PART III: THE ECONOMY
September 4, 2003

In the third part of the debate, all eight candidates blasted the president's handling of the economy and outlined general plans for improving the employment and business environment picture in the U.S.

 

Online NewsHour Special Report: The Democratic Debate The Full Debate Part I: Gov. Bill Richardson, Debate Rules, Introductions Part II: Iraq and the War on Terror Part III: The U.S. Economy, Trade and Employment Part IV: Health Care Part V: Immigration and Migrant Workers Sept. 5, 2003: Shields and Brooks offer analysis of the Democratic Debate. Sept. 4, 2003: Update: Democratic Candidates Tackle Iraq, Economy in First Debate Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the Politics and Campaigns   The Democratic National Party	RAY SUAREZ: Maria Elena? MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Let's talk about the economy. (Speaking in Spanish) So the economy is growing slightly. The number of jobs is continuing to decline. And unemployment has risen faster for Hispanics than any other sector of the country. Right now, it stands at 8.2 percent. What would you do as president of the United States to remedy the situation? Let's begin with Congressman Kucinich. DENNIS KUCINICH: The following steps need to be taken in order to begin to help the American economy recover. First of all, when you consider that we've lost 2.7 million manufacturing jobs since July of 2000, it's shocking but the United States does not have a manufacturing policy, an economic policy which states that the maintenance of steel, automotive, aerospace and shipping is vital to our national economy and our national security. We will have a policy when I'm president. Secondly, we have to do everything we can to secure our manufacturing base, and that means giving a critical examination to those trade agreements that have caused a loss of hundreds of thousands, in some cases millions of jobs, in this economy. As president of the United States, my first act in office, therefore, will be to cancel NAFTA and the WTO and to return to bilateral trade, conditioned on workers' rights, human rights and the environment. On Labor Day, I announced a new initiative, a new initiative which will enable the United States to rebuild its cities in the same way that Franklin Roosevelt rebuilt America during the Depression, called a new WPA-type program, rebuild our cities, our streets, our water systems, our sewer systems, new energy systems. It's time to rebuild America. We have the resources to do it, we have to have the will to do it. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Thank you, Congressman. We'll get to NAFTA again a little later. (Speaking in Spanish) Senator Graham, you have said that you would create new jobs by using federal funds to rebuild infrastructure, to build bridges and highways that are much needed in the country. How do you create jobs in that way across the board in all sectors? BOB GRAHAM: First, let me say I have done it. For eight years I was governor of one of the largest and most complicated and diverse states in the nation. While I was governor, 1.4 million new jobs were created. Those jobs had the effect for the first time in my state's history, raising the average per capita income above the national average. For three years, Florida was designated as the state that had the best climate for economic expansion and growth. So when I say what we should do, I am not speculating. I am bringing the experience of actually creating good jobs for our people. What we should do? One, we should repeal all of the portions of the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which went primarily to the upper incomes. Number two, we should use a portion of that money to give a tax break to middle-income Americans by reducing the tax on the payrolls. That's a place where money actually will be spent, used and energize the economy. Third, we should have an interstate-like program to rebuild America. We got a wake-up call a couple of weeks ago when our electric system went down. The same thing could have happened with the bridges falling into the Mississippi River, with schools tumbling in on children. If we can spend the money to rebuild the electric system, the bridges and highways and schools of Iraq and Afghanistan, we can do it in the United States of America. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Thank you, Senator. Ambassador Moseley Braun, he's saying to repeal the tax cuts in 2002, 2003. Do we ask people to give the money back? CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN: No. No, you'll never get it back. The point is -- The point is, we are witnessing for the first time in recent history embedded wealth, entrenched poverty and a shrinking middle class in America. And the only way we can turn that around is to end the trickle-down economics that have given the wealthiest Americans more money than they can even reasonably use and give people opportunity to support themselves and their families. If you invest in the masses of the people, you can create jobs and create the kind of stimulus for the economy that will give prosperity to everybody. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Well, how do you create those jobs? CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN: You do it--well, when I was in the Senate, I proposed rebuilding our nation's crumbling schools. That's one way. A second way is to begin to rebuild traditional infrastructure--roads and bridges and the like. Another way, which I find very exciting, is to invest in environmental technologies--technology transfer, creating incentives for people-- for entrepreneurs to create whole new industries and environmental technologies that, frankly, will not only preserve our air and our water and our soil here, and deal with energy shortfalls and difficulties, but also give us product to sell to the rest of the world. I want to finish up with one other point. I am also very concerned about the pay gap--what I call the sticky floor--on which many women, who are sole providers often for their families, are stuck. Women--right now, you've heard 76 cents on the dollar. That's for Anglo women. African-American women, it's about 67 cents on the dollar. And Hispanic women, it's about 56 cents on the dollar. You can't use 56 cents to buy a dollar loaf of bread. You have to be able to support your families. And getting rid of this pay equity--of the pay inequities and leveling the playing field between men and women in terms of the amount of money that they earn, that they can--with which they can support their families is a real priority and will be a priority in my administration. RAY SUAREZ: Governor Dean, people doing all kinds of work have lost jobs in the last couple of years. But people working in the manufacturing sector have done worst of all, losing between 2 and 3 million jobs. Now, Congressman Kucinich talked about preserving certain industrial capacities as a matter of national security. But given the way goods move around the world, can we really say to a laid-off American steel worker, textile worker or auto worker, with any assurance that they ever are going to get their jobs back? HOWARD DEAN: We can say that we can have jobs again in America, manufacturing jobs in America. I agree with most of what was said here about the economy. The one piece I would add to it, however, is that we need to stop corporate welfare and start doing something for small businesses in this country. Small businesses create more jobs than large businesses do and they don't move their jobs offshore because they're rooted in their community. If you want to invest in America, we ought to invest in America and stay in America with those jobs. And I agree with the infrastructure and the... We also ought to invest in renewable energy because, Lord knows, we ought to stop sending our foreign oil money to the Middle East where it's used to fund terrorism. Now, I do not agree with Dennis that we ought to get rid of NAFTA and the WTO. But we do need to understand what makes the European Union work. You can't get into the European Union unless you have exactly the same labor and environmental and human rights standards that you do in all those countries. We ought not to be in the business of having free and open borders with countries that don't have the same environmental, labor and human rights standards. And if you do that, we're going to be able to create manufacturing jobs in America again and they'll stay in America. RAY SUAREZ: Senator Edwards, North Carolina has seen the loss of many of the jobs that we've been talking about. What's the role of the president in all of this? JOHN EDWARDS: Well, you know, the president goes around the country speaking Spanish. The only Spanish he speaks when it comes to jobs is, "Hasta la vista." Here's what I would do as president. First, I would stop these corporate--these tax loopholes that give American businesses a reason to go overseas. Instead, we ought to give tax breaks to companies that'll keep jobs right here in America. I would also make sure in our trade agreements for some of the same reasons that Dennis just talked about, that we had real environmental protections, real labor protections, prohibitions against child labor and forced labor, so that we give our workers a better chance to compete. But it's not enough to just protect the jobs that we have. We have to create jobs, and particularly in those communities where the job loss has been greatest. So what I would do is identify those places in America that have been hit the hardest, particularly by trade, and create a national venture capital fund for businesses that will locate there, give tax incentives to existing business and industry that will come there. The two other things we need to do, though, to get this economy going again is something this president is incapable of doing, which is cracking down on corporate cheating so that business actually works for employees. And finally, finally, we need to stop President Bush's war on work. We need to stop these tax cuts for multi-millionaires who invest, and instead give tax cuts to working people to help them buy a house, to help them educate their kids, to help them get health care, to help them save. That's the kind of tax cut that's going to actually help middle class working families. RAY SUAREZ: Thank you, Senator Edwards. Maria Elena? MARIA ELENA SALINAS: (Speaking in Spanish) As many of you know, the U.S. and Latin America have been negotiating the FTAA--the Free Trade of the Americas--that would create a free trade zone in Latin America by 2005. Let's begin with Senator Lieberman. Do you support it? JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: I certainly support the goal. And let me talk about that. Let me describe the Bush policy toward Latin America in a Spanish phrase: (Speaking in Spanish). "Many words and little action and a great opportunity lost." Look, all of us on this stage agree that the Bush economic policy has been a powerful failure. It has stifled the American dream, has lost 3.2 million jobs, 2.5 million in manufacturing. American manufacturing is bleeding. The president sent his secretary of the treasury--finally, after many of us have been calling for it to do so--to China to try to get them to stop linking their currency to the dollar, which is an unfair advantage they get over American manufacturing - came back empty-handed. We can't do that. We've got to be--I'm for trade, but for fair trade. Let me say the same is true with regard to fair trade for the Americas and Latin America. We have turned our back on our allies to the south. I want to say something about what Governor Dean said. He said here tonight, again, something that I read he said on an interview with The Washington Post, which I found to be stunning, which is that he would not have bilateral trade agreements with any country that did not observe fully American standards. Now that would mean we'd break our trade agreements with Mexico, with Latin America, with most of the rest of the world. That would cost us millions of jobs. One out of every five jobs in America is tied up with trade. So if that ever happened, I'd say that the Bush recession would be followed by the Dean depression. We cannot put a wall around America. We cannot put a wall around America, and we cannot leave our businesses and workers defenseless. We have to have trade, which is good for our economy and good for our relations with Latin America. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Governor Dean? HOWARD DEAN: Thank you for the opportunity to respond. We do have to have trade relations which rely on equality and labor standards throughout the world. It doesn't have to be American labor standards; it could be the International Labor Organization. I believe Mexico will do that. I believe that Mexico wants open trade relationships with the United States. And I believe, given the reform that's gone on in Mexico under Vicente Fox, that we will in fact be able to negotiate with Mexico the same labor standards, the same human rights and the same environmental standards over a period of time. And I think we need to do that. We cannot continue to ship our jobs to countries where they get paid 50 cents an hour with no occupational safety and health, no overtime, no labor protections and no right to organize. We're going to move every job out of this country. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Let's go to Senator Kerry. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Maria Elena, may I say just briefly that Governor Dean, in his interview with The Washington Post, referred to American standards, not international standards. HOWARD DEAN: Either is fine with me. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN: Well, then that's a reassuring change of position. I totally support the application of international labor standards to all of our bilateral trade agreements, and I have fought for that on the floor of the Senate over and over again. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Senator Kerry, in Mexico the salaries for many workers is $1 a day. Can we ask Mexico to pay $5 to $10 an hour like we do in the United States? JOHN KERRY: Well, we can ask them, but they'll say no. If I could just put this in a context a little bit. You know, it's interesting that the Standard & Poor's went up to 1,000, and the Dow went up to 9,400, which proves that good things happen when George Bush is on vacation, folks. In fact, I think the only jobs created in the United States of America by George Bush are the nine of us running for president of the United States. But I want to speak to the larger question because it's critical. I don't support the free trade agreement of America as it is today, I don't support the Central American free trade agreement as it is today because they do desperately need to have increased labor standards, environment standards, to bring other countries up. You can't have trade be a rush to the bottom, and you can't leave other nations with a one-way street, and you can't abuse people the way it has been. But more importantly, we need to jump-start jobs here at home. We have an extraordinary ability, an entrepreneurial capacity second to no people on the planet. This president isn't asking Americans or giving Americans the opportunity to do that. Education could be more invigorated, science could be more invigorated, the most anti-science administration in modern history. We need to push energy. Energy independence for the United States of America will create thousands of jobs in our country. We need to push the environmental standards. And most importantly, we need to guarantee that our children are not made the abused of political slogans, Leave No Child Behind. You have to fund education, and you have to guarantee that we're not content to just spend $50,000 a year on prison. Head Start needs full funding, children need to be funded in this country. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: What do you tell the Latin American countries that are telling the United States, "You're only looking toward the Middle East, why don't you look south?" JOHN KERRY: I think it would be wonderful to have a president of the United States who could find the rest of the countries in this hemisphere. And I will do that. MARIA ELENA SALINAS: Ray? RAY SUAREZ: Congressman Gephardt, we've heard mixed support for NAFTA, as it's been working for the last almost 10 years, and mixed levels of support for free trade in the Americas. Where do you stand on these two questions? RICHARD GEPHARDT: Well, I'm surprised, frankly, to hear the outpouring of support for standards for the environment and labor in treaties like NAFTA and the China free trade treaty. Most of the candidates here voted for those treaties without proper standards. I was the one who took on my own president, and I agreed with Bill Clinton on most things. I was his majority leader, but I thought on this it was wrong, because we didn't have those standards in the provisions of the treaty. We had side agreements that didn't mean anything, but we needed in the treaty. They're right. We do have a race to the bottom. Remember what Henry Ford said? "I got to pay my workers enough so there's somebody to buy the cars they are making." It never changes. It never changes. So, we've go to do that. But let me go to another part of this question. I will be a president who will bring trade standards. I will lead the world to globalize the economy of the world, as we must, with standards on the environment and on labor. But I'm going to do something else. In 1993, I was the majority leader who led with Bill Clinton to get this economy straightened out. Bill Richardson was my chief deputy. We were out on the floor. We didn't get a Republican vote in the House or a Republican vote in the Senate. We passed it by one vote in both houses. Dick Armey said it would create a depression in the country. He was the minority leader. Let me tell you something. He wasn't wrong; he was dead wrong. You remember? Twenty-three million new jobs in seven years. Unemployment was in 3 percent. We took a $5 trillion deficit and turned it into a $5 trillion surplus. We know how to do this. I know how to do it. And when I'm president, we'll get this economy moving again. I'll get rid of the Bush tax cuts. I'll get everybody health insurance that can't be taken away from you. I'll have an energy program I call Apollo 2 (ph) that'll make us independent of Persian Gulf oil. I'll have a pension program so that you can move your pension credits from one job to the other. I'll accelerate spending in the highway trust fund. RAY SUAREZ: Congressman, we'll touch on many of those subjects later in the conversation. RICHARD GEPHARDT: These are important issues. This president is a miserable failure on foreign policy... RAY SUAREZ: Congressman, we'll get to health care soon. RICHARD GEPHARDT: ... and on the economy. And he's got to be replaced. RAY SUAREZ: Congressman Kucinich, if we follow the advice and the assurances that you just gave and start to pull out of some of these treaties, if we start to demand these standards abroad in the places that America acquires the things it sells in its stores, won't the price of everything that you see when you walk into a Wal-Mart go up, everything that you see when you go into a Kmart or, indeed, even to the supermarket? DENNIS KUCINICH: Well, the real question, Ray, is what kind of profits do the Kmarts and the Wal-Marts of the world make? RAY SUAREZ: Well, Kmart, not too much. DENNIS KUCINICH: But on the misery of those people in Third World countries who are working for pennies an hour and are finding themselves unable to support their own families. I mean, all this talk about trade here belies something that really needs to be looked at and that is NAFTA makes it impossible to be able to protect workers' rights. Now, those people say they're going to put conditions on NAFTA. If you put conditions on NAFTA, that's WTO illegal. So what we need to do--the only way that we can go back to trade which will work for the American people and for people all over North America is to make sure that we have workers' rights, human rights and environmental quality principles in trade. And by workers' rights I mean this: the right to collective bargaining, the right to strike. The right to join a union, the right to decent wages and benefits, the right to a safe workplace, the right to a secure retirement. Those have to be written specifically into our trade agreements and they were not. We had intellectual property written into the trade agreements. And we need specifically written into the trade agreements prohibitions on child labor, slave labor, prison labor. But you know what? Unless we cancel NAFTA and withdraw from the WTO, we aren't going to get there. So all of this is just talk. I'm the one, first day in office, cancel NAFTA, cancel the WTO, return to bilateral trade with all those conditions we've just spoken about. Thank you. RAY SUAREZ: Well, let me get your response on this, Senator Kerry, because I know that you've been a big supporter of free trade over the past years. Earlier today I went to the University of New Mexico bookstore, as I'm bound to do, and I bought T-shirts for all my children. None of them were made in the United States, though they were all made in this hemisphere. JOHN KERRY: Correct. RAY SUAREZ: Very clearly labeled in the collar. Is the answer making those things here or just making sure they're made there in a better way? JOHN KERRY: No, I think Dennis--I admire what he is saying and I am as strongly committed as he is to those worker rights and to the efforts to raise the level, but it would be disastrous to just cancel it. You have to fix it. You have to have a president who understands how to use the power that we have as the world's biggest marketplace to properly leverage the kind of behavior that we want. You also have to have a president who is prepared to have an enforcement structure, particularly an attorney general whose name is not John Ashcroft, who is prepared-- who is prepared to enforce the laws. And the president himself, through the powers of the various sections of the trade agreement, has the ability to get tougher. The fact is that Bill Clinton was absolutely correct. We not only were responsible fiscally, we not only created 23 million jobs in America--I mean, we created more jobs than ever before and we traded. What's happened is, in the last three or four years that relationship has gotten out of whack. And this president doesn't care about it. We need a president of the United States who is prepared to enforce a new standard between our countries, and I intend to do that, but I also know that we have to trade. You can't shut yourself down and hope to grow your economy and expect to put the American people to work the way we need to. RAY SUAREZ: Maria Elena? MARIA ELENA SALINAS: (Speaking in Spanish) I'm going to begin with you, Senator Graham. (Speaking in Spanish) Forty-one million Americans do not have access to medical care or health care. (Speaking in Spanish) One-third of Hispanics of the 38 million Hispanics in this country do not have health care. At a time of record federal government deficits, how can this country bring the number of uninsured down? BOB GRAHAM: We can do it in this way. One, by practicing pragmatic common sense. Two very smart people, Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, 10 years ago tried to pass a comprehensive health-care reform. They were unable to do so. I think the lesson from that is that if we are going to get health care to those currently uninsured, we need to set the goal of all Americans having access to health care and then proceed in a step-by-step basis. I would personally advocate that we provide first for children, then for the working poor, and third for the early retiree. If we did those three groups, we would cut by two-thirds the number of Americans who do not have health coverage. And we could do that at a cost of approximately $70 billion a year, a cost that I think is one the American people can afford and would support. So I think that there is a way to get to the resolution of one of our most serious national concerns and that is how do we provide effective health care in this rich country to all Americans.