BERNARD SHAW (Moderator): From historic Danville, Kentucky, good evening. And welcome to this year's
only vice presidential debate sponsored by the Commission on Presidential
Debates. I'm Bernard Shaw of CNN, moderator.
Tonight we come to you from Newlin Hall in the Norton Center for the Arts on
the campus of Centre College. To president John Roush, the faculty here,
students and community leaders statewide, we thank you for hosting this
debate.
The candidates are: the Republican nominee, former Defense Secretary Dick
Cheney of Wyoming, and the Democratic nominee, Senator Joseph Lieberman of
Connecticut.
The commission, these candidates and their campaign staffs have agreed to the
following rules: A candidate shall have two minutes to respond to the
moderator's question. The other candidate shall have two minutes to comment
on the question or the first candidate's answer. When I exercise the
moderator's discretion of extending discussion of a question, no candidate may
speak for more than two minutes at one time. This audience has been told no
disruptions will be tolerated.
A prior coin toss has determined that the first question will go to the
Democratic candidate.
Senator, few hard-working Americans would base their well-being on bonuses
they hope to get five or 10 years from now. Why do you, and you, Secretary
Cheney, predict surpluses you cannot possibly guarantee to pay for your
proposed programs?
Senator JOSEPH LIEBERMAN (Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate): Bernie,
before I answer that very important question, let me first thank you for
moderating the debate. Let me thank the wonderful people here at Centre
College and throughout Kentucky for being such gracious hosts. And let me
give a special thank you to the people of Connecticut, without whose support
over these last 30 years, I would never have had the opportunity Al Gore has
given me this year. And finally, let me thank my family that is here with me,
my wife Hadassah, our children, our siblings and my mom. My 85-year-old mom
gave me some good advice about the debate earlier today. She said,
`Sweetheart,' as she is prone to call me, `remember, be positive and know that
I will love you no matter what your opponent says about you.' Well--well,
mom, as always, that was both reassuring and wise.
I am going to be positive tonight. I'm not going to indulge in negative
personal attacks. I'm going to talk about the issues that I know matter to
the people of this country: education, health care, retirement security and
moral values. I'm going to describe the plan that Al Gore and I have for
keeping America's prosperity going and making sure that it benefits more of
America's families, particularly the hard-working middle-class families who
have not yet fully benefited from the good times we've had. And, Bernie, I'm
going to explain tonight how we're going to do all this and remain fiscally
responsible. Let--let me briefly get to your question.
SHAW: You have about 10 seconds.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: All right. We're not spending any more than is projected by
the experts. In fact, unlike our opponents, we're setting aside $300 billion
in a reserve fund just in case those projections the non-partisan experts make
are not quite right. We understand that balancing the budget...
SHAW: Your time is up, Senator.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: ...keeping America out of debt is a way to keep interest
rates down and the economy growing.
SHAW: Secretary Cheney.
Former Secretary DICK CHENEY (Defense Department; Republican Vice Presidential
Candidate): Well, I--I, too, want to join in thanking the folks here in
Centre College in Danville, Kentucky, for sponsoring this and making all of
this possible. And--and I am delighted to be here tonight with you, Joe. And
I, too, want to be avoid any personal attacks. I promise not to bring up your
singing.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: I pro--I promise not to sing.
Mr. CHENEY: So I--OK. Good.
I think this is an extraordinarily important decision we're going to make on
November 7th. We're really going to choose between what I consider to be an
old way of governing ourselves, of--of high levels of spending, high taxes,
ever more intrusive bureaucracy for a new course, a new era, if you will,
and--and Governor Bush and I want to offer that new course of action.
With respect to the surplus, Bernie, we've got to make some kind of--of
forecast. We can't make 12-month decisions in this business. We're talking
about the kinds of fundamental changes in programs and--and government that
are going to affect people's lives for the next 25 or 30 years. And while it
may be a little risky in some respects from an economic standpoint to--to try
to forecast surpluses, I think it's--you--you have to make some planning
assumption in which to proceed. We care a great deal about the issues that
are at stake here. And one of the difficulties we have, frankly, is that for
the last eight years, we've ignored a lot of these problems. We haven't moved
aggressively on Social Security. We haven't moved, for example, on Medicare.
There are important issues out there that need to be resolved, and it's
important for us to get on with that business. And that's what Governor Bush
and I want to do.
SHAW: You alluded to problems. There's no magic bullet, Secretary Cheney, in
this question to you, no magic bullets to solve the problems of public
education, but what's the next best solution?
Mr. CHENEY: Well, I think public education is the solution, all right? Our
desire is to find ways to reform our educational system, to return it to its
former glory. I'm a product of public schools. My family, my wife and
daughters all went to public schools. We believe very much in the--in the
public school system. But if you look at--at where we are, from the
standpoint of the nation, recent exams, for example, the national assessment
of educational progress, independent, non-partisan testing service shows that
there's been no progress on reading scores in the last eight years, almost no
progress on math. The achievement gap between minority and non-minority
students is as big as it's ever been. We've had a significant increase in
spending for education nationwide, but it's produced almost no positive
results. That's really unacceptable, from our standpoint, because if you look
at it and think about it, we now have, in our most disadvantaged communities,
nearly 70 percent of our fourth-graders can't read basic level.
We've graduated 15 million kids from high school in the last 15 years who
can't read at basic level. They are permanently sentenced to a lifetime of
failure. And what we want to do, what Governor Bush and I want to do is to
change that. We think we know how to do it. Governor Bush has done it in
Texas. We want to emphasize local control so that the people here in
Danville, Kentucky, decide what's best for their kids. We want to insist on
high standards. One of the worst things we can do is fail to s--establish
high standards. In effect, to say to a youngster because of their ethnic
background or their income level, `We don't have the some kind of expectations
from you that we have from everybody else.'
And we want accountability. We have to test every child every year to know
whether or not we're making progress with respect to achieving those goals and
objectives. So we think it's extraordinarily important. This is probably the
single most important issue in this campaign. Governor Bush has made it clear
that, when he's elected, this will be his number-one priority as a legislative
meter--major to submit to the Congress.
SHAW: Senator.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Bernie, Al Gore and I are committed to making America's
public schools the best in the world. And I--I disagree with what my opponent
has said. A lot of progress has been made in recent years. Average testing
scores are--are up and a lot of extraordinary work is being done by tens of
thousands of parents and teachers and administrators all around America, but
there's more to be done.
And--and if you'll allow me, I want to go back to your--your last question
because it leads to this question. I think both of us agree that leaving
aside the Social Security and Medicare surpluses, there's $1.8 trillion in
surplus available to spend over the next 10 years. As I said before, we're
being fiscally responsible about it. We're taking $300 billion off the top to
put in a reserve fund. The rest of it we're going to use for middle class tax
cuts and investments in programs like education.
Now there's a big difference here between these two tickets. Our opponents
are going to spend 1.6 trillion of the $1.8 trillion surplus projected on that
big tax cut that Al Gore talked about the other night so effectively.
We--we're saving money to invest in education. You cannot reform education
and improve it in this country without spending some money. Al Gore and I
have committed $170 billion for that purpose--to recruit 100,000 new teachers,
to reduce the size of classrooms, to help local school districts build new
buildings so our children are not learning in crumbling classrooms. And we're
not just going to stop at high school; we're going to go on and--and give the
middle class the ability to deduct up to $10,000 a year in the cost of college
tuition. Now that's a tremendous life-saving change, which will help people
carry on their education and allow them to develop the kinds of skills that
will help them succeed in the high-tech economy of today.
Mr. CHENEY: A very important issue, Bernie. Maybe we could extend on
education for a moment?
SHAW: You're asking me to invoke the moderator's discretion on further
discussion?
Mr. CHENEY: I am asking you to invoke the moderator's discussion--yes, sir,
discretion.
SHAW: It is so granted.
Mr. CHENEY: Thank you, sir.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Your honor, do I have a chance to re--respond?
SHAW: Of course you do.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Thank you.
SHAW: The secretary will have two minutes and then you will have two minutes.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Thank you.
Mr. CHENEY: Let's talk about this question of the surplus because it really
drives a lot of what we're talking about here, Joe. And--and if you look
at--at our proposal, we take half of the projected surplus and set it aside
for Social Security, over $2.4 trillion. We take roughly a fourth of it for
other urgent priorities, such as Medicare reform and education and several
of--of these other key programs we want to support. And we take roughly
one-fourth of it and--and return it in the form of a tax cut to the American
taxpayer. We think it is extraordinarily important to do that.
But it is a fundamental difference between our two--our two approaches. If
you look, frankly, by our numbers and--and the numbers of the Senate Budget
Committee, which has totaled up all the promises that Vice President Gore has
made during the course of the campaign, they are some $900 billion in spending
over and above that projected surplus already, and we still have a month to go
in the campaign. The fact is that the program that we've put together we
think is very responsible. The suggestion that somehow all of it is going for
tax cuts isn't true. Another way to look at it is that over the course of the
next 10 years, we'll collect roughly $25 trillion in revenue. We want to take
about 5 percent of that and return that to the American taxpayer in the form
of tax relief.
We have the highest level of taxation now we've had since World War II. The
average American family's paying about 40 percent in federal, state and local
taxes. We think it is appropriate to return to the American people so that
they can make choices themselves in how that money ought to be spend, whether
they want to spend it on education or on retirement or on paying their bills.
It's their choice. It's--it's their prerogative. We want to give them the
opportunity to--to make those kinds of choices for themselves, and we think
this is a totally reasonable approach.
SHAW: Senator.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Well, Bernie, let me--let me start with the numbers. With
all respect, the--the Senate Budget Committee estimates that Dick Cheney has
just referred to are the estimates of the partisan Republican staff of the
Senate Budget Committee. We--we're using the numbers presented by the
non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. And we--we start with an agreement,
which is that the surplus in the Social Security fund should be locked up and
used for Social Security. That's where the agreement ends. We also agree,
and s--and believe and pledge that the surplus in the Medicare trust fund
should also be locked up with a sign on it that says, `Politicians, keep your
hands off.' Our opponents do not do that. In fact, they raid the Medicare
trust fund to pay for, well, their tax cut and other programs that they can't
afford because they've spent so much on the tax cut.
Let me come back to the remaining $1.8 trillion that we've both talked about.
The numbers show that $1.6 trillion goes to that big tax cut which, as Al Gore
said the other night, sends 43 percent to the top 1 percent. But really worse
than that, when you add on the other spending programs that our opponents have
committed to, plus their--the cost of their plan to privatize Social Security,
by our calculation, they are $1.1 trillion in--in debt. And that means we go
back down the road to higher interest rates, to higher unemployment, to a kind
of stealth tax increase on every American family, because when interest rates
go up, so, too, do the cost of mortgage payments, car payments, student loans,
credit card transactions.
So if we've learned anything over the last eight years, it is that one of the
most important things the government can do, the federal government, probably
the most important, is to be fiscally responsible. And that's why Al Gore and
I are committed to balancing the budget every year. In fact, to paying off
the debt by the year 2012 when, by our calculation, our opponents' economic
plan still leaves America $2.8 trillion in debt.
SHAW: Time.
The next question goes to you. Gentlemen, this is the 21st century, yet on
average, an American working woman in our great nation earns 75 cents for each
dollar earned by a working male. What do you males propose to do about it?
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Well, it's--it's a good and--and important question.
Obviously, in our time, fortunately, great advances have been made by women
achieving the kind of equality that they were too long denied. But, Bernie,
your question is absolutely right. Women, actually the number I have, have
received 72 cents for every dollar a man receives in a--in a comparable job.
Al Gore and I have issued an economic plan in which we've--we've stated
specific goals for the future. And one of those goals is to eliminate the pay
gap between men and women. It's unfair and it's unacceptable. And the first
way we will do that is by supporting The Equal Pay Act, which has been
proposed in Congress, which gives women the right to file legal actions
against employers who--who are not treating them fairly and not paying them
equally. Secondly, we--we're going to do everything we can using governmental
support of business agencies, such as the Small Business Administration, to
help women business owners have an opportunity to invest and--and begin
businesses and--and make larger incomes themselves. And there are--there are
other civil rights and human rights laws that I think can come to play here.
So bottom line: This is an unfair and unacceptable situation, and even
though, as the economy has risen in the--in the last eight years, America's
women have risen with it and received more income. Until women are receiving
the same amount of pay for the same job they're doing as a man receives, we've
not achieved genuine equality in this country. And Al Gore and I are
committed to closing that gap and achieving that equality. You know, in so
many families, women are a significant bread-earner or the only bread-earner.
So this af--this--this--this cause affects not only the women, but families
and the children, as well.
SHAW: Mr. Secretary.
Mr. CHENEY: Bernie, I certainly share the view that we ought to have equal
pay for equal work regardless of--of someone's gender, and we've made major
progress in recent years. I think we've still got a ways to go. But I--I
also think it's--it's not just about the--the differential with respect to
women.
If you look, for example, at our opponents' tax proposal, they discriminate
between stay-at-home moms with children that they take care of themselves and
those who go to work or who, in fact, have their kids taken care of outside
the home. You, in effect, as a stay-at-home mom get no tax advantage under
the Gore tax plan. As contrasted with the--the Bush proposal which, in fact,
provides tax relief for absolutely everybody who pays taxes. And it's
important to understand that the things that we're trying to change and the
things that we're trying to address in the course of the campaign and what our
agenda is for the future, our plans are for the future, focused very much upon
giving as much control as we can to individual Americans, be they men or
women, be they single or married, as much control as possible over their own
lives, especially in the area of taxation.
We want to make certain that the American people have the ability to keep more
of what they earn, and then they get to decide how to spend it. The proposal
we have from--from Al Gore basically doesn't do that, and in effect lays out
some 29 separate tax credits. And--and if you live your life the way they
want to you live your life, if you do, in fact, behave in a certain way, then
you qualify for a tax credit and at that point you get some relief. Bottom
line, though, is 50 million American taxpayers out there get no advantages at
all out of the Gore tax proposal, whereas under the Bush plan, everybody who
pays taxes will, in fact, get tax relief.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Bernie, might I have an opportunity to respond here?
SHAW: You can re--respond, Senator. But I caution you gentlemen that, if you
do this consistently, we're not going to cover a lot of topics.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: OK.
SHAW: And after the senator responds, you don't have to feel compelled to
respond to the senator.
Mr. CHENEY: It depends on what he says, Bernie.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Right.
This--this is an important difference between us, and I--and I want to try to
clarify it briefly, if I can. The first thing is that, in fact, the
tax-relief program that Al Gore and I have proposed, one of those many tax
credits for the middle class that Dick just referred to, includes a $500 tax
credit for stay-at-home moms, just as--as a way of saying we understand that
you are performing a service for our society, we want you to have that tax
credit. Second, the number of 50 million Americans not benefiting from our
tax-cut program is absolutely wrong. It--it's an estimate done on an earlier
form of our--our tax-cut program, and i--and it's just plain wrong. And
secondly, although Governor Bush says that his--his tax cut program, large as
it is, gives a tax cut to everybody, as the newspapers indicated earlier this
week, the Joint Committee on Taxation, again, a non-partisan group in
Congress, has said that 27 million Americans don't get what the governor said
they would in their tax cut program.
Again, Al Gore and I want to live within our means. We're not going to give
it all away in one big tax cut and certainly not to the top 1 percent of the
public that doesn't need it now. So we're focusing our tax cuts on the middle
class in the areas where they tell us they need it: tax credits for better
and more expensive child care, tax credits for middle class families that
don't have health insurance from their employers, the tax deduction I talked
about earlier, very exciting deduction for up to $10,000 a year in the cost of
a college tuition, a $3,000 tax credit for the cost--well, actually for a
family member who stays home with a parent or grandparent who's ill, and a
very exciting tax credit program that I hope I'll have a chance to talk about
later, Bernie, that encourages savings by people early in life and--and any
time in life by having the federal government match savings for the 75 million
Americans who make $100,000 or less up to $2,000 a year. So very brief...
SHAW: Time.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Very briefly, if--if a young couple making $50,000 a year
saves $1,000, the government will put another $1,000 in that account. By the
time they retire, they'll not only have guaranteed Social Security, but more
than $200,000 in that retirement fund. Now, that's...
SHAW: Your time is up, Senator.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Thank you, sir.
Mr. CHENEY: Bernie, you have to be a CPA to understand what he just said.
The--the fact of the matter is that that plan is so complex that an ordinary
American's never going to be able to figure out what they even qualify for.
And--and it is a classic example of h--wanting to have a program, in this case
a tax program that will, in fact, direct people to live their lives in certain
ways, rather than empowering them to make decisions for themselves. It is a
big difference between us. They like tax credits. We like s--tax reform and
tax cuts.
SHAW: Mr. Secretary, this question is for you. Would you support the effort
of House Republicans who want legislation to restrict distribution of the
abortion drug RU-486?
Mr. CHENEY: Bernie, the abortion issue's a very tough one, without question,
and a very important one. And Governor Bush and I have emphasized, while we
clearly are both pro-life--that's what we believe--that we want to look for
ways to try to reduce the incidence of abortion in our society. Many on--on
the pro-choice side have said exactly the same thing. Even Bill Clinton who's
been a supporter of--of abortion rights, has advocated reducing abortion to
make it as rare as possible.
With respect to the question of RU-486, we believe that--of course, that it's
recently been approved by the FDA, that really was a question of whether or
not it was safe to be used by women. They didn't address the--sort of the
question of whether or not there should or should not be abortion in this
society, so much as evaluate that particular drug.
What we'd like to be able to do is to look for ways to reach across the divide
between the--the two points of view and find things that we can do together to
reduce the incidences of abortion, whether it be such things as promoting
adoption as an alternative, encouraging the parental notification. And we
also think banning the horrific practice of partial-birth abortions is an area
where there could be agreement. Congress has twice passed, by overwhelming
margins, a significant number of votes by both parties, a ban on partial-birth
abortions. Twice it's been vetoed by--by Bill Clinton and Al Gore. We hope
that eventually they--they would recognize that that's not--not a good
position for them to be in.
With respect to the RU-486, at this stage, I haven't looked in particular at
that particular piece of legislation. Governor Bush made it clear the other
night that he did not anticipate that he would be able to go in and direct the
FDA to reverse course on that particular issue, primarily because, as I say,
the decision they made on the efficacy, the drug, not the question of whether
or not we--we supported abortion.
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Bernie, this is--this is a very important question, and it
is one on which these two tickets have dramatically different points of view.
My answer is: No, I would I not support legislation that is being introduced
in Congress to override the Food and Drug Administration decision on RU-486.
The--the administration, FDA worked 12 years on this serious problem. They
made a judgment based on what was good for women's health. A doctor has to
prescribe and care for a woman using it. I think it's a decision that we
ought to let stand because it was made by experts.
But let--let me say, more generally, that the significant difference here on
this issue is that Al Gore and I respect and will protect a woman's right to
choose, and our opponents will not. We know that this is a--a difficult,
personal, moral, medical issue. But it--that is exactly why it ought to be
left, under our law, to a woman, her doctor and her god. Now one area in
which we agree, Al Gore and I, is that we--we believe that the government
ought to do everything it can to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies,
and, therefore, the number of abortions.
And incidentally, here there is good news to report. The number of abortions
is actually down in America over the last eight years. In fact, over the last
eight years, the number of teen-age pregnancies has dropped 20 percent. And
the reason it has is that there are good programs out there that Al Gore and I
will continue to support, such as family planning and programs that encourage
abstinence. But when the health of a woman is involved, I think the
government has to be respectful. I supported, in fact, a bill in s--in the
Senate that would have prohibited late-term abortions, except in cases where
the health or life of the mother was involved. I did not support the
so-called partial-birth abortion bill because it would have prohibited
abortion--that form of abortion at any stage of the pregnancy, regardless of
the effect on the health and life of the woman, and--and that's unacceptable.
SHAW: This question is for you, Senator. If Yugoslavia's Slobodan Milosevic
prevails, notwithstanding the election results, would you support his
overthrow?
Sen. LIEBERMAN: Well, there is good news from Belgrade today, Bernie, as you
know, but it--it's unconfirmed. The encouraging news is that the State News
Agency is reporting that Mr. Kostunica is the president-elect. And there are
some re--press reports, but they're unconfirmed, that Milosevic has actually
left Belgrade. Now that is a very happy ending to a terrible story, and it's
the--the end of a reign of terror. If--if that doesn't--if that is not
confirmed and--and does not happen, then I--I think the United States, with
its European allies, ought to do everything we can to encourage the people of
Serbia to do exactly what they've been doing over the last few days, to rise
up and end this reign of terror and--and bring themse--by Milosevic--and bring
themselves back into the family of nations where they will be welcomed by the
United States and others.
You know, I'm very proud, on this night, as it appears that Milosevic is about
to or has fallen, of the leadership role the United States played in--in the
effort to stop his aggression and genocide in Bosnia and Kosovo. I know our
opponents have said that they thought that was an overreaching. It wasn't.
It was a matter of principle in America's national interest and values. And
the fact is that we--we stopped the aggression, we stopped the genocide, and
therefore, strengthened our relationship with our European allies in NATO and,
in fact, made the United States more respected and trusted by our allies and
more feared by our enemies. I think that Vice President Gore played a
critical role, passionate, purposeful role in leading the administration,
along with Republican supporters like Bob Dole and John McCain, to do the
right thing in the Balkans and--and hopefully tonight we are seeing the final
results of that bold and brave effort.
SHAW: Secretary Cheney.
Mr. CHENEY: Mm-hmm. Well, I noted, Bernie, that the--like--like Joe,
certainly, I'm pleased to see what's happened in Yugoslavia today. I hope it
marks the end of Milosevic. I think probably more than anything else, it's a
victory for the Serbian people. They've taken to the streets to support their
democracy, to support their vote. In some respects, this is a continuation of
a process that began 10 years ago all across Eastern Europe and is only now
arrived in Serbia. We saw it in Germany, we saw it in Romania, we saw it in
Czechoslovakia as the people of Eastern Europe rose up and--and--and made
their claim for freedom. And I think we all admire that.
I think, with respect to how this process has been managed most recently, we
want to do everything we can to support Mr. Milosevic's departure.
Certainly, though, that would not involve committing US troops. I do think
it's noteworthy that there appears to be an effort under way to get the
Russians involved. I noted the other night, for example, Tuesday night in the
debate in Boston, Governor Bush suggested exactly that, that we ought to try
to get the Russians involved to exercise some leverage over the Serbians.
And--and Al Gore pooh-poohed it. But now it's clear from the press that, in
fact, that's exactly what they were doing and that--that it's a--that Governor
Bush was correct in his--his assessment, in his recommendation. He has
supported the administration on Kosovo. He lobbied actively against passage
of the Byrd-Warner provision, which would have set a specific deadline, one he
felt that was too soon for forcing US troops out. So he's been supportive
of the policy that--that we've seen with respect to Yugoslavia and I think he
deserves a lot of credit for that.
I'd go beyond that. I think--I think this is an opportunity for--for the
United States to p--test President Putin of--of Russia. That, in fact, now is
the time when we ought to find out whether or not he is, indeed, committed to
democracy, whether or not he's willing to support the forces of freedom and
democracy diplomatically in the area there of Eastern Europe. And it's a test
for him, in effect, of whether he represents the old guard and the Soviet
Union. One of the most important challenges we face as a nation is how we
manage that process of integrating those 150 million Eastern Europeans into
the security and economic framework of--of Europe.
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