Ross McGowan: 16 minutes after 8:00. Tonight and tomorrow evening Congressman George Miller will be having two town hall meetings talking about the Democrats’ New Direction for America plan. The Congressman joins us this morning. Gotta talk to you first about the Mideast: the president said this morning in Miami that any Mideast cease-fire be accompanied by a wider agreement.

George Miller: We would hope that you would have a wider agreement.

Ross McGowan: But not immediate cease fire. It would have to have a wide agreement.

George Miller: The president should not play games with the words here. The fact is you need an immediate cease fire, and after you have that immediate cease fire you will then have to do the very hard work of diplomacy of trying to get rid of the Hezbollah missiles, trying to get rid of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, trying to take care of all of the issues in that region of the world.

Ross McGowan: But Condoleezza Rice said if we just have an immediate cease fire, all you have is status quo: Hezbollah gets rearmed, they go back and rebuild their infrastructure and everything, then they attack again.

George Miller: I think most people who believe that -- there's a real opportunity to finally engage Syria on this issue, to break Syria away from Iran.

Ross McGowan: Do you have any reason –

George Miller: We're the only country in the world that has this problem where Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran and Syria, all of the major players, we're not talking to. We have to stop this idea that we don't talk to our enemies. It was said when we signed the Israeli-Palestinian agreements you don't negotiate with your friends, you negotiate with your enemies. Eventually the President and Condoleezza Rice have to get away from this idea that America dictates policy in the region. .

Ross McGowan: What do you do if you are Israel? You have had Iran, Syria, say they will like to get rid of them. Annihilate them altogether.

George Miller: That's why we support Israel because we're the bulwark against those kinds of policies -- when Hezbollah made the decision to launch these missiles into Israel to capture the soldiers, that was an act of aggression against Israel, and Israel had a right to respond. The question now is whether that response is helping or hurting, whether or not civilians now are being killed at an unacceptable rate by that policy. We know that Hezbollah goes in among the civilian population. It makes it very, very difficult for Israel. At the end of the day, you have to be able to bring the surrounding countries to the bargaining table and deal with the issue of Hezbollah.

Ross McGowan: Any thinking in the government, a Republican or Democrat, that when you have a problem like this, you have to throw everything at it you've got. For instance, James Baker was very successful under the first President Bush, take Madeline Albright, former President Bush and Bill Clinton, let them all help Condoleezza Rice on the diplomatic side.

George Miller: That would be what you would ordinarily do. Remember this administration believes they had the answer, all of these people offered to help before Iraq. It was rejected. They've offered their help here. It's being rejected. The world stage will drive them back to that kind of diplomacy where you take all of the assets you have, Republican, Democrat, old, young, and make them work the problem. that's the key.

Ross McGowan: Before you left Washington, the House passed an increase in the minimum wage. You passed a bill that would overhaul the pension fund. Is this just campaign ploy? Because you know it won't get through the Senate. All of you come back and say we've passed increased minimum wage, we've passed this. it ain't going to happen.

George Miller: The Republican-controlled Congress has been resisting an increase in the minimum wage for ten years. I've introduced a bill to increase it for the past six years. What they did this last Friday night was hook it into a repeal of the estate tax and that they know that won't pass the Senate. So they got their vulnerable candidate a vote to increase the minimum wage knowing it will never become law. It’s a very cruel thing to do to people working for 5:15 an hour here.

Ross McGowan: Your town hall meetings, you will be introducing the new plan for America. What's the center piece of this plan?

George Miller: It's clearly the country is headed in the wrong direction. it's headed in the wrong direction in foreign affairs, on minimum wage, economic justice, cost of student loans going up dramatically, and the Republicans just increased that, and clearly headed in the wrong direction on energy where we're still stuck with the 1950's and 60's energy policy, now when we need energy independence more than ever. That's what we'll be discussing. .

Ross McGowan: If you want to know more information about those town hall meetings, call the number on the screen. 925-602-1880. Congressman George Miller is having town hall meetings tonight and tomorrow night. Nice to have you here.

George Miller: Thank you.