ON THE STUMP

	November 2, 2000
	Excerpts from campaign speeches by presidential candidates Al Gore, George W. Bush, and Ralph Nader.

JIM LEHRER: Speeches by the three leading presidential candidates. First, Governor Bush, speaking in St. Charles, Missouri, this afternoon. GOV. GEORGE W. BUSH: I am running against a man who trusts the federal government. Ours is a philosophy that says we trust people to make decisions in their own lives. And I am running against a fellah who's of Washington, by Washington, and for Washington. You can understand why. He was raised in a hotel in Washington. Today, I want to spend some - a little extra time talking about a important program called Medicare; it's a program that must work. We say to seniors we understand how important prescription drug coverage, so prescription drugs will be an ingrainable part of the Medicare plan. We'll say to poor seniors, we'll help you with all of your prescription drug bills and we'll help all seniors afford prescription drugs. It is a different point of view though from that of my opponent. He wants to force seniors into what's called prescription benefit managers. There's going to one prescription drug manager per region of the country. He says it's not an HMO; but it certainly looks like an HMO. The rules make it seem like an HMO. And it quacks like an HMO. He says he's for a step-by-step plan for universal coverage. No, folks. He's for a hop, skip, and a jump to nationalized health care. He wants - he thought Hillary care made a lot of sense. We think differently. In 1992, they went around the country saying we'll modernize Medicare. In 1996, they said the same thing. We had a debate here in St. Louis, and he said the same thing in the year 2000. My opponent says, you ain't seen nothing yet. And how right he is. We haven't seen anything yet. This country wants to reform Medicare, and we ain't seen nothing yet. We need to reform Social Security, but we ain't seen nothing yet. There's an achievement gap in American education that needs reform, but we ain't' seen nothing yet. There's a military that needs to have morale boosted, but we ain't seen nothing yet. We need health insurance, but ain't seen nothing yet. And our message on November 7 is, we've seen enough. It's time for new leadership in America. We've had interesting moments in this campaign. One came I think it was in St. Louis during the third debate -- when my opponent actually looked at the cameras, and said, I'm against big government. I could barely contain myself. I was afraid in the middle of the debate I was going to break out in hilarious laughter. I knew the man was prone to exaggerations, but I think this one took the cake. There's a danger in growing the federal government too big. Not only does it crowd out people's ability to save; it could stop this economic growth of ours. The era of big government will not be over if our opponent wins. But guess what? With your help, he's not going to. We're going to carry the great state of Missouri. JIM LEHRER: Now, Vice President Gore speaking in Scranton, Pennsylvania, this morning. VICE PRESIDENT AL GORE: I'm running for President to keep our prosperity going not just for prosperity's sake itself, but so we can achieve major changes for families. I want a real patients' bill of rights so doctors and families make the medical decisions. We want to take them away from the HMO's and the insurance companies and give them back to the doctors and medical professionals. Here is the first thing you need to know about my HMO reform plan. The HMO's are against it. The insurance companies are dead set against it. You need to know also the doctors and nurses are for it and want to see it passed into law, and the families who have been facing this problem, are for it. I'm telling you this is an issue that people are rightly concerned greatly about. When a doctor says you need a medicine or treatment based on education or training and his or her concern for you, that doctor's decision should never be overruled by some clerk in an HMO who doesn't have a license to practice medicine and who doesn't have a right to play God. The choice is yours. And it's on the ballot this Tuesday. Governor Bush opposed health coverage for a additional 220,000 children in Texas, not withstanding the fact that Texas was 49th out of 50 now - and 50th in some categories of health insurance, courtesy of the national economic recovery the last two years, he found himself in possession of the largest budget surplus that state had ever had, and several in the legislature tried to use it to address this terrible problem of children without health insurance. One out of every 10 children in America without health insurance is in the state of Texas. But he fought against it and made his priority tax cuts for special interests and the first one was another tax cut for the oil companies, which was labeled an emergency. Now, I want to ask you: If you ere governor of a large state that was near the bottom in health insurance for children, and all of a sudden you had a big budget surplus, don't you think you might want to use part of it to maybe lift your status from 50th to 49th or 48th or maybe even better? It just seems to me to be basic common sense. But, now, he fought against that and now that state ranks dead last in the nation, in health insurance for families. Now, that's relevant for this reason: You can look at our records and get some indication of what kind of President you want and what we'd be. Now, the President elected five days from now will take office in January of next year, at a time when our country has the biggest surplus in history. And he's proposing to use that surplus for giant tax cuts for the wealthiest of the wealthy. And here is what I think we ought to do. As I've told you, I think we ought to have middle class tax cuts and balance the budget and pay down the debt. And then I say this: Let's make a commitment that we will cover with high-quality health insurance every single child in the United States of America by the year 2004. And we can do it. That's not just an issue, it is a moral imperative and it is a big difference in this election, so let me ask you again, are you with me? I want you to know I'll always be with you. I need your help. I need Pennsylvania. I need your heart. I need your vote. I want to be your President to fight for you and your families and Pennsylvania and the future of the United States of America. God bless you, and thank you. Let's win Pennsylvania. JIM LEHRER: And now, the Green Party's Ralph Nader, speaking in Dearborn, Michigan, earlier this week. RALPH NADER: I don't think it can be debated that these two major parties-- the Republicans and Democrats-- are becoming more and more and more alike; more lookalike… ( Applause ) ... because they're funded by the same commercial interests. They're funded by the auto industry, and the drug industry, and the oil industry, and the insurance and banking industries, and the security industries. But the cardinal truth is not only are they bought and paid for by the same commercial interests, not only are they morphing the two parties into one corporate party with two heads wearing different makeup preventing the American people from having an adequate clear- cut choice in a two-party dominated system. If you're only going to have two parties, it's a pretty good idea for these two parties to give you a clear choice instead of morphing into one corporate party. As voters, our votes are nullified by money and politics. As workers, our efforts to form unions and our efforts to gain some sort of power over the workplace nullified by repressive labor laws that are still on the books. As consumers, we're told to sign on the dotted line and shut up. Who's standing up for a type of economy that allows one breadwinner to have a middle class standard of living for the family? (Applause) More and more members have to work at low-paying jobs, commuting longer distances, worrying about day, an ailing grandparent. Who's going to pay? Don't have time for shopping, have to take the kids to McDonald's. No time to have dinner around the table and talk and transmit the wisdom from one generation to another. No time for community activities. Just time to cater to a corporate designed economy that has shut us out of any role in deciding where we're going. (Applause) And in a poll of the American people, 72 percent said, yes, to the question, "is there too much corporate power over your lives?" It's not just a few commentators, it's millions of Americans who feel that power when they're pushed around on the job and they don't have any rights, when their personal privacies are invaded on the job when their medical records... outside their job, their medical records, their financial records, their genetic records, their credit records, when these computers know more about you than you know about yourself because you can't keep it all in your head at one time, whirling around the world in electronic databases, knowing what medicine you bought, knowing how long you've been on vacation here, knowing what your genetic type is, knowing things about you that no one but you and only you have a right to know. And you have no power. (Applause ) If you're happy with politics, you can vote for Bush and Gore... or Gore. But if you're not happy, if you want more power as a voter, worker, taxpayer and consumer; if you want to be able to band together with your fellow workers, taxpayers, consumers and voters more easily; if you want to reassert the sovereignty of the people over this country and what it could mean for the rest of the world and furthering justice and democracy, vote the Nader/Laduke ticket on November 7. Thank you. (applause)