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| VIEWS FROM THE FIELD | |
 July 29, 1999 
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The NewsHour Media Unit is funded by a grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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| The budget surplus and educational resources | |||||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: Welcome to all of you.
TERENCE SMITH: Charles Tisdale, what would you add or subtract to that?
TERENCE SMITH: All right. Nancy Slepicka, can you tell me what would be on your list of the things that you think the candidates should debate. NANCY SLEPICKA: I would agree with Charles, and I really think the debate should be simplified to maybe two or three issues. And on my list would be education and healthcare, equalizing opportunity and access to both for every American. I think if we had a healthy populace and a well-educated populace, a lot of other problems would be solved. |
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| "There are problems on the farm" | |||||||||||
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TERENCE SMITH: Larry Atkinson at the Mobridge Tribune, what would be on your list?
TERENCE SMITH: Robert Trapp, from your perspective in Espanola, what are the important issues?
TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Joel Hack from Bodega Bay overlooking the Pacific, what seems most important?
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TERENCE SMITH: All right. Nick Benton, what -- the first question I suppose arises about the surplus and whether it is real or just projected. And secondly, the other question about the debate and whether it's early, middle or late. What do you think?
TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Charles Tisdale, do you get the sense that the candidates, from what you've heard so far, comprehend the issues that matter to you and the people who live around you? CHARLES TISDALE: No, nor do they comprehend what this country's about. This country was a plan devised to give people the greatest amount of liberty, freedom, and education possible. These people are thinking about things for a select group of people that will benefit them in the long run, rather than the country as a whole. TERENCE SMITH: So there's a group being missed, in your view?
TERENCE SMITH: Nancy Slepicka, what would you add to what you've heard?
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TERENCE SMITH: Larry Atkinson, have you heard any of the agricultural and other issues that you care about discussed so far? LARRY ATKINSON: Not really. It's being discussed by some of the farm state Congressmen, Senator Tom Daschle from South Dakota of course is fighting for some emergency funding right now for the farmers and ranchers to help them right at this moment. But let's look at this a moment minute. You know, we're talking budget surpluses in this country. It's the first time in decades that we've been able to sit down and say, "okay, what do we have to do as a country to make sure everyone at every level in this country shares in this wealth and this growth and this boom of the economy?" Mr. Tisdale points out that not everyone is sharing in that. In South Dakota, we have some of the largest Sioux Indian reservations in the nation. One of the poorest counties in the nation is Shannon County, South Dakota. President Clinton visited there to highlight his points. It is not a time when we should stop looking at what we need to do. We now have the wherewithal, the money, the surpluses to look at what we need to do to fix things. Now we should be looking at what can we do to get everyone on the same level. TERENCE SMITH: Robert Trapp, I got a sense from you earlier that you've not been very satisfied by what you've heard from the candidates. Is that fair?
TERENCE SMITH: Okay. Joel Hack, a final word from you, please. You mentioned in your first answer something about the police role, if I remember your word, of the United States abroad. Tell me more of what you have in mind. JOEL HACK: Well, what I'd like to hear from the candidates is how exactly they're going to position the United States in relationship to other countries. We've had two major upheavals, Kosovo and the invasion of Iraq, that were police actions, as it were, to bring home renegade countries and renegade governments. Those are real big issues -- that's going to happen again and again. Hussein is still there. TERENCE SMITH: All right. I thank all of you for a really thoughtful selection of issues and ideas. Thanks very much. |
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TERENCE
SMITH: Tonight we talk with six editors of weekly newspapers from smaller
towns across the country. From East to West we're joined by Nicholas
Benton of the Falls Church News Press in Virginia; Charles Tisdale
of the Jackson Advocate in Mississippi; Nancy Slepicka of the
Montgomery County News in Central Illinois; Larry Atkinson at
the Mobridge Tribune on the banks of the Missouri River in South
Dakota; Robert Trapp of the Rio Grande Sun in Espanola, New Mexico;
and Joel Hack of the Bodega Bay Navigator in California.
NICHOLAS
BENTON: Well, I think that one of the biggest issues is the budget surplus.
Of course, it's being debated a lot now in Congress between the White
House and Congress; it's between a tax cut on the one side or fixing
Social Security and Medicare on the other side. But I think there's
a lot more issues that this budget surplus, which is really a manifestation
of the enormous amount of economic wealth that the nation is generating,
can be put to in terms of solving some other very fundamental problems
we have with our society and with the world. I mean, we're on the eve
of a new millennium. There should be a great national debate on how
to deploy this surplus, this wealth over the course of the next century,
half century, or whatever, to fix some very fundamental problems beyond
just these narrow problems that have been addressed so far. Social Security,
Medicare certainly do need to be fixed. I don't think the public is
clamoring for a tax cut, but you look at the growth of the prison population
in the United States, the conditions of our prisons in this country
and what kind of future people who go into those institutions have when
they get out, right there, you look at the problems in the third world,
the spread of AIDS, the other problems of under-development there, there's
a lot that could be wrapped into a national debate on how to best deploy
our national wealth over the course of the next century.
CHARLES
TISDALE: Well, I think he's quite right about how we shall address the
great surplus that we have. I think it is important also that those
left out of the total development of this country be included in it,
that there be an equalization of educational resources. Right now there's
a great separation, a divide between the rich and poor in terms of education,
and until we solve that problem, we are not going to solve our other
problems. At the turn of the century what we had believed was that when
we had great leisure, we would also have great time to think and solve
our problems. That hasn't occurred. The rich have gotten richer, and
the poor have gotten children, and that's essentially the state that
we remain in today.
LARRY
ATKINSON: Well, there's a big part of this country that's not enjoying
the same economic boom as the rest of America, and that's the heartland
of America, with the farmers and ranchers. They're facing grain prices,
cattle prices that are 10- and 20-year lows. There are problems on the
farm. The American farm policy has not worked to this point. There's
something wrong. It needs to be revisited. Agriculture is a tough issue
for the presidential candidates to discuss because it's such a small
part of the American economy. It's only 1 percent of our $7 trillion
economy. But when things are good, that's when we should be discussing
what we can do to keep the farmers and ranchers of this country on their
land because, when they're not on the land, when we lose them, we also
lose communities in rural America. The towns of South Dakota, of North
Dakota, Nebraska, all the way on down to Texas, the rural communities
are facing an outflow of people because the business isn't there anymore.
If that farmer and rancher who has been spending $130,000 a year in
that community is not making any money, that money dries up and the
communities dry up. So it's more than just the farmers and ranchers
hurting; it's rural America hurting. And when we talk about urban sprawl,
we have a rural blight, and it seems to me that if we can find out how
to balance those two, there is more room for people out in rural areas,
and we need to have a discussion about how do we balance that.
ROBERT
TRAPP: I think that, as far as the national debt is concerned is most
important. I'm not convinced that we have any kind of a tremendous surplus
yet. There's a lot of talk about it, but I think that if there is any
kind of a surplus, it should go to be paying for the national debt.
And I'd like to see the presidential candidates discuss this. A $6 trillion
national debt may not mean much in Washington, D.C., but in Espanola,
it'll buy an awful lot of enchiladas. And the income tax cut that they're
talking about I think should be ignored. We pay more in Social Security
taxes than we do in income taxes. I also think that they should be talking
about healthcare. There's millions of people out there in New Mexico,
children, there are hundreds of thousands of them who don't have health
insurance, are uninsured. I think that these presidential candidates
need to be talking about that, not particularly Medicare but trying
to get some help for these people, particularly hospitals where they
have to eat a lot of bad debts because the people can't afford to pay
these horrendous bills. It costs $5,000 to have a baby now. Now, how
many young people young people can afford that? My third thing that
I think that they should be discussing is when and how are they going
to bring the troops home from Kosovo and Bosnia? We've heard that they'd
be home by Christmas a couple of years ago. They're still over there,
they're still costing us millions of dollars. I'd like to hear some
of these presidential candidates discuss that. I haven't heard a word
about that yet. Thank you. 
JOEL
HACK: Well, I've heard some very interesting and thoughtful comments.
But I'd also like to add that the foreign relationships that this country
enjoys, what its particular stature is and how it uses its wealth and
how it uses its police powers throughout the world, those are key issues.
Environmental issues are key issues. This is still the largest energy-consuming
country in the world. I'd like to second those that mentioned the disparity
between the rich and the poor -- both in this country and in the world.
I'd like to also talk about Social Security and fixing that and making
sure it's fixed not just for me when I'm getting up there into retirement
age, but my kids and their kids. This is a problem that's not going
to go away just because someone flashes their wand. The other thing
that I think is real important here and I want to back up to the beginning
of my remark, is that -- it's how many months away, 16 months away till
the election? Isn't this a little bit early to talk about some of these
issues? I want to see these as national debates, not just as presidential
politics. The presidential politics doesn't always translate into good
policy. 
NICHOLAS
BENTON: Well, I think that there certainly is enough evidence to show
that the nation is generating enormous wealth. I mean we're the most
powerful, you know, organized political entity probably in the history
of the planet. And we're entering a new millennium with an enormous
opportunity to address a whole array of problems. I think there is a
tendency to compartmentalize a lot of these issues. I mean a lot of
the individual things that, you know, my colleagues around the country
and this program said are good issues to be addressed. But they always
kind of tend to be pigeon-holed as one separate from the other. I think
we need a kind of visionary approach as we enter a new millennium. It
would be great to see it come from the presidential candidates. I mean,
I also don't think it's a particularly healthy for the country that
we seem to have two such dominant candidates in either party -- in both
parties at this such an early stage. I think we'd do better to have
a much healthier, vibrant, competitive debate, intra-party debate on
either side to get some of these issues to the forefront. But you know,
on the issue of the national debt, you know, it's kind of like when
you talk about paying down your mortgage and getting rid of that debt,
or could that money be better invested to create a better result, I
think when you look at the kind of problems that do exist in this society,
as I mentioned the prison thing and the developing sector thing, Sub-Saharan
Africa, when most of that continent's nations earn less than the three
top executives at Microsoft or something like that. And we don't think
that that's a problem for the United States? I think it is. But I think
you have to have a grand vision going into the new millennium. 
CHARLES
TISDALE: Of course. They aren't talking about the things that candidates
for president ought to be talking about. They're talking about what
can I get out of this, what can me and mine get out of this, rather
than what can we do to develop this country, this nation and the world.
NANCY
SLEPICKA: I think the fact that this presidential campaign has started
so early on focused on two candidates so early tends to trivialize some
of the discussion because everything now becomes campaign issues, rather
than a national debate. And I think that's too bad. And the other thing
that's too bad is I think people are going to be very turned off by
the time of the actual election if we only hear two candidates' names
now for a year and a half, I think you're going to see some low voter
turnout. 
ROBERT
TRAPP: I've not heard much from them, period. Larry is absolutely right
on one point, that we have a lot of money now, and I don't think that
there's anything that needs to be returned in the form of a tax return.
My payroll, I pay -- in one pay period I paid $1,600 in Social Security
taxes and $1,200 in income taxes. So I think that, first of all, they
talk about fixing Social Security. I think the only thing they need
to do about Social Security is keep the politicians' hands out of it
and it'll be fine. If we had some money left from income taxes, I still
maintain that it should go to the -- pay off the national debt, which
would reduce the interest on the national debt, and in the long run
I think that'll be beneficial.
