So what's the answer, Congressman Gephardt?
GEPHARDT: The president is failing in his responsibility to get us the help that we need. It is four months since he landed on the aircraft carrier in his flight suit and said the war was over. We've almost lost 800 soldiers to injury since then. We've almost lost 100 soldiers who have been killed. And it's incomprehensible that he's not been able to go to the U.N. and get the help we need.
WOODRUFF: But I'm…
GEPHARDT: Give them the civil authority. You remember on your report card you had your English grade and your history grade, and then it says, “plays well with others”? He flunked that part of his grade school.
WOODRUFF: But my question is…
(APPLAUSE)
But my question is going forward, if you were president starting a few days from now, you would be picking up a situation as it exists, what would you do differently?
GEPHARDT: Judy, you've got to get the help of our friends. He keeps saying we've got 30 countries helping us. Yes, Togo sent one soldier.
(LAUGHTER)
That isn't what we need. We need France, Germany, Russia. There's only three countries in the world that can give us both the financial and the military help that we need.
He needs to go to those countries. He needs to go to the U.N. He needs to build the consensus. He needs to collaborate. He needs to communicate.
He doesn't do any of those things. It's an abysmal failure of a foreign policy both there and across the world.
QUESTION: Well, you know, as a middle class American citizen, there is a tendency to really feel helpless. There'ss helplessness around you. Corporations closing. Social Security possibly going away. Benefits going away. And an alternative is to go into business for yourself.
I didn't know how helpless I could feel until I went into business for myself…
(LAUGHTER)
… because in doing such I found that there were so many taxes associated with going into business. There taxes upon taxes.
QUESTION: And there's a privilege tax that you're levied just for the privilege of doing business. I want to understand from someone up here–and I heard you touch upon it when you spoke with the young Hispanic lady–what would you do to try to help those of us who are trying to be in small business accomplish it without so much of the pain?
WOODRUFF: Congressman Gephardt, your plan would be to roll back not only the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy but also on the middle class. That would, in effect, be a tax increase, wouldn't it be, for Ms. Clayton? So what do you say to her?
GEPHARDT: You have asked the right question.
We need to do something bold to stimulate this economy and solve what I believe is our major problem.
We got 45 million people in this country that do not have health insurance. Small business like yours is having to pay a lot of tax, and my plan would help you and your employees and the employees of every corporation in the country.
It basically gives you a refundable tax credit equal to 60 percent of the cost of whatever plan your employee and you choose with your employee.
It would have to go through to your employee. If you're paying 80 or 90 percent of their health care premium now, you'd have to hold it there to get the 60 percent tax credit.
GEPHARDT: Now you've got to get rid of the Bush tax cuts to do this.
But let me tell something folks, the Bush tax cuts are a miserable failure. They have not worked. They haven't built…
WOODRUFF: But it's going to mean a tax increase for someone because…
GEPHARDT: No, it's not.
WOODRUFF: … if you roll…
GEPHARDT: The average–it's going to help her small business dramatically. She's going to get 60 percent of her health care costs for employees picked up by the federal government. That's a major help. And it puts more money into the average family than the Bush tax cuts.