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In the first of four resolutions, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott(R-MS), Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle(D-SD), Speaker Newt Gingrich(R-GA), and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt(D-MO) debate whether a Republican or a Democratic Congress would be a better steward of the economy.
A RealAudio version of this Newsmaker interview is available.
Topics addressed on PBS Debate Night:
- Should the Republicans should maintain control of Congress?
- Which party would handle the economy better?
- Would Democrats or Republicans improve America's quality of life?
- Would a Republican or a Democratic majority in Congress ensure America's place in the world?
- Which party would run the government better?
- What is the difference between a vote for President and a vote for a member of Congress?
Browse the Online NewsHour's Congressional coverage.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Let’s go now to our first topic, the economy. Borrowing the debate language and procedures appropriate to our 18th century setting here, the question is posed in the form of a resolution. Be it resolved that the Republican Party in Congress can best meet the challenges facing the nation’s economy.
REP. NEWT GINGRICH, Speaker of the House: Jim, let me say first of all, I am delighted to be here and as a history teacher, I want to commend you for picking this site where Patrick Henry, George Washington, Tom Jefferson, so many historic figures worked. I also want to congratulate you for becoming America’s debate master. I understand today that you’re now going to also
be--after practicing on us--you’re going to do all the others. So the country will get very used to you being the moderator. I think--I want to start with what my good friend, Dick Gephardt, just said, to clarify something because it’s at the heart of this debate. We were told--and this relates directly to the economy but also to solving our problems--we were told last year that Medicare is going to go broke. That was a Clinton trustees report. We were told this year it’s going broke faster. It’s losing $22 million a day now. Next year, it’ll lose $36 million a day. The year after, it’ll lose $60 million a day. This is Medicare, which my 81-year-old mother-in-law is on. My mom and dad in their seventies are. We attempted to save Medicare with a plan which went from $4800 a year up to $7100 a year per senior citizen per year, a big increase. My only point is this: To solve our economic problems we have to have a candid, factual conversation; to deal with tax cuts versus tax increases, whether you have money in your family budget, or you have money in Washington; to learn how to cut out wasteful Washington spending without doing damage, and frankly, to reform education and win the war on drugs so that our young people can compete with Germany and Japan and China and the world market. These are the core kind of dialogue we need so we can focus on solutions for our economy and the country.
JIM LEHRER: Democratic rebuttal.
SEN. TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: Jim, let me also add my congratulations. It’s a remarkable tribute to you and to your fairness and to the expertise that you bring to debates. And we’re delighted that you will be moderating. And thank you for inviting us tonight. Every presidential election year I think the American people generally ask: Are we better off? And this year, I think the answer is, yes, with an exclamation point. Just last week, the Census Bureau
reported that household income had increased by almost $1,000. That’s the biggest single increase we’ve seen in over a decade. We’ve created 11 million new jobs, 3 million new small businesses. We’ve reduced the deficit now four years in a row, 60 percent below what it was in 1992. That’s the biggest deficit reduction and the most consistent deficit reduction we’ve seen since before the Civil War. The stock market is up, inflation is down. Even Bob Dole last February said this is the best economy we’ve seen in about 30 years. Unfortunately, our Republican colleagues have fought most of our efforts to get to this point. And now they want to go back to the deja voodoo economics of the early 1980's. Newt has talked about Medicare. And the fact is that they are proposing tax cuts which will be paid for by deep cuts in Medicare, the environment, and education. As Dick said, we need Families First. We’re making progress. We can do a lot more, but we’ve got to do the kinds of things that affect the American working family. And the Families First agenda will allow us to do that.
JIM LEHRER: All right. To the dialogue on the subject of the economy, a question from the Republicans to the Democrats, and let’s go.
SEN. LOTT: Well, as a matter of fact, I might say to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, don’t they remember that in the 103rd Congress, the one before this one, as a matter of fact, the only thing that’s really memorable there was an effort to take over health care by the
government, not a common sense approach like we passed this year. And as a matter of fact, the, the most memorable thing was a tremendous tax increase. I think that to get the economy going, to get people into jobs, to create more jobs, to help families, in Pascagoula, Mississippi, or in South Dakota, they need tax relief. My young son that’s in business now, and he called me and said, Dad, I just figured it out. 50 percent of what I’m making has been taken in taxes. When you drink a cup of coffee, you pay taxes. When you drive to work, you pay gasoline tax. When you work, you pay income tax. And when you die, you pay an estate tax. Republicans have tried to give relief in that area. In fact, we did it. President Clinton vetoed it. So the first thing we would do next year is given the American people genuine tax relief because we think it will create jobs; it’ll help families, and communities in America, instead of keeping that money in Washington. Why do you want to have all this money in Washington and decisions made out of Washington? Why should it be made in South Dakota and Missouri?
REP. GEPHARDT: Trent, I think the big difference on taxes between our parties is who we want to cut taxes for. We believe the tax cut should be focused on middle income Americans and
people trying to get in the middle class. And we don’t think we ought to shower a $20,000 a year tax cut on people earning over $200,000 a year. That’s why the Medicare cuts had to be as large as they were. One further thing, why did you try to raise taxes on working families in your budget? I mean, I agree with you. We need tax cuts. The question and the difference between our parties is who you want to cut taxes for. We want to do it for the middle class; you want to do it for people at the top.
REP. GINGRICH: Dick, let me take the two different assertions. I mean, first of all, as you know, for working families there was no tax increase. There were changes for single people without children on the earned income credit, which is a government check to people. It’s not a tax cut. It’s a government check to people. But for families, there were no tax increases at all of any kind. Second, let’s take the Dole-Kemp tax plan. For a family of four, $20,000 a year. The Dole-Kemp tax cut is a $1,261 a year. That’s $105 a month more in take-home pay, $24.25 a week. Now, if you go to any grocery store in America and you stand out there and ask a young couple with two kids who’s earning $30,000 a year is a $1,261 a big increase in your spendable
take-home pay, I think they’re going to say yes. The part of the difference here is that we believe, you know, when the Democrats raised taxes in 1993, nobody went out and asked the American people, can you afford to pay it, can you afford to pay more gasoline tax to drive to work, can you afford to pay more on Social Security if you’re only earning $23,000 a year as a senior citizen in terms of your Social Security? We’ve looked at it; we’ve listened to the American people. We believe that working families deserve a break, that, in fact, marginal taxes for families is too high, and that’s why we would give a family of $30,000--hardly the rich--a family of $30,000 a 74 percent reduction if they have two kids, 74 percent reduction in what they’re paying in taxes.
SEN. DASCHLE: Newt, you can explain it any way you want to, but the fact is that working families under your proposals would have seen increases in taxes. Regardless of how you explain away that fact, they will see increases in taxes. And I guess the big concern we’ve always had
with regard to the huge tax breaks that you’re proposing is first, who they go to, and secondly, how they’re paid for. Back in the 1980's and again the last couple of years, you proposed a, a huge tax break for the wealthiest people in this country, largely to be paid for with deep cuts in Medicare, in Medicaid, in education, and the environment. So I think that’s really the fundamental question. If you want to provide tax breaks to that, that selected group of people, isn’t there way to make them more fair, and how are you going to pay for them without deeply affecting the programs that we’ve invested in, in people’s health and security now for 30 years?
SEN. LOTT: You know, Jim, they just don’t get--they think by taking money away from people--and that’s where growth and, and progress has really made ‘em bring it to Washington. You get more out of it by bringing it to Washington. As a matter of fact, I want tax relief for everybody. You all want to pick winners and losers, but when you talk about a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut, that’s for everybody. Uh, when you talk about a tax credit for families with children, that really helps people, $500 for every child, that really makes a difference. But beyond that, what about the IRA’s, the Individual Retirement Accounts for spouses? We did that this year. We think that our families, wives working at home, they should have IRA’s. And we did that, and I also like the education scholarship IRA that Bob Dole is advocating. Allow people to save for themselves for education of their children, rather than bring that money to Washington taxes, and then sending it back through some program that quite often eats up all the money.
REP. GEPHARDT: Well, again, I think we can agree on tax cuts. What I’d like to ask is--
SEN. LOTT: We can agree on tax cuts?
REP. GEPHARDT: Yeah, I think we can.
SEN. LOTT: We’ve got something here, Jim.
REP. GEPHARDT: Whatever--
JIM LEHRER: I hear you.
REP. GEPHARDT: --whatever amount we can agree on in tax cuts, why don’t we focus it at the people who really need it, people who are earning $30,000 a year, having trouble paying their
bills, having trouble paying for education--they’re the folks that need the tax cut. So let’s focus it at them, and not spend--in the Dole tax plan, about 45 percent of the funds go to people who earn over $100,000 a year. They don’t need a big tax cut. The people who earn fifty and thirty and twenty thousand dollars a year, they’re the--and, again, you tried to raise taxes on people earning twenty thousand dollars a year.
REP. GINGRICH: Let me just ask--I’m fascinated. And I think this is a great format, and the four of us can chat in a positive way. You know, we had two tax increases in a row from Democrat Congresses--the tax increase of 1990 and the tax increase of 1993. We raised taxes on all sorts of Americans. Gasoline taxes went up. That’s not taxes on the rich. Taxes went up on senior citizens. That wasn’t tax increase on the rich. Now you have a plan that says a family of $30,000 ought to be able to have $1,261 more a year. Uh, your--part of your answer is well, we do terrible things to Medicare. And I just want to say, this is one of the things that’s made me saddest over the last years. Medicare is going broke. It’s losing $22 million a day. It’s going to lose $36 million a day next year and $60 million a day the year after. The money we saved in Medicare went into the trust fund, part A, to keep it solvent to 2012, part B to keep it solvent so people got health--as I said, my mother-in-law is 81. She’s on Medicare. You both know under our plan Medicare goes from $4800 a year per senior citizen up to $7100 a year. Now, that seems to me we can have an honest dialogue about how to save Medicare without scaring people with words like a cut to describe an increase, and then we can talk about how do we cut taxes. That’s--you can’t have that dialogue.
SEN. DASCHLE: Can I answer that real quickly?
JIM LEHRER: You can. No. I just want to say that as we speak now, the Democrats are two minutes under the Republicans so--
REP. GINGRICH: You get a real chance.
SEN. LOTT: Just give ‘em half of that.
JIM LEHRER: All right. Okay. Have at it, in other words, Senator.
SEN. DASCHLE: Let me just sit back and do some of this. I think it’s, it’s a very significant burden for senior citizens when the premiums are going to go up $1,000. It’s a very significant burden when seniors are going to be denied the opportunity to get breast cancer checks through
mammograms. It’s a senior--it’s a problem for seniors when you have to tell them that you’re going to be limited in your choice of doctors. You can’t do that. It’s a real problem for seniors if their purchasing power is limited, if the same dollars are not going to buy the same kind of health services in the future. So it’s, it’s really that. I mean, obviously, there’s been a big debate over the last two years over what is a cut. It’s a cut if you can’t buy the same amount of health care. It’s a cut if your premiums go up. It’s a cut if you have serious problems with access to very fundamental checks in, in care that affect breast cancer and other things. So that’s really the issue. That’s No. 1. It goes back to the other problem that we still have never been able to figure out is how you all find a way to pay for these big cuts, regardless of who they go for, if you don’t cut Medicare and Medicaid? There is no other bank out there to pay for the cuts that you want for those, those people who don’t need them.
SEN. LOTT: Jim, the way you do it is called will, the determination to do it. I think the American people know full well there’s all kind of wasteful spending in Washington. But what you really do is control the rate of growth. The best example of the Medicare question there, when Mrs. Clinton came to Congress in a very intelligent statement said that we could allow Medicare to grow 6 percent, that was called a 6 percent increase; when Republicans said we’re going to allow a 7 percent increase, that was called by the President a cut. I don’t understand the difference.
SEN. DASCHLE: Well--
SEN. LOTT: We
could work this problem out if we will, if we will get together and stop trying to, you know, position ourselves on something as important as Medicare. My mother is 83 years of age. She depends on Social Security and Medicare. She’s watching this program, and I’m here to assure here that we are not only going to make sure she gets it, we want to preserve it and protect it and improve it for the future--for my daughter.
REP. GEPHARDT: Trent, you can call it anything you want to call it, but when you double the premium and double co-pays and, and take away choice, those are serious consequences for any senior in this country. Further than that, if we’re going to deal with the Medicare problem, we’ve got to deal with it for Medicare Trust Fund and not in the context of a budget where we’ve got a tax cut, giving a $20,000 a year tax cut to people earning over $200,000 a year. The American people should not and will not accept that.
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