All Blog Posts from Couric & Co.

Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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With no fanfare and little notice, the national debt has grown by more than $4 trillion during George W. Bush’s presidency.

It’s the biggest increase under any president in U.S history.

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That’s a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush’s watch.

The bailout plan now pending in Congress could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national debt – though President Bush said this morning he expects that over time, “much if not all” of the bailout money “will be paid back.”

But the government is taking no chances. Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It’ll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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If you scoured the hundreds of pages of the Housing bill signed today by Pres. Bush, you’d find that buried deep in its bowels – in the hope few would notice – is this:

SEC. 3083. INCREASE IN STATUTORY LIMIT ON THE PUBLIC DEBT.
Subsection (b) of section 3101 of title 31, United States Code, is amended by striking out the dollar limitation contained in such subsection and inserting in lieu thereof $10,615,000,000,000.

It’s a provision that allows the U.S. Government to keep on spending money it doesn’t have and has to borrow.

It raises the legal ceiling on the national debt to more than $10.6 trillion. And it’s the sixth time the debt limit has had to be raised on President Bush’s watch.

On the day President Bush took office, the National Debt stood at $5.7 trillion. That's with a "T." ...

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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Say it ain’t so, Joe.

It’s the feeling of many top White House staffers on this – Joe Hagin’s last official day as Deputy Chief of Staff.

Hagin has served in the job from day one of the Bush Administration. There’s no staffer who’s been in the same senior level post longer than him. And there’s no one at the White House whose been more intimately engaged in the moment-to-moment operations of the Executive Office of the President.

He was the one who modernized the communications system at the White House. He brought 21st century technology to the Situation Room (see above image) and renovated the worn and tattered Press Briefing Room.

“My job here has been to make the trains run on time and rejuvenate the institution and I’ve been very happy doing that,” said Hagin in an interview with CBS News.

But as one of Mr. Bush’s top aides for more than seven years, he has kept a deliberately low profile. And unlike his one-time fellow Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, Hagin has never been served a subpoena ...

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Tony Snow, the conservative commentator who served as President Bush's spokesperson died Sunday of cancer. He served in the White House for 17 months as press secretary.

When he resigned in September 2007, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller interviewed Snow about his tenure in the White House - and his plans for the future. In his memory, we thought we'd re-post the interview.

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Read more about Snow's life
Listen to Tony Snow's interview with Mark Knoller

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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Think the White House and its defenders are up in arms now about Scott McClellan?

Just imagine the uproar if he’s called to give sworn testimony to Congress about what he knows and heard during his White House years.

A democratic member of the House Judiciary Committee is already calling for McClellan to be summoned to testify under oath about such matters as the firings of those nine U.S. attorneys a couple years ago and the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative.

But the White House says it could move to stop McClellan from testifying about private presidential deliberations.

“Hypothetically? Yes, I think so,” said White House press secretary Dana Perino at today’s press briefing. “The law would allow for that.”

But she was quick to explain that the White House would not definitely take that action. But it is an option.

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CBS News White House correspondents Peter Maer (top left) and Mark Knoller (bottom left) interviewed President Bush in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

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We had to wait nearly an hour for President Bush to enter the Roosevelt Room for our radio interview.

But actually, we’d been waiting more than seven years.

My colleague Peter Maer and I have been pitching the White House to grant us an interview with the president since the year he took office.

Most recently, we were told that Mr. Bush doesn’t like doing radio interviews. He doesn’t think his comments get a fair shake when we only use “snippets” of what he says in our radio reports and on the hourly radio newscasts.

Well, that’s the nature of the business. But through the magic of this podcast, you can hear everything thing he said, in the context in which he said it.

We were given 15 minutes, and tried to wring every nanosecond out of it.

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Click here to listen to the entire interview with President Bush.

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Courtesy of White House correspondent Mark Knoller:

Commenting on the disruption in the airline industry because of the American Airlines flight cancellations, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel told reporters:

"Right now, we have a very safe airline transportation system. That is not by accident."

Mark Knoller is a White House correspondent for CBS News.

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I’m not much of a baseball fan and I don’t get all the hubbub over steroid use.

So explain to me why it’s different than taking vitamins, which can also be said to enhance player performance.

If a player undergoes eye surgery that gives him better than 20/20 vision, is that cheating?

If a trainer tapes up a players arm, leg or chest, is that cheating?

If a doctor numbs up a painful elbow for a player, is that cheating?

If right before a game, a ball player downs a can of soda enriched with caffeine, is that cheating?

The only reason steroids can be seen as cheating is that it’s against the rules, which are certainly arbitrary and subject to change.

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Mark Knoller is a White House Correspondent for CBS News.

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One of the raps against Fred Thompson was that he didn’t work hard enough in competing for his party’s nomination.

He was late announcing his candidacy, at least compared to the others in the race. And his schedule of campaign events was deemed to be leisurely. It led some to think he didn’t have the proverbial “fire in the belly” we have come to expect in our presidential candidates.

Whether true or not, it raises interesting questions about politics in America.

Do we want our presidential candidates to be obsessed with the pursuit of the highest office in the land?

Are we better served by those aspirants who will work early morning to late night for the better part of two years in order to win their objective?

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Yesterday, frequent contributor Mark Knoller sent in this official White House holiday photo of the Bushes.

After reading his post, the White House sent Mark a couple more “unofficial” holiday photos – showing a side of the White House senior staff you don’t often see, but that this year they think you should. Look below: yes, that’s White House press secretary Dana Perino behind the coffee stand, White House chief of staff Josh Bolten handling an undisclosed drink and presidential speechwriter Bill McGurn serving up egg nog.

Don’t they look like they’re having fun?

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