that with Republicans in charge, they'll wipe out the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Commission for National and Community Service.

I have plans presently-- and I've talked to Eli Segal about this. He wants me to be involved in an advisory capacity-- to highlight the successes of community-based national and community service, where there is a government role. Not just putting money in, but like we do in Minnesota through service learning programs in our elementary and secondary education program. Government has a very appropriate role here, and we need to maintain that. It isn't just putting millions of dollars in. And I will spend some time highlighting that

SPEAKER 1: This is somewhat related. As we move, and it seems like the government definitely moving in the direction of scaling back, turning more responsibility back to the United States, local communities, or local governments, and perhaps even more so, the private sector, various social services, for example.

It seems like we don't have the kind of network in place at the local level anymore to take care of the responsibilities that we've essentially turned over to the government lo these many years. Is there not a danger that a whole lot of people and a whole lot of services are going to fall through the cracks in the meanwhile, as these local networks are rebuilt?

DAVE DURENBERGER: I hear what you're saying, but I don't quite agree with your estimate. I think the capacity is there today, much better than it was 30 years ago when we sent all the responsibility to Washington.

What people fear is whether they have the financial capacity. Whether locally or [INAUDIBLE], taxes are going to be able to meet the challenge, just like education in if left to local taxes doesn't make it in rural Minnesota, or it doesn't make it in the inner city of Saint Paul and Minneapolis. You have to have a much broader base,

But the capacity today is much different. From deinstitutionalizing people with disabilities to a wide variety of dealing with mental illnesses. And you have constant examples that there are more resources, professional resources in our communities today than there ever have been.

The fact that we still have problems is not a lack of resources. It's the fact that there's a federal program for every need, and that federal money is just enough to force people to take it, and all the orders and everything that go with it.

You go through this community of Minnesota, and you will find people who if, in fact, you just give them the dollars or give them 75% of the dollars that are involved, but don't tell them how to do it, they will give you better educated kids, healthier kids, kids with their family and personal behavior change.

But don't tell them how to accomplish it. Give them an outcome that you expect, you the public through government in some kind, but don't tell them how to do it. And that is the challenge of a new federalism that lies ahead.

It isn't just cutting and running from government responsibility. It is redefining the role that government plays and how you hold people accountable in our society. The capacity, I believe, is there, but our accountability measures are all the wrong thing. They measure on what went in rather than what comes out of the system.

SPEAKER 1: Stuart, you're next.

STUART: Yes. Senator Durenberger, I appreciate the opportunity to ask you two questions. Although a Democrat, I also think you've given great service to the state of Minnesota. However, I have two questions.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Thank you.

STUART: One, could you tell us a little about your tenure on the Senate Intelligence Committee? I know once, a long time ago, you gave a speech in Florida where you mentioned Mr. Pollard. That got you in trouble, right?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Right.

STUART: And I was wondering, sir, I know your character, which is a very high standard. I'm wondering if there's more to the story with the trouble you're in than meets the eye. I know that sounds conspiratorial. It doesn't mean to be.

But I was wondering if that speech got you in a lot of trouble with people who maybe were opposed to your domestic agenda, and they jumped on that? Number two, do you think serving with Arnold & Porter-- and I don't mean this as an accusatory thing. I'm just trying to find out more about how government works-- do you think that feeds into this revolving door of government and private interests?

In other words, I think people should do whatever they want when they leave the Senate, and they have a right to earn a lot of money. But are you going to be dealing with former health interests maybe, or clients that you were dealing with or contributed to you during you're 16 years when you worked for Arnold & Porter?

So I know those are two tough questions. I don't mean to put you on the spot. I'm really trying to delve in a little bit about your tenure on the Senate Intelligence Committee and working for William Porter. And I hope you don't mind I'm asking those questions.

DAVE DURENBERGER: No. And I appreciate they're difficult questions. And it's not going to be easy to answer them in the time we have with the other calls we have. I'm going to take a stab at it, though.

First, with regard to the Intelligence Committee, really challenging time. We did a lot of unique things that nobody knows anything about, many of which dealt with problems that are only now becoming obvious to people such as trying to develop a national intelligence strategy. That's the one thing that Bill Casey and I did agree on.

A lot of other people haven't awakened to. That's one around which I wrote my first book. And neither madmen nor messiahs having a vision, a strategy for what would happen if the Russians don't turn out to be 10 feet tall like we made them out to be.

In that period of time, we went through something called the year of the spy, where there were nine or 10 or 11 Americans who were discovered spying for other countries. One of those was a fellow by the name of Pollard.

I did talk about that case and briefly to an APAC audience in Florida without revealing any national security secrets or any of that sort of thing. Wolf Blitzer, who's now a famous reporter, CNN, I think, in Washington, DC, at that time wrote for The Jerusalem Post, and he wrote a distorted and in several instances untrue version of what I said.

He was not present. He got all his second or third hand. Another Senator? Who was president or president at the time indicated that sort of thing didn't happen. But I did put in perspective some of the untruths or half truths that the director of Central Intelligence was putting into the American market about Israelis.

And to that extent, I angered people. I angered the Secretary of Defense Cap Weinberger, who was no great famous friend of Israel. And I angered Mr. Casey. I don't subscribe to conspiratorial theories, so I'm not sure there's any connection between what's going on now and what happened there.

Secondly, with regard to the consulting, I remain an independent contractor, not an employee of either Arnold Porter, which has sold APCO, the consulting firm, to another firm. And my work will be-- by law, I can't do lobbying. By instinct, I don't want to do lobbying. I'm largely going to work on strategy issues.

And one of those will be working with people who are in the health business or people who are employers, who have begun the health care reform revolution in trying to develop a national strategy to help Americans understand what is health care, what is health care reform, and what is the government's role in all of this.

So while I don't lobby and won't lobby for a specific client who may have been a constituent of mine, I will provide advice to those people around this strategy for how do we do health reform in a way that Americans can understand it, participate in it and therefore be the beneficiaries of it and not simply delegate it all the time to the government?

SPEAKER 1: Do you think we need more restrictions in terms of what government officials, what jobs they can move into after they leave either public office or an appointed position?

DAVE DURENBERGER: I think you need to-- ask me this in a year after I've been out and understand some of these sort of things better. I know well senators who lobby, and I know senators who refuse to lobby. I fall on that latter category.

I came out of state government in 1970, '71, and I knew then that I didn't want to be a lobbyist. And so I worked for eight years at HB Fuller. And I did a lot of pro bono kind of work on-- that time it was parks and open space, the State Ethics Commission, Judicial Standards commission for judges of the Supreme Court and other judges in Minnesota, the Minnesota Commission on the Arts, the Governor's Commission on the Arts.

And my skill is in bringing people together around something that will happen in the future rather than trying to lobby on something that happened yesterday and somebody wants to remedy.

I'm sure there are other people at APCO, the firm I'll be involved in, who do lobbying. And because of the experience I had in the Senate, I think I'll probably be the in-house expert on how to draw the line so that people will understand the ethics of what we do as a firm, what I do as a person.

SPEAKER 1: Our guest today is Minnesota Senator Dave Durenberger. This is his last week in office. Caller os on the line from Stillwater. John, go ahead.

JOHN: Yes, Senator Durenberger. My question is that so-called middle class tax cut we're talking about just a red herring for Congress not willing to balance the budget. Your thoughts on that, please?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yes. Thanks very much. I went through-- well, I did a lot of taxes in the Senate Finance Committee, 16 years in the Finance Committee. And you get to be either think you're an expert, or you become one by just being exposed to it a lot.

We did the big tax bill 1981, followed by '82. And then in 1986, the really large one that took on the Senate side, we took the marginal rates of taxation down to 25%. If we could do that across the board and stay with it, where the marginal rate of federal taxation was 25% and leave other sources of taxes to the states and local communities, I think we'd have a much healthier system.

If you want to know the truth, I think the main problem for the middle class now is that they're taxed on their income rather than on expenditures. And let me clarify that a little bit. My kids when they get their first job, and all of them are on their first, second, or third right now, they're not making what I make overnight.

In fact, my children will take 17 years to catch up with my income, whereas I took 4 and 1/2 years to catch up with my dad. That's the difference in our generation. Those kids, though, are paying 15.3% of the first dollar they earn for Social Security that they don't think they'll ever see. And that's the heart of this problem.

It isn't going around through the government trying to pick and choose what the middle class likes or doesn't like. You can start right with that fact that middle class Americans working two jobs per family, or three jobs per family, or four jobs per family, as the case may be, are paying 15.5 cents of the first dollar they earn, regardless of whether it's a $4.25 an hour job or a $10 an hour job. Paying it into a Social Security system that is paying off Mrs. Pillsbury and a whole lot of other people in America who no longer need the same kind of a Social Security system that was designed in the 1930s.

So the people in the entitlement commission who talk about meeting the promises made to all Americans, middle-class, upper-class, and low-income Americans, but doing it in a different way ought to be listened to. It's not a matter of getting rid of Social Security or anything like that. A middle-class tax cut really means going after the payroll tax, going after that 15.3% that hits all these low-income, new-earning families and bringing that tax down.

What's the substitute for it if you need it? That's where you get controversial. The two substitutes are do something about the high cost of entitlements, Medicare included, and move in the direction of a value added or expenditure tax.

We can move as a nation out of the payroll tax or this low-income or middle-income tax in the direction of an expenditures tax. And we can do that by not exempting needed items but by giving people a refund on their income tax for the equivalent amount of food, clothing, medical expenses, and so forth.

And so we could have a very fair, equitable middle-class expenditure tax like a value added tax that didn't penalize people for buying the things that they absolutely have to have. But getting there is tough.

SPEAKER 1: Patricia, you're next.

PATRICIA: Yes. First, I wanted to just thank Senator Durenberger for all of his time. 16 years is a long time. I was on a panel with him. Well, it was by satellite. It was on Minnesota Public Television.

And the same issues like now it was on children's issues and on health. And it was on the food program that they're having because that is part of health. And to ask you when you're still in Washington to make sure that these are some of the issues that are very important to early child development?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well, thank you very much, Patricia. And I remember the program, and I remember some of the issues. And I know that everybody is focusing on kids these days. And I think we're all very, very grateful for that.

The issue is going to be the way in which you involve family, community, and local resources in meeting these needs as opposed to using, for example, a very effective, in fact, maybe one of the most effective federal-- there are two really effective federal programs that I've had experience with.

One is maternal and child health, Title VI of the Social Security Act. The other one is WIC, the Women, Infant and Children's program. In the administration of those programs, there are still a lot of improvements.

I mean, you can shift a lot of the-- if we can change the accountability measures, I think we can get better food, better health care, and so forth to moms and kids, particularly lower-income moms and kids if we change the way in which we do accountability and the administration of it.

But those are a couple of examples of programs that you don't just throw overboard because they happen to be federal categorical programs. So I hope that you'll stay in touch. And if there's some help you need, let me know.

SPEAKER 1: David, your next. Call from Saint Louis Park.

DAVID: Yes. Thank you. I think this type of an opportunity to speak with the Senator for about an hour is one of the best reasons to have shorter terms for our--

DAVE DURENBERGER: [LAUGHS] Great.

DAVID: I think making these kinds of personal changes gives everyone a chance to sit back and relax and take a deep breath and really talk about what's happened. The question I have is, so often we hear from people in the Senate, as well as in the media that we Republicans or we Democrats are trying to come up with a solution to a problem. And if the other side would simply come along, right, we'd get something done.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Absolutely.

DAVID: We so seldom hear someone say, we senators, period, are going to work out this problem. Can you shed some light on why that is so often reported, and if that's really the case?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yeah, I think, well, there's two or three reasons for it. One, because everybody in the United States Senate since I've been there has been one or the other, either Republican or Democrat. Secondly, the way you get to the Senate is to be one or the other.

In order to get on the ballot in Minnesota in 1978, 1982, and 1988. I had to go through a Republican endorsing process, and then a Republican primary in order to get there. So we have a very distinctive two party system. And we elect leaders in the Senate who are the Republican leader or the Democratic leader of the Senate.

And if you wanted to get some discipline in the process, in effect, you'd want all the Republicans, if they were in the majority to deliver on their promises, whatever they promised in an election, by God, now let's deliver. So that's why you sent them there, and you put them in the majority.

Now, let's get something for it. So I think those are the reasons why you as a citizen want to hear some of that. Unfortunately, what's happened in the last 20 years is that while the Republicans and the Democrats all have leaders, and they all hide behind we're going to do this for you and we're going to do that for you, when it comes to delivering, everybody is an entrepreneur.

I mean, everybody in a place runs against the Congress. And then when they get there, they set up their own little business. And mine happens to be currently health care. That's what everybody says. Actually, I'm in 50 different lines of business, but everybody focuses on health care. That's my little stand.

It says health reform over my stand like at the State Fair. And that's how people get reelected. Somebody else says, I'm the champion of the senior citizen. Somebody else says, I'm for the food stamp program. So everybody is their little expert, and they don't care.

But then when it comes to actually making decisions, it depends on whether or not their stand will make out, whether they get customers at their stand. And that's what happened. That's what has happened in Washington. And it's one of the things that I hope Newt Gingrich kind of Republicanism might change.

I mean, rather than just making promises either to do good or to get rid of what they characterize as bad, maybe just maybe Newt will say, take down all your little stands now. And what we're going to stand for instead of health, aging, whatever the popular thing is back home, unions, small business, something like that, we're all going to stand on some principle for a change.

Like we only use the national government for certain purposes, whatever that principle is. Or the best government is that closest to home. If you think there's some merit to that. And Gary and I had a discussion about that earlier.

But some principles are desperately necessary now in order to make this system work better. Republicans, above all, need to start dealing with principle, not just talking about it but actually dealing with it.

SPEAKER 1: Question of term limits was alluded to in a kind of a joking way. But, first of all, are we look for term limits to actually pass the Congress? And if so, how is that going to change things out there?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well, in my experience, and I haven't been around all that long, I've never seen anybody vote themselves out of a job. And I don't think the Republicans are going to start by doing it. Even though they campaigned on term limits, I don't think they're going to put them into effect.

Some of my colleagues who campaigned on term limits, I think of Dan Coats in Indiana, for example. Still a young man, he's going to quit. I mean, he's going to stick with it. He says two terms. He's going to walk out after two terms.

Danny's the guy that got Tom Barrett-- I heard on your program before I came in here. Tom Barrett is the psychologist that came and talked to the new House members about living with their families, living with their responsibilities, and then living with their politics.

Danny is a guy that got Tom Barrett involved in-- but no, I don't think we're going to get term limits. But I think we're going to get self-imposed term limits. And when we do, then what's going to happen in my book?

Instead of having 25-year-olds, 30-year-olds run, get into politics and spend their whole life in it, you're going to find more Dave Durenberger, who come into this at age 44 and get out at age 56. They become a much more valuable part of society at 56 than they were at 44.

SPEAKER 1: Mark is on the line from Minneapolis. Next question for Senator Durenberger.

MARK: Thank you. I'd like to see the Senator talk about a principle of acknowledging the enormous complexity of the issues that face our country right now in the vein that he was just talking about. We seem to get a lot of superficial posturing and grandstanding on enormously ambiguous and complicated issues like welfare reform and economic development and whatnot.

And my impression over the years of working with the Senator on hunger and kids issues is that he's been in the trenches, he's got his hands dirty, his sleeves are rolled up, and he really studies the issues carefully. And I want to acknowledge him for that hard work and what I see is a lack of grandstanding on his part. Can you carry on that theme?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yeah. And gosh, I really do appreciate the complement and the way you presented that. I don't deal very well with complex issues because I know how complex they are, so I'm the guy about whom they created this phrase ask them what time it is, and he'll tell you how to make a watch.

I don't fit. I mean, guys like this don't seem to fit in this place. If you can't put it into an 8-second soundbite, forget it. On the day-- it happened to be my birthday, August 19, 1994, that I was 60-- the mainstream health group we were coming to our final conclusions in our recommendations. And we were going to have a press conference at 2:00 o'clock, then 3:00 o'clock, then 4:00 o'clock.

Finally, we got our act together and came out at 5:30. And this mass of reporters just sitting down there in the Senate press gallery, and they're all up against deadline. So the first person when they saw us when the little group of us walked into the room-- I remember this so well-- Bobby Horner, who is a reporter for NBC in Washington, yelled out. She said, soundbites only!

[LAUGHTER]

God, she wanted an 8-second explanation of a 30-year-old problem. And so this caller is absolutely right. I mean, I've done a lot. I've got a lot done in areas we don't even have time to talk about. From sanctity of contract to high speed rail to God knows what that aren't issues today except for a few people.

But I've had to do it by working hard at the committee level, by working for the Committee chairman, whether it's Lloyd Benson or Teddy Kennedy or whoever. They'll tell you that I got my work done in the committee. Because the issues are complex, you can't fight them out on the floor without running into the 8- second problem and the call-in campaigns and all that sort of stuff.

So you want to be able to measure your senator or your congressman not about what television reports them is doing, or newspapers, or as the case may be, but you've got to spend a little time yourself as this caller obviously did.

He said we worked on hunger issues in getting to know them personally and working with them to find out that they actually, the good ones, get their work done day after day after day, behind the scenes, working with the chairman, working with the ranking members, working on the tough stuff that isn't reportable, except by radio. I mean radio usually does a pretty good job of doing this, but, unfortunately, radio isn't always our favorite means of

SPEAKER 1: Because it lasts too long. Well, Senator, I mean, we have our 10 listeners, and they're devoted. Well, you got good listeners.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Most Americans are wanted in 8 seconds or 22 seconds or something like that.

SPEAKER 1: How do you change the political climate in this country or the public climate in this country, I guess, to the point where people are willing to spend some time thinking and talking and discussing issues again, and ultimately holding their representatives accountable for the amount of work they put in on? I think to change that culture.

DAVE DURENBERGER: I think Newt Gingrich might do it. It's going to take a person, and it's going to take somebody. And that's why I shiver when he starts into the $4 million books or all the rest of that sort of stuff, because this man has value to us.

I don't agree with everything he does, says all the rest of that sort of thing, but I know him really well. I mean, we came in. In fact, somebody ought to do a little research sometime on the class of 1978, senators, congressmen, unique bunch of people, I think, that happens to be a class that came in with.

But Newt was one of them. And I think he is going to challenge people to start thinking more deeply. He thinks deeply. People tend to grab on to things like orphanages and stuff like that and go running with them because everybody knows thinks they know what an orphanage is. And then they start dragging up Charles Dickens, Father Flanagan, and something else.

But I got to tell you, you watch the way journalism, basically, liberal journalism in this country is reacting to them. They don't know how to deal with them, because he's tapping into something that they have been able to put off as radio talk show politics.

And they aren't going to be able to get away with that, because here is the about to be Speaker of the House. And I think Newt is going to answer your question in some way. And if he doesn't, it'll be another person. Maybe it'll be the next president if he has the ability, or she has the courage, or whatever the case may be to do it.

But I'm going to bet that Newt Gingrich is going to change the way in which we deal with these sort of things and force us and force the congressmen and senators to start dealing more patiently, more in-depth, with more explanation, bite some tough bullets now and then, not always the easy ones.

SPEAKER 1: Shirley, you're next.

SHIRLEY: Thank you. Good afternoon, Senator.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Hi, Shirley.

SHIRLEY: I have a couple of questions about the Congressional pensions. Now, the only information I have is what I get from the media. And, of course, we hear of these exorbitant pensions that a lot of the senators are going to get and, I guess, representatives too.

How can the public get accurate information? And how many years do you have to serve before you-- excuse me-- qualify? And how can we go about repealing some of this so that it would be in line with the rest of us working people?

DAVE DURENBERGER: OK, I'll have to try to get the information myself so I can answer your question. And then if you call into this station another week or so, something like that, maybe I'll have give me 10 days since I don't even have a place to call right now, or the ability to know how to make phone calls, so to speak.

I'll tell you what we did. In 1980, I think it was-- no, wait, wait. Maybe it was '82, something like that, we changed the pension laws for congressmen and senators. And a bunch of people quit at that particular point, as I recall. There are former members who are making more in retirement than current members are making under the old rules.

If you were in long enough, you can actually make more than $130,000 a year as a retiree, even though you're retired 25, 30 years ago. A crime. We changed that. I can tell you that I'm going to-- my retirement will be about $54,000. That includes service in the army when I was young enough to be in the army and all the rest of that sort of thing.

I think right now we're on a much more realistic keel. I think ours when we did the reform, I think we did it to correspond more with similar kinds of jobs in private industry, and so forth. So I pay into Social Security. I pay into the pension. And this is what I get after whatever it is in the army plus 16 years in the United States Senate. But I'll get some specific information about that.

SPEAKER 1: Joanne?

JOANNE: Yes.

SPEAKER 1: You're on the line next.

JOANNE: Thank you.

SPEAKER 1: Go ahead.

JOANNE: Oh, Senator?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yes, Joanne.

JOANNE: When you first went to the Senate, you were going to talk or try to see if we could have some way that if people left their employment early that they could take their pension with them. Has anything been done with this?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yes, the-- you may be thinking of something different than I am, but one of the first things that I did after I got there, because I was blessed with a young man by the name of Ralph Neas, who really wanted to work in this area, was develop what's called the Economic Equity Act.

And you may or may not recall that back in 1978 when I was elected, women in the workplace were paid 56% or 57% of what men were paid to do the very same job. And what Ralph informed me was that a lot of that was because of legislative discrimination. The laws discriminated against women.

So we developed the Economic Equity Act which over the first five or six years of the 1980s eliminated practically all of the statutory legislative rules, regulation, discrimination against women in the workplace.

And now, I'm happy to say the latest I saw, I think it's up to $0.77 or $0.78 on the dollar. I mean, women they're still the glass ceiling and other kinds of things that exist out there. But in the course of that, we made it possible for women to qualify or for everybody to qualify.

But this particularly applied to women who come into the workforce later in life to qualify, to have their pension rights vested much, much earlier. The issue I think she may be getting at is the issue of portability, and we haven't accomplished that yet.

How are eight people able to take both their health insurance and their pension rights from one job to the other? We know how to do it. We just haven't got that one done.

SPEAKER 1: Tom, you're up next.

TOM: Yes, Senator. First of all, I want to thank you for your years of service in the Senate for Minnesota.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Thank you, Tom. My question is about Minnesota politics in 1996. Senator Wellstone is going to be up for re-election. And I keep on hearing two names that the Republican Party might be putting forward for the endorsement. One is Rudy Boschwitz and the other is Jim Ramstad. Could you comment on if you have a preference and how those two might do?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Well, I'd be pleased to without getting too specific, since they're both my buddies, and I'm still in the Senate, and all that sort of thing. But I appreciate your asking the question. I think Paul Wellstone is going to be surprised at how many really good Republicans want to serve in the United States Senate from Minnesota.

And you've mentioned two already. I've met several others and several of the candidates who were candidates this time would like to run again. I'm thinking of Jen Olson and our Lieutenant Governor who both have expressed a strong interest in running.

And there are people in the state legislature. There's a mayor, a former mayor, Eden Prairie, Doug Tempest. And I think of Roy-- and I mentioned the state legislature. I know I've talked to Roy Terwilliger. There are probably others, and I hope there are others, because I think politics in Minnesota is going to be different from now on.

I think the Republicans are going to take the legislature next time, both the Senate and the House. I think that the Republican convention in 1996 is going to be very different from the ones that we've experienced in the past, because my sense is that it's Arne Carlson's victory.

A lot of things that happened this time, and that includes Rod Graham's victory. A lot of things that happened this time and are happening nationally are going to encourage many, many more people to get involved in the Republican Party and to try to shape it in ways that take advantage of some of its current strengths and add to it.

So I think we're going to have a lot of really good people as candidates in '96.

SPEAKER 1: Third party-- Paul Tsongas has talked about that a lot, that there's a real chance Third Party will come to spring.

DAVE DURENBERGER: No, no, no. No, no, no. We'll shape up the Republican Party, whatever that means. I mean, we'll define it. That's better. I think we'll define the Republican Party a lot more quickly than the Democrats will redefine their party. And so it's going to be Republicans and Democrats for the foreseeable future.

SPEAKER 1: We're just about out of time, but let's see. You're going to be a teacher, so let me ask you this. Assign some grades, if you would please, to the presidents that you've worked with Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Jimmy Carter?

DAVE DURENBERGER: Yeah, I don't want to do this A, B, C, D, that sort of thing. There's got to be a new system for grading people because just looking at them as people, the two outstanding people are Jimmy Carter and George Bush.

Jimmy Carter is-- God, he's proven it every day. This is a fantastic man. He was a lousy president, but look, he's a fantastic I mean, he's doing more with one arm behind his back now than he than he than he could have done as president. It's a matter of timing.

George Bush was everybody's best friend. He was the uncle you'd want to have but not necessarily the president that we needed at a particular given period of time. But a fine, fine man,

Ronald Reagan, was distinctive because he stood on principle. I mean, if you go back and you listen to the old General Electric speeches or something like that, there was principle in them, things you could count on whether you were a Democrat or Republican or independent or whatever you were, you could count on certain things.

In applying that at a given time, he wasn't always practical, and we had our public disagreements. But darn it, the guy had a principle. Bill Clinton is well-intentioned, but whether it's emotional or whatever it is, he just doesn't seem to be equipped to do the job in this particular kind of an environment.

He was active in the DLC. He has this long list of people that should be in the government today, helping them reshape the future of America. But he doesn't seem to be able to come to grips with the job itself.

And in that respect, he's like Jimmy Carter. And frankly, I mean, I don't think Bill Carter or Bill Clinton-- pardon me-- I don't think Bill Clinton will be a candidate for re-election. In fact, I think he will announce relatively soon that he won't be a candidate.

SPEAKER 1: Senator, we're out of time. Thanks for 16 years.

DAVE DURENBERGER: Thank you very much. It's been a great opportunity and a great pleasure. And I'll never forget it.