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| VICE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE | |
 October 5, 2000  |
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In the second part of the vice presidential debate, Senator Lieberman and Secretary Cheney address economic inequality, abortion and dealing with Milosevic.
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Economic inequality | |||||||||||||||||||
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MR. SHAW: The next question goes to you. Gentlemen, this is the 21st century, yet on average, an American working woman in our great nation earns 75 cents for each dollar earned by a working male. What do you males propose to do about it? SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, it's a good and important question. Obviously in our time, fortunately, great advances have been made by women achieving the kind of equality that they were too long denied. But Bernie, your question is absolutely right. Women -- actually, the number I have is receive 72 cents for every dollar a man receives in a comparable job. Al Gore and I have issued an economic plan in which we've stated specific goals for the future. And one of those goals is to eliminate the pay gap between men and women. It's unfair, and it's unacceptable. And the first way we will do that is by supporting the Equal Pay Act, which has been proposed in Congress, which gives women the right file legal actions against employers who are not treating them fairly and not paying them equally. Secondly, we're going to do everything we can using governmental support of business agencies such as the Small Business Administration to help women business owners have an opportunity to invest and begin businesses and make larger incomes themselves. And there are other civil rights and human rights laws that I think can come to play here. So bottom line, this is an unfair and unacceptable situation. And even though, as the economy has risen in the last eight years, America's women have risen with it and received more income, until women are receiving the same amount of pay for the same job they're doing as a man receives, we've not achieved genuine equality in this country. And Al Gore and I are committed to closing that gap and achieving that equality. You know, in so many families, women are a significant bread-earner or the only bread-earner. So this cause affects not only the women, but families and the children as well. MR. SHAW: Mr. Secretary. MR. CHENEY: Bernie, I certainly share the view that we ought to have equal pay for equal work, regardless of someone's gender, and we've made major progress in recent years. I think we've still got a ways to go. But I also think it's not just about the differential with respect to women. If you look, for example, at our opponents' tax proposal, they discriminate between stay-at-home moms with children that they take care of themselves, and those who go to work or who, in fact, have their kids taken care of outside the home. You, in effect, as a stay-at-home mom get no tax advantage under the Gore tax plan, as contrasted with the Bush proposal, which in fact provides tax relief for absolutely everybody who pays taxes. And it's important to understand that the things that we're trying to change and the things that we're trying to address in the course of the campaign and what our agenda is for the future, our plans are for the future, focused very much upon giving as much control as we can to individual Americans, be they men or women, be they single or married, as much control as possible over their own lives. Especially in the area of taxation, we want to make certain that the American people have the ability to keep more of what they earn and then they get to decide how to spend it. The proposal we have from Al Gore basically doesn't do that. It, in effect, lays out some 29 separate tax credits and if you live your life the way they want you to live you life, if you do, in fact, behave in a certain way, then you qualify for a tax credit and at that point you get some relief. Bottom line, though, is 50 million American taxpayers out there get no advantages at all out of the Gore tax proposal, whereas under the Bush plan, everybody who pays Taxes. will, in fact, get tax relief. SEN. LIEBERMAN: Bernie, might I have an opportunity to respond here? MR. SHAW: You can respond, Senator, but I caution you gentlemen that if you do this consistently, we're not going to cover a lot of topics. SEN. LIEBERMAN: Okay. MR. SHAW: And after the senator responds, you don't have to feel compelled to respond to the senator. (Laughter.) MR. CHENEY: Depends on what he says, Bernie. SEN. LIEBERMAN: Right! (Laughter.) This is an important difference between us, and I want to try to clarify it briefly, if I can. The first thing is that, in fact, the tax relief program that Al Gore and I have proposed, one of those many tax credits for the middle class that Dick just referred to, includes a $500 tax credit for stay-at-home moms, just as a way of saying, "We understand that you are performing a service for our society. We want you to have that tax credit." Second, the number of 50 million Americans not benefitting from our tax cut program is absolutely wrong. It's an estimate done on an earlier form of our tax cut program, and it's just plain wrong. And secondly, although Governor Bush says that his tax cut program, large as it is, gives a tax cut to everybody, as the newspapers indicated earlier this week, the Joint Committee on Taxation -- again, a nonpartisan group in Congress -- has said that 27 million Americans don't get what the governor said they would in their tax cut program. Again, Al Gore and I want to live within our means. We're not going to give it all away in one big tax cut, and certainly not to the top one percent of the public that doesn't need it now. So we're focusing our tax cuts on the middle class, in the areas where they tell us they need it: tax credits for better and more expensive child care; tax credits for middle-class families that don't have health insurance from their employers; the tax deduction I talked about earlier, a very exciting deduction, for up to $10,000 a year in the cost of a college tuition; a $3,000 tax credit for the cost -- well, actually for a family member who stays home with a parent or grandparent who's ill; and a very exciting tax credit program that I hope I'll have a chance to talk about later, Bernie, that encourages savings by people in life and any time in life, by having the federal government match savings for the 75 million Americans who make $100,000 or less, up to $2,000 a year. So, very -- very briefly, if a young couple making $50,000 a year saves a thousand dollars, the government will put another thousand dollars in that account. By the time they retire, they'll not only have guaranteed Social Security, but more than $200,000 in that retirement fund. Now that's -- MR. SHAW: Your time is up, Senator. SEN. LIEBERMAN: Thank you, sir. MR. CHENEY: Bernie, you have to be a CPA to understand what he just said. The fact of the matter is that that plan is so complex that an ordinary American's never going to be able to figure out what they even qualify for. And it is a classic example of wanting to have a program, in this case a tax program, that will in fact direct people to live their lives in certain ways rather than empower them to make decisions for themselves. It is a big difference between us. They like tax credits. We like tax reform and tax cuts. |
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| RU-486 and abortion | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MR. SHAW: Mr. Secretary, this question is for you. Would you support the effort of House Republicans who want legislation to restrict distribution of the abortion drug RU-486? MR. CHENEY: Bernie, the Abortion issue is a very tough one, without question, and a very important one. And Governor Bush and I have emphasized, while we clearly are both pro-life, that's what we believe, that we want to look for ways to try to reduce the incidence of Abortion on our society. Many on the pro-choice side have said exactly the same thing. Even Bill Clinton, who has been a supporter of Abortion rights, has advocated reducing Abortion to make it as rare as possible. With respect to the question of RU-486, we believe that -- of course that it's recently been approved by the FDA. That really was a question of whether or not it was safe to be used by women. They didn't address the -- sort of the question of whether or not there should or should not be Abortion in the society so much as evaluate that particular Drug What we'd like to be able to do is to look for ways to reach across the divide between the two points of view and find things that we can do together to reduce the incidence of Abortion We're thinking of such things as promoting adoption as an alternative, encouraging parental notification, and we also think banning the horrific practice of partial-birth abortions is an area where there could be agreement. Congress has twice passed, by overwhelming margins, a significant number of votes from both parties, the ban on partial-birth abortions. Twice it's been vetoed by Bill Clinton and Al Gore. We would hope that eventually they would recognize that that's not a good position for them to be in. With respect to the RU-486 proposal, at this stage, I haven't looked in particular at that particular piece of legislation. Governor Bush made it clear the other night that he did not anticipate that he would be able to go in and direct the FDA. to reverse course on that particular issue primarily because, as I say, the decision they made was on the efficacy of the Drug, not the question of whether or not we supported Abortion SEN. LIEBERMAN: Bernie, this is a very important question, and it is one on which these two tickets have dramatically different points of view. My answer is no, I would not support legislation that is being introduced in Congress to override the Food and Drug Administration decision on RU-486. The administration, FDA. worked 12 years on this serious problem. They made a judgment based on what was good for women's Health A doctor has to prescribe and care for a woman using it. I think it's a decision that we ought to let stand, because it was made by experts. But let me say more generally that the significant difference here on this issue is that Al Gore and I respect and will protect a woman's right to choose, and our opponents will not. We know that this is a difficult, personal, moral, medical issue, but that is exactly why it ought to be left under our law to a woman, her doctor and her God. Now, one area in which we agree, Al Gore and I, is that we believe that the government ought to do everything it can to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, and therefore the number of abortions. And incidentally, here, there is good news to report. The number of abortions is actually down in America over the last eight years. In fact, over the last eight years, the number of teenaged pregnancies has dropped 20 percent. And the reason it has is that there are good programs out there that Al Gore and I will continue to support, such as family planning and programs that encourage abstinence. But when the Health of a woman is involved, I think the government has to be respectful. I supported, in fact, a bill in the Senate that would have prohibited late-term abortions except in cases where the Health or life of the mother was involved. I did not support the so-called partial-birth Abortion bill because it would have prohibited Abortion -- that form of Abortion at any stage of the pregnancy regardless of the effect on the Health and life of the woman. And that's unacceptable. |
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| Dealing with Milosevic | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MR. SHAW: This question is for you, Senator. If Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic prevails, notwithstanding the election results, would you support his overthrow? SEN. LIEBERMAN: Well, there is good news from Belgrade today, Bernie as you know, but it's unconfirmed. The encouraging news is that the state news agency is reporting that Mr. Kostunica is the president-elect. And there are some press reports, but they're unconfirmed, that Milosevic has actually left Belgrade. Now, that is a very happy ending to a terrible story, and it's the end of a reign of terror. If that is not confirmed and does not happen, then I think the United States, with its European allies, ought to do everything we can to encourage the people of Serbia to do exactly what they've been doing over the last few days, to rise up and end this reign of terror and bring -- by Milosevic and bring themselves back into the family of nations, where they will be welcomed by the United States and others. You know, I'm very proud on this night, as it appears that Milosevic is about to or has fallen, of the leadership role the United States played in the effort to stop his aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. I know our opponents have said that they thought that was an overreaching. It wasn't. It was a matter of principle and America's national interests and values, and the fact is that we stopped the aggression. We stopped the genocide and, therefore, strengthened our relationship with our European allies in NATO and, in fact, made the United States more respected and trusted by our allies and more feared by our enemies. I think that Vice President Gore played a critical role, passionate, purposeful role, in leading the administration, along with Republican supporters like Bob Dole and John McCain, to do the right thing in the Balkans and, hopefully, tonight we are seeing the final results of that bold and brave effort. MR. SHAW: Secretary Cheney? MR. CHENEY: Well, I noted, Bernie, that the -- like Joe, certainly I'm pleased to see what's happened in Yugoslavia today. I hope it marks the end of Milosevic. I think, probably more than anything else, it's a victory for the Serbian people. They have taken to the streets to support their democracy, to support their vote. In some respects, this is a continuation of a process that began 10 years ago all across Eastern Europe, and it's only now arrived in Serbia We saw it in Germany, we saw it in Romania, we saw it in Czechoslovakia, as the people of Eastern Europe rose up and made their claim for freedom, and I think we all admire that. I think with respect to how this process has been managed most recently, we want to do everything we can to support Mr. Milosevic's departure. Certainly, though, that would not involve committing U.S. Troops. I do think it's noteworthy that there appears to be an effort underway to get the Russians involved. I noted the other night, for example, Tuesday night, in the debate in Boston, Governor Bush suggested exactly that; that we ought to try to get the Russians involved to exercise some leverage over the Serbians, and Al Gore pooh-poohed it. But now it's clear from the press that, in fact, that's exactly what they were doing and that Governor Bush was correct in his assessment -- in his recommendation. He has supported the administration on Kosovo. He lobbied actively against passage of the Byrd-Warner provision, which would have set a specific deadline -- one he felt that was too soon -- for forcing U.S. Troops. out. So he's been supportive of the policy that we've seen with respect to Yugoslavia, and I think he deserves a lot of credit for that. I'd go beyond that. I think -- I think this is an opportunity for the United States to test President Putin of Russia; that in fact, now is the time, and we ought to find out whether or not he is indeed committed to democracy, whether or not he's willing to support the forces of freedom and democracy diplomatically in the area there of Eastern Europe And it's a test for him, in effect, of whether he represents the old guard in the Soviet Union. One of the most important challenges we face as a nation is how we manage that process of integrating those 150 million Eastern Europeans into the security and economic framework of Europe |
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