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Kerry dean on free trade { September 25 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3088203/http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3088203/
Transcript to CNBC/WSJ Democratic Presidential debate
Read the complete transcriptMSNBCSEPTEMBER 25, 2003
SPEAKERS: BRIAN WILLIAMS, CNBC
RON INSANA, CNBC
GLORIA BORGER, CNBC
GERALD SEIB, WALL STREET JOURNAL
FORMER GOVERNOR HOWARD DEAN (D-VT)
U.S. SENATOR JOHN EDWARDS (D-NC)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE RICHARD GEPHARDT (D-MO)
U.S. SENATOR BOB GRAHAM (D-FL)
U.S. SENATOR JOHN F. KERRY (D-MA)
U.S. REPRESENTATIVE DENNIS KUCINICH (D-OH)
U.S. SENATOR JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (D-CT)
FORMER U.S. SENATOR CAROL MOSELEY BRAUN (D-IL)
THE REVEREND AL SHARPTON
GENERAL WESLEY CLARK (RET.)
GEPHARDT: Well, the fight for labor unions and working families is in my bones. My dad was a Teamster and a milk truck driver, and I’m very proud of what he stood for and represented in my life and in my family’s life. And I’m proud to have the support of working families.
This administration has declared war on the middle class. They’ve lost more jobs in the last two and a half years than the last 11 presidents put together. He’s lost more jobs than Herbert Hoover, almost. This is a colossal disaster for the president and for the country.
We need to have a policy to build new jobs in this country. Part of it is fair trade, not just free trade.
Everybody here-most everybody here voted for NAFTA, voted for the China agreement. I did not. I led the fight against it. That’s the kind of trade policy we need that globalizes with fairness and standards around the world so work, wherever it’s performed, is given a fair wage for their hard work.
WILLIAMS: Congressman, thank you.
Senator Kerry, you have accused Governor Dean of playing on workers’ fears and advocating protectionism and saying that under him it threatens to throw the economy into a tail spin. It that fair?
KERRY: Yes, it is fair, because Governor Dean, on a number of occasions across the country, has said very specifically that we should not trade with countries until they have labor and environment standards that are equal to the United States.
That means we would trade with no countries. It is a policy for shutting the door. It’s either a policy for shutting the door, if you believe it, or it’s a policy of just telling people what they want to hear.
I think there’s a middle ground that’s smart for America. No president can shut the door to globalization and no president should.
President Clinton traded. We created 23 million jobs in the 1990s, we balanced the budget, we paid down the debt, we brought more women into the workforce than at any time in American history. We lifted a hundred times the number of people out of poverty of Ronald Reagan.
We can do that again, but we have to enforce trade agreements. We have to be fair in our trade.
And I intend to sign no trade agreement that doesn’t have adequate labor and environment standards. I’m going to raise the enforcement level. But I’m not going to shut the door, because that would depress the economy of our country.
WILLIAMS: Senator Kerry, thank you.
Governor Dean, you have said that the senator from Massachusetts lacks an understanding of the job loss in this country. You have heard the accusation from him.
DEAN: I think that’s true.
You know, to listen to Senator Lieberman, Senator Kerry, Representative Gephardt, I’m anti-Israel, I’m anti-trade, I’m anti- Medicare and I’m anti-Social Security. I wonder how I ended up in the Democratic Party.
I’m not a new entrant to the Democratic Party. I’ve been here a long time.
I voted for-I supported NAFTA, I supported the WTO. We benefited in Vermont from trade.
But I have spent a lot of time in the Midwest in the last couple of years. Our manufacturing jobs are hemorrhaging. We have to go back and revise every single trade agreement that we have to include labor standards, environmental standards and human rights standards.
And if we don’t, the trade policy that we seek to help globalize and help workers around the country and the world is going to fail. I want a successful trade policy, but I’m no longer willing to sacrifice the jobs of middle-class Americans in order to pad the bottom lines of multinational corporations.
Trade has to be fair to workers, not just multinational corporations. And I think Senator Kerry is insensitive to the plight of workers-American workers who have lost their manufacturing jobs.
WILLIAMS: Senator Kerry, rebuttal time, and then perhaps Congressman Gephardt.
KERRY: Well, I gave a speech in Detroit several days ago which reflects an economic policy that I’ve laid out over the last years that will address the manufacturing loss.
I’m not insensitive to the jobs. I’m desperately concerned about those jobs. But you don’t fix them by pandering to people and telling them you’re going to shut the door. You have to grow jobs.
We need to increase our commitment to science in America, to venture capital, to the kinds of incentives that draw capital to the creation of jobs.
Democrats can’t love jobs and hate the people who create them.
WILLIAMS: Senator?
KERRY: We need to encourage job creation and trade, but fair trade, and I’ve shown how that can happen.
WILLIAMS: Time is up on that, Congressman. We’ll try to get to you.
The questioning continues with Gerry Seib.
SEIB: I’d like to turn this question of job loss to Senator Graham, if I could.
What would you do as president, if anything, to either discourage of maybe even punish American companies that take jobs overseas? Or to deal with allies such as Mexico that have lower labor, environmental standards, that make them attractive places for American factories?
GRAHAM: I am the jobs candidate. And I’m not only talking about what I will do, but what I have done.
While I was governor of Florida, when the state had a population of approximately 12 million people, I presided over the creation of 1.4 million new jobs in Florida, new jobs that resulted in, for the first time in our state’s history, the per-capita income in Florida being above the national average; resulted in Florida for three years in a row being recognized as the state that had the best climate for economic development.
I also am the candidate who has the most comprehensive economic plan, Opportunity For All, which lays out the pillars of creating new jobs in America: balancing the budget; making our tax program more fair and progressive; third, investing in America by rebuilding America. If we can afford to rebuild the bridges, the roads, the schools and electric system of Iraq, we can afford to invest in rebuilding America.
WILLIAMS: Senator Graham, thank you.
Before Gerry continues, just been told by our timekeepers, again, another reminder, when the bell sounds, we must stop talking. We’re getting sloppy and over on time. It’ll have to come out at the end.
Gerry, please?
SEIB: Senator Edwards and Reverend Sharpton, on this question of job loss, you’ve both had a fairly tough line.
I think, Senator Edwards, you’ve talked about withholding tax credits from companies that move jobs overseas.
Reverend Sharpton, you’ve talked about punishing companies that move overseas to dodge American taxes.
Isn’t that, though, a message that builds walls between the U.S. and the rest of the world economy on which our own prosperity has become so dependent?
Reverend Sharpton?
SHARPTON: No. When I say that we should punish companies that go and have offshore corporations to duck taxes, that doesn’t affect our standing with any other country. That affects people like Enron, that had 3,000 offshore companies deduct taxes. That doesn’t hurt other countries, in terms of our enforcement.
I think what we should say to other countries is the way that we can develop them in proper relationships is to, first, have a strong country here.
We’re on an island right now that, one side trades trillions on Wall Street; the other side, you have people in Harlem and Washington Heights trying to choose between rent and prescription drugs. We have a responsibility to those citizens and we need to make that responsibility our priority before we try and help to accommodate companies that don’t want to stand up for their responsibilities.
We’re told the responsible thing to do is serve the country. But if you’re a multi-billionaire, the responsible thing to do is to duck taxes and to try to down-size employment. That’s ridiculous.
WILLIAMS: I’ll take a 30-second rebuttal here from General Clark before we continue with Gerry.
CLARK: Well, I think that American business is the source of jobs and opportunity in this country. We need to look very carefully at how we create positive incentives for business. And we need to go right at the jobs problem in this country.
I’ve got a better job plan in eight days than George Bush had in three years in this country, and it will work, it’s significant, and we need to concentrate on creating jobs here.
WILLIAMS: Thank you, General.
Gerry, your question for the senators.
SEIB: Senator Edwards, I’ll come back to you. How do you draw the line between building walls to protect jobs and building walls that create isolationism economically?
EDWARDS: Well, we should start by saying this is not an academic discussion. Over 3 million Americans under this administration have lost the self-respect and the self-dignity that comes with a paycheck and a job. That’s the starting place. This president doesn’t understand that.
I think what we ought to do is have a tax system, to answer your question, that’s fair, that values hard work in the middle class over wealth. We, in fact, ought to have trade agreements that have real protections in them that allow our people here at home to compete.
But we also ought to close down loopholes in our tax code that give American companies an incentive to go overseas. In fact, I think we ought to go further than that: We ought to give tax breaks to American companies that will keep jobs right here in America.
But I think we have to do another thing-that’s to protect the jobs we have. We have to create jobs. And in order to create jobs, we ought to identify those places in America where job losses occurred and say to new business, “If you’ll start there, we’ll give you the seed money with a national venture capital fund”; and second, to existing businesses and industry, “If you’ll locate in an urban area, in an inner city, in a rural area, we will give you incentives to go there.”
WILLIAMS: Senator, thank you.
Questioning continues with Ron Insana.
INSANA: Thank you, Brian.
I would talk to you about a tradeoff between jobs and trade. I’d like to switch the conversation a little bit to the budget priorities of the Democratic Party and jobs.
Senator Lieberman, Ambassador Moseley Braun, you seem to have different priorities in these issues.
Senator, you tout jobs as the main portion of your economic program.
Ambassador Moseley Braun, you suggested a balanced budget is the utmost priority.
Senator, first, which should be the priority of the Democratic Party, balancing the budget or creating jobs?
LIEBERMAN: We can do both, but the priority has to be to create jobs.
I’ve got an aggressive, constructive economic plan which I am confident will create 10 million jobs in the first four years instead of losing 3.5 billion as George Bush has already done.
For the details I would forward folks to my Web site, joe2004.com.
But-you can imagine how happy I was the day Joe Biden announced he was not running for president of the United States.
(LAUGHTER)
But fiscal responsibility, paying down the debt is a critical part of creating confidence again in our economy.
And incidentally, so, too, is trade. I’m for trade because trade creates jobs. You cannot build a wall around America and create one more job. The last president to try to do that was Herbert Hoover, and it led to the Great Depression.
Bill Clinton understood that trade creates jobs.
LIEBERMAN: One in five jobs in America today is dependent on trade. I want to increase trade, I want to enforce other countries to play by the rules and that’ll create more jobs.
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