Debating Our Destiny: The 1996 Vice Presidential Debate -- October 9, 1996

LEHRER: Mr. Kemp, you mentioned it already before and you said on Meet the Press Sunday that the federal government engages in "regulation reign of terror." What exactly do you mean?

KEMP: Well, exactly just what I said. Regulations that would take property or reduce the value of some farmer or rancher or homeowner's property for wetlands or endangered species and take that property or reduce its value without compensating the owner. That is a reign of terror. It's happening. In Oregon, not too long ago, a farmer took 25 percent of his property and declared it a wetland. It had the runoff of snow that allowed it to be declared a wetland, but he did it himself voluntarily. He found within a couple of years that the Bald Eagle began to use it as a habitat. The Corporations of Engineers, the Bureau of Wildlife and Fisheries, all of the federal agencies came onto his property, declared it a federal wetland and said he couldn't drive. They took away the road, he couldn't mend his fences and they wouldn't pay the value of the loss of the -- they wouldn't pay -- or compensate, I should say, for the loss of value to that property. How can we, as a free society, turn people into enemies or adversaries of the United States government? OSHA does it, EPA does it, ERDA does it. We should recognize that this country lives in such a way as to build an alliance with our free enterprise system that can build a better America for our children and our grandchildren. We can do it. But it's got to take new leadership in Washington.

GORE: Well, it takes values that recognize the importance of the environment. Mr. Kemp voted against the Clean Water Act, voted against the renewal of the Superfund Act. We have been taking a new approach, protecting the environment, but getting rid of unnecessary regulations. We're eliminating 16,000 pages of regulations. We've entered a -- into a new project called project XL. This is at the EPA. Where we enter into a bargain with businesses. When they say we'll exceed the standards, give the EPA a way to measure the progress and throw away the rulebook all together. Now this is the kind of common sense approach that can clean up the environment while eliminating unnecessary red tape. Make no mistake about it, though, there are those who would like to go much further. Some have even proposed and this bill he cites would do it, that polluters ought to be paid if they agree to stop dumping poisons into the river. The pay polluters provision is wrong. We fought against it. We'll never allow that.

KEMP: When I went to Congress from Buffalo in 1970, you could almost walk across Lake Erie because of the pollution. Today, thanks to the secondary and tertiary treatment plants, which many of us voted for on both sides of the aisle, which actually started under Richard Nixon, a Republican president, our water is cleaner in the Great Lakes. We've got a lot of progress that we've made and we've got to make more, but to turn the country into a regulatory effort by the federal government to suggest that we can't work in harmony, "A" with the environment, and with business is a big mistake. We should use incentives, not always using uh sticks against business in America and the jobs it creates.

LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, does the government of the -- of the United States has now operated by the Clinton Administration operate on a reign of terror, through a reign of terror?

GORE: No, of course not. We're taking a brand new approach to eliminate unnecessary regulations, unnecessary bureaucracy. We've got lots of examples of this there was a story in the newspaper the other day about a home testing kit that the FDA had held up. That happened under a rule in the last administration. We said change that rule. It's being changed now. It's under consideration by the FDA right now and it will be changed. There are thousands of other examples. We believe that there is a new approach. Let me give you an example from OSHA. We're reinventing the way OSHA does its job. Some people would like to eliminate OSHA. We think that the protection of job safety in the workplace is very, very important, but what we've said is look, start, start measuring the results. We found that the inspectors were being rewarded on the basis of how many fines they issued. We changed that completely. They used to go in and give somebody a fine if they didn't have a poster on the wall informing employees of their rights. To use this as an example of our new approach, now if they go in and see that poster is not there, they go out to the trunk of the car and give them a poster. It's the same approach that we're taking in all the regulatory agencies. We're making a lot of progress. We want the protection with common sense, not nonsense.

KEMP: Well, we have to have the type of economic prosperity that will allow us to generate the revenues to provide this technology. 10% of all the emissions -- 10% of the all the hydrocarbon emissions oxides going going into the air caused by 10% -- 100% of the all the emissions are caused by 10% of the automobiles. Now there is technology that would allow infrared technology to be used to identify those cars that are providing or the pollution in our atmosphere. It is not being able to be used because we are going to take every automobile driver in America, all 110 million automobiles, and charge them 17 or 20 or $25. Look, we ought to go after the ones that pollute, not go after the men and women who want to be able to drive their automobile to work or to school and to make sure that they have the type of opportunity to live like everyone else without having themselves regulated by Washington establishment. We can use technology. That's the answer, but to get the technology, you've got to have a growing economy. This economy is not growing fast enough and it will under Bob Dole and Jack Kemp.

GORE: Well, the economy is growing very strongly right now. We've had 10.5 million new jobs created just in the last four years. In the last quarter, the growth rate was 4.7%. The average growth rate is also coming up. It is higher than in either of the last two Republican administrations. Bob Dole said in February of this year this is the strongest economy in 30 years. The conservative business journal, "Barron's," says this is the strongest economy in 30 years. We've got good solid growth. Let's don't risk it on some $550-billion risky scheme.

LEHRER: What measurement do you use, Mr. Kemp, in saying the economy is not growing the way it should be?

KEMP: Well, as I said earlier, Jim, it takes two bread winners to do what one breadwinner could have done just a relatively few short few years ago. As long as a woman or man wants to go to work it ought to be their choice, but in America today that woman or man must work in a family to, one to pay the tax and the other to help the family. That's not America. It doesn't leave enough time for the children. It doesn't leave enough time for people to enjoy their families. It doesn't allow people to save. The family is the most overtaxed institution in the United States of America. When I was growing up in Los Angeles, a family that median level of income might have sent four or five percent of their income to the federal government. Today, it's close to 30, or at least 27 or 28%. That's just unacceptable, and for Al Gore to keep suggesting that we can't afford to reduce the tax rates across-the-board on the American people and on the formation of the capital necessary to create the new jobs for America is just totally at odds with the experience of both Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy and other times in this century. One other thing that's very, very important. To call it a risky scheme reminds me of the fact that this administration is suggesting that they're going to give you a tax cut if you'll do what they want you to do. They want to cut the Capital Gain Tax, but only for home owners. How about the small businessmen and women of America that create 91% of all the new jobs? My Daddy was a truck driver who bought the truck and started a company. We need more truck drivers becoming truck owners and they can't do it if they don't have access to the capital and the seed corn for the next generation of truck and jobs for America.

GORE: We've had the creation of more new small businesses in the last four years in each of the last three years than in any other year in all of American history. We've seen the creation of 10.5 million new jobs. We have the lowest combined rate of inflation and unemployment in 30 years. Business Week magazine said these are the kind of results that you want. Lower inflation, lower interest rates, more jobs and more growth, all within the context of a balanced budget. We have reduced the budget deficit four years in a row. We've cut it down 60 percent. After it went up by almost 300 percent during the previous two administrations. Now, this is the kind of growth that we want more of. We think we can do much better still. That's why we're pumping these income tax cuts for middle income families in the context of a balanced budget that protects important programs.

KEMP: Four years too late. You told us that four years ago. And we still don't have it. How can we trust an administration that, all of a sudden, four years into or the last year of its four years tells us that now they're going to follow through on the promise they made four years ago? This economy is not growing fast enough. The haves are doing well, but Jim the have-nots are not doing well. There's people hurting, there're families that can't stay together. There's jobs that are not being created, and the unemployment rate in our nations' inner cities is somewhere between 16 and 25 percent. That is morally and socially unacceptable in a modern day economy.

LEHRER: Mr Vice President, Senator Dole raised the same question to President Clinton the other night about keeping promises made. What is your reaction to that? What is your response to that charge against you and the President.

GORE: President Bill Clinton promised to create 8 million jobs. He's created 10 and a half million new jobs. He's promised to cut the budget deficit in half. He has cut it by 60 percent. He promised to end welfare as we know it. He passed and signed the Welfare Reform Law. He has already moved 1.9 million people off the welfare rolls into good jobs. We've got a plan to move 1 million more off welfare during the next four years. He promised to implement the death penalty. We passed an anti-crime Bill that has 60 new death penalty provisions. He promised to pass a plan that would put 100,000 new police officers on the streets It is law, over the opposition of Senator Dole, and 20,000 of them are already on the streets, 2,000 of them have been funded already for here in Florida. We're ahead of schedule and we're going to get the additional 80,000 new police officers on the streets in the coming four years, 45,000 of them are now already funded. That is a record of promises made and promises kept. He promised middle-income tax cuts. We've cut taxes for 15 million families and our plan to cut them for all middle income families has been waiting for action in the Congress for two full years. In the next four years, we will pass it.

KEMP: Well, to say that this is the best economy in 30 years just staggers the imagination. We have a growth rate of the last four years of about two and a half percent. My friend Al Gore says is better than the Reagan years. It isn't. But irrespective of whether he thinks it is or not means less than fact that this country cannot morally and socially and economically accept an economy running out the clock on the 20th Century. We're treading water. We have families that are hurting. We have people who are unemployed. We have people with no property. We have an administration that is demolishing public housing in our inner cities and not providing anything else but more public housing. Their solution to the inner city is more -- excuse the expression but it's true, "socialism." It is not for the people. It is for the government to tell them where to live, where to go to school. We need school choice. We need to privatize public housing, we need to sell it to the residents, we need to put enterprise zone into, in, America and need to lower the rates of taxation on labor, capital and the factors of production. That'll happen under Bob Dole.

GORE: We are demolishing the outdated projects that did not work and we're replacing them with new units that do work. And we have private vouchers so that individuals can choose for themselves where they live and we're selling these units to many of those who want to buy them. Mr. Kemp had a good idea when he advocated that years ago. He talked about it we did it and we're going to do a lot more of it, if we have the opportunity with the help of the American people.

LEHRER: Mr. Kemp, uh some are saying these days that something's gone terribly wrong with the American soul, that we've become too mean, too selfish, too uncaring and the spitting incident, how it was handled, the baseball players used as a recent example. What do you think about that?

KEMP: Civility, responsibility, racial reconciliation, healing the wounds of our country has to be one of the greatest, most singularly important goals for this country here on the edge of the 21st Century. How in the name of American democracy can we say to eastern Europe that democratic capitalism will work there if we can't make it work in East L.A. or East Harlem or East Palo Alto, California? How can we tell South Africa and the new Mandela government that democracy and private property and limited government and the rule of law and civility will work there if it's not working in our own backyard here at home or the South Bronx? How can America go into the next century and leave so many people behind? "USA Today," just few weeks ago did a study. They said the affluent is doing very well in America, the haves, the have-nots and the poor are being left behind. It is a giant, in my opinion, zero sum game. Kind of like musical chairs when we were young boys and girls growing up. And it seemed like when the music stopped the big guy elbowed out the little guy from that last chair that's not America folks. We need more chairs, we need a bigger table, we need a greater banquet. We need to create more wealth. We need to create more jobs and more access to credit and capital and educational choice and opportunity for any man or woman and child to be what God meant them to be, not what Washington, D.C. wants them to be.

GORE: I think Mr. Lehrer, that throughout most of his career, Jack Kemp has been a powerful and needed voice against the kind of coarseness and incivility that you refer to in the question. I think it's an extremely valuable service to have a voice within the Republican party who says we ought to be one nation. We ought to cross all of the racial and ethnic and cultural barriers. I think that is a very important message to deliver. And we ought to speak out against these violations of civility when they do occur. You asked about the incident involving Roberto Alomar. I won't hesitate to tell you what I think. I think he should have been severely disciplined, suspended perhaps, immediately. I don't understand why that action was not taken, but the same could be said of so many incidents in all kinds of institutions in our society, but I compliment Mr. Kemp for the leadership he has shown in moving us away from that kind of attitude.

KEMP: Well, I thank you, Al. I mean that very, very sincerely, but I'm trying to make a bigger point. That civility cannot return to our country unless every person feels that they have an equal shot at the American dream. That if you're born in this country to be a mezzo-soprano or a master carpenter or a school teacher, like my daughter, or a professional football quarterback, nothing should be in your way. And removing those barriers is what Bob Dole is all about, moving our country forward and leaving no one behind.

LEHRER: Mr. Vice President, do you agree with that thesis that in order to solve the problem of civility, the problems in the American soul, you have to -- it's an economic problem more than it is something else?

GORE: I think that economics is one of the single most important parts of this problem. That's why we're focusing on tax credits, to hire 1 million more people coming off welfare in the inner city. That's why we're focusing on an economic policy that has already created 10.and a half million new jobs and is going to create millions more within the context, again, of a balanced budget that protects important programs. We have focused especially on the most distressed areas, because we cannot leave anyone behind. Our empowerment zones and enterprise communities, the tax credits that will encourage the formation of new businesses, the new approach by the small business administration to get more loans out to individuals that have not had equal access to capital in the past. These are parts of the plan. Another part of it is the community development financial institutions. And the -- and the law that says deposits that are made in a community, in the inner cities say, should be kept in the community, not entirely, but some percentage of them should be kept there. That prevents that money being taken from the community and invested in some go-go investment on the other side of the world. And when they invest in the community, they find that there's a better payback rate, more small businesses are created and the community improves. That's happening in America today, not fast enough, but faster than before and we think we can accelerate it with our plan.

KEMP: There really is no separation between a strong community and a strong economy. And you can't have a strong economy without strong communities and strong families. The word "economics" in Greek came from the word family, or law or custom of the family. A family without a job where both breadwinners are away from home and cannot spend time with their children or can't send the child to the school of their choice rather than just the choice of the federal bureaucracy, cannot possibly be as strong as a family that has the nurture, the love, the dignity and the justice that goes along with one breadwinner, a strong job, and if that man or woman wants to work, it's their choice, not just to pay taxes. So we need both. We need strong commun -- we need strong schools, we need schools that nurture the type of discipline and respect from teachers and parents. And Bob Dole wants to empower the public school districts and the teachers, not the federal bureaucracy at the Department of Education.

GORE: Well, Senator Dole has said he wants to abolish the Department of Education. He voted against the creation of Head Start. He vigorously opposed the Family and Medical Leave Act, which was the first law that President Clinton signed as president. Now, Senator Dole has suggested he would repeal the Family and Medical Leave Act if he had the chance if he was elected president. We believe in more educational opportunity and measures to strengthen families, not restrict their access to education.

LEHRER: Mr. Kemp, speaking of the family, where do you come down on it? Do you believe it should be repealed? The Family Leave Act?

KEMP: I wouldn't have voted for it. It's in place. Their answer, this administration to every single problem is another regulation and another tax. Clearly, in America, we need -- I am astounded to think that you can have a strong Family Leave Act or policy by a business if they're not making a profit. If there aren't a lot of jobs, if there isn't the types of policies that will enhance the formation of the seed corn and the oxygen and the capital that would allow that company not only retain that profit but invest it. As I said earlier, Dana Crist of Lancaster, Pennsylvania who runs a small little manufacturing or distribution center in Lancaster, said that she as an entrepreneur, would start a whole new factory if the federal government would cut the cost of capital. She wants the capital gains rate reduced. And if, to Al Gore and Bill Clinton that is somehow, trickle-down economics. Tell that to Dana Crist, tell it to Van Woods, tell it to the men and women I met in South Central. Tell it to anybody who understands how to makes democratic capitalism work. I want to say it one more time. The real excitement of a Dole/Kemp Administration would be to get out of this current tax code that redistributes wealth and create a brand new system for the 21st Century that's pro-family, pro-growth and stops the double, triple and quadruple taxation of income from work, savings, investment and entrepreneurial risk taking in America.

GORE: The question as I recall, it was about Family and Medical Leave. Here's how it works. If you have a child who is critically ill or has been seriously injured and you have to stay with that child in the hospital, some employers, have said you can't take too much time off in spite of these circumstances. I personally know people who have been fired because they made the choice to be with their child. Don't tell me this doesn't happen. It happens all across the United States. But since Bill Clinton made this the first law he signed, it has been use 12 million times by American families to reconcile the demands of work with the responsibilities to the family. We now want to extend it to PTA meetings and scheduled doctors appointments. It shouldn't be repealed. It ought to be extended. 75 percent of businesses who have been -- had experience with it say they like it. It works.

KEMP: Well, it was here before Bill Clinton and it will be here after Bill Clinton. Senator Tsongas a good friend of Senator Gore, Vice President Gore suggested that he was afraid his party was fall nothing the trap of loving the employee, but hating the employer. You cannot love labor and hate employers. You cannot drive this wedge between workers and management. And businesses were providing family leave. They will continue. They should. They've got to make a profit and the tax on business, capital, labor and families is too high and it will -- we want to reduce that regulatory burden and that tax burden in a new Dole/Kemp Administration.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, that was the last question, so now we go to the closing statements. There will be three minutes each and Mr. Kemp, you are first.

KEMP: Thank you, Jim and thanks to the people of St. Petersburg for a fantastic hospitality and my friend, Al Gore, for a vigorous debate. I think this is the most exciting time in the history of the world to be alive. We have lived through what Jean Kirpatrick called the bloodiest century in mankind's history. We have defeated in this system of ours fascism, Nazism, communism, socialism is defunct or debunked around the world, the evil of apartheid has ended. There is only one last question remaining for the next century, indeed the next millennium. Can we, in America, make the world's greatest liberal democracy, this democratic experiment in private property, limited government, the rule of law, respect for families and traditional Judeo-Christian values work, so it can be a blessing to our country and a blessing to the rest of the world?

With all due respect to this administration, they've got a foreign policy in disarray. They have a lack of credibility around the world. Weakness, I said earlier, is provocative and clearly, this economy is not performing up to the standards that we would expect from this great nation going into the most exciting global economy the world has ever known.

There's something amiss. Our culture seems to be weakening all around us. Families are under tremendous pressure. People do not -- do not feel safe in their homes. A mother doesn't feel safe sending her child to school. Our schools are not educating. It's not the problem of the teachers. They are overworked and my daughter will tell you, they are underpaid and we know that, they need to be empowered. We need to reform education. We need to reform welfare. We need to reform litigation and regulation. And we certainly need to reform this tax code that is a product of this terrible century of war and recession and inflations. It can be done. We need somebody who understands the potential of the American people, who are not just doing well for ourselves, we need to do well for the rest of the world, because they're looking at us. And we need to make it work in every neighborhood and community in America and for every family, so that no one as Bob Dole said in his San Diego acceptance speech is left behind.

Bob Dole, as I said earlier, is a man of courage, a man of principles, a man who crawled out of a fox hole on Riva Ridge in 1945 to save a wounded brethren. The bible says no greater love hath a man than he gave his life. Well, Bob Dole did, just about, he'd been through the valley of the shadow and he as Commander-in-Chief can take this country with the courage of Churchill. The principles of Lincoln and the indefatigable optimism and spirit that this nation expects from its Commander-in-Chief and the next President of the United States, Bob Dole.

LEHRER: Mr. Vice President?

GORE: Thank you very much, Mr. Lehrer. Thanks again to the people of St. Petersburg and thanks again to Jack Kemp. I have enormous respect for Jack Kemp and for Bob Dole. They're good men. I don't agree with their plan. I've tried to make that clear tonight. And one reason I've tried to make it clear is that in just 27 days, the United States of America has an important choice to make. Between two approaches to the future of this country.

We have a plan that will create millions more jobs, bring the deficits down further and balance the budget, while protecting Medicare, protecting Medicaid, protecting and preserving the environment, our air, our water, the Everglades, the Tongas, the Mojave Desert in California, the Utah-Red Rocks area, all of which have been protected by President Bill Clinton. We also have a plan to expand access to education. There's a family in the audience tonight, the McNeil family, who lives right here in St. Petersburg. Both parents are teachers, they're not rich in money, but they have strong values and they value education. They're oldest son is a freshman at St. Petersburg Junior High -- Junior College. Their younger son, Roderick, is a sophomore in the same high school that Don McNeil teaches at. Roderick is concerned that he may not be able to get the tuition he needs to go to college when the time comes. Our plan gives a $1500 tax credit to make that junior college essentially free. And a $10,000 tax deduction to make it so that no American family, or almost no family, will have to pay taxes on the money they pay for college tuition. This plan also gives tax breaks on the sale of a home, up to $500,000 in profit tax free. It gives the new break for first-time home buyers, and, again, all all in the context of a balanced budget. We have seen progress during the last four years because policies like these have been working.

This risky scheme that I've described tonight has been said by many objective observers to not add up, it would be a serious risk. Our plan, by contrast, has been working and will work more. We want to build a bridge to the 21st Century and we want it to be strong enough and broad enough for all families to cross and we want it to lead to a brighter future for America, 'cause our best days are ahead.

LEHRER: Thank you. [ applause ]