SEIB: Brian, let's continue the Iraq line with Senator Lieberman and Senator Graham, because for you it's not a hypothetical. Where do you come down on the $87 billion? Your colleagues have suggested paying for it at least in part by rolling by the top Bush tax cuts. Is that the way to go? Should the wealthy pay for Iraq and Afghanistan?
LIEBERMAN: That is certainly my first choice as to how we should finance this $87 billion. The fact is that the only Americans sacrificing today for our policy in Iraq, which is critical to our national security and world security, are the 140,000 Americans who are there in uniform for us.
And, of course, we all agree that if George Bush had a better, more multilateral foreign policy, we wouldn't have to finance this alone.
Again he went to the United Nations this time like a beggar and was turned down by the nations of the world.
But we have no choice but to finance this program for two reasons.
We have those 140,000 American troops there. We need to protect them. We need to protect them and bring them home safe to their families.
Secondly, we are involved in a great battle in the war on terrorism. Those terrorists have poured in there. They're attacking Americans. They're attacking the institutions of civilization: the United Nations, Jordanian embassy, Muslim mosques. We cannot afford to lose this fight.
WILLIAMS: Senator Lieberman, direct question, 60 seconds, same question: Would you exert the same sort of caution or can you say that existing revenue would be enough, no new taxes under a Lieberman administration?
LIEBERMAN: Same answer that Bob Graham gave; it's the right answer.
And immediately as president, I would attempt to repeal the Bush tax cuts on the highest income Americans, they don't need it. It sent us in a deficit that will cost the middle class, and as Bob said, our children and grandchildren, all sorts of money in the future.
There's a choice here and I want to take it to a larger point. The debate going on between us is really a debate about whether we want to take the Democratic party back to where it was before Bill Clinton transformed it in 1992, or whether we want to take it forward.
And some of my opponents here, including Howard Dean, Dick Gephardt, want to repeal all the taxes. That, as John has said, would mean a middle-class tax increase. Bill Clinton was for a middle-class tax cut.
Some would spend over $3 trillion. That would put us as much into debt as George Bush has done, and take all that money out of the Social Security trust fund.
Some forget that Bill Clinton was for trade that created jobs, and they're against trade today.
I want to build on the Clinton-Gore record, and create 10 million new jobs in the first four years of my administration.
WILLIAMS: Time, Senator. Time, Senator.
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. 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.
But Senator Lieberman–a strict 30 second rebuttal–is what we're talking about here really a modern-day WPA?
LIEBERMAN: Well, that could be part of it.
But, look, the way we're really going to grow the economy is to invest in people, to invest in innovation, to have the federal government put money in the kind of research that will create the new high-technology, bio-technology industries that will create the millions of new jobs.
And one of the ways we do that is having the federal government partner with business, give business tax incentives to invest and grow and create jobs. And then, use public money to give lifetime opportunities for training and retraining to America's workers.
That's the way we are going to do it.
BORGER: Well, talking a little bit more about prescription drugs–and this is for Congressman Kucinich and Senator Lieberman.
A very big issue on Capitol Hill, as you well know, is the importation of cheaper prescription drugs from Canada. The drug companies say you should not be able to do this because the industry needs the money in this country for research and development. The Food and Drug Administration also says that these drugs might be unsafe. Senator Lieberman, you first: Are you for the reimportation of drugs from Canada?
LIEBERMAN: Yes, I have supported measures to allow for the reimportation of drugs with an FDA approval that it is safe.
We've got a crisis here and there's something unfair happening. Look, the American pharmaceutical industry has presented us with drugs that are keeping people alive and well a lot longer than they otherwise would be. But they're asking the American people, and the American people alone, to finance the research that leads to those drugs. That's not fair.
We've got to ask the Canadians who have price controls, the Europeans who have price controls, to begin to pay part of that cost.
And, of course, the best way to give prescription drugs to people at an affordable cost is to cover prescription drugs under Medicare and to cover the 41 million Americans who don't have health insurance today, because it's they who get whacked by the cost of prescription drugs, not the people who have health insurance.
SEIB: Let me switch to a different subject, which is energy and energy security, and address this question to Senator Kerry and Senator Joe Lieberman.
Just yesterday, OPEC announced a production cutback and the price of oil jumped immediately. How can you say on one hand that there is a paramount economic and national security need to reduce dependence on imported, and specifically Middle Eastern, oil, while on the other hand oppose drilling in one section of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska?
Senator Lieberman, you see any other alternatives?
LIEBERMAN: Well, I sure do.
Look, there's been a widespread loss of confidence in George Bush's economic policies. And the OPEC decision to cut the supply of oil shows that even George Bush's buddies in OPEC have lost confidence in his economic plans, because they based that cut in supply on a projected cut and demand because they see America in a jobless recovery. It's going to take a Democratic president to begin to create jobs again.
And one of the ways we're going to do it with a declaration of real energy independence, so no matter how strong we are, we can't have our strength be compromised by the countries in OPEC.
I am for increasing the average fuel efficiency of our vehicles to 40 miles a gallon. That's critical. I'm for investing billions of dollars in creating new, alternative renewable energy technologies and giving tax credits to people who buy them.
We can get together and make ourselves energy-independent and stronger economically.
NAFTA is now on the table. Same question: “free trader” or “Made in America”; pick a label.
LIEBERMAN: What's the question?
WILLIAMS: “Free trade” or “Made in the U.S.”?
LIEBERMAN: Made in the U.S. and sold abroad–that's what this is all about.
(LAUGHTER)
Right.
I'm for trade because trade is all about breaking down barriers abroad so that we can sell more American-made goods there and make them here to create jobs.
You know, Brian, this is all about jobs, and I want to talk about something we ought to talk about here so close to Wall Street now after Dick Grasso's resignation.
There's a loss of confidence in the American economy, and part of it is because of the culture of greed and irresponsibility. And at the top of that, unfortunately, is the president of the United States. He's taken our government into terrible debt. His administration has yielded to special interests over and over again. Halliburton writes the specs and then gets the no-bid contracts. In the Bush administration, the foxes are guarding the foxes and the middle-class hens are getting plucked. I want to make clear I said plucked.
What in office, as president, would be the least popular, most right thing you would do? Again, 30 seconds each.
LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Brian.
Let me say this has been a significant debate for because it's the first Democratic debate in a while at which I have not been booed.
(LAUGHTER)
It's not over, I know.
(LAUGHTER)
And I have been booed–I know perfectly well after 30 years in public life what you have to say to any crowd to get a round of applause. But if I'm before a labor group and I believe that trade creates jobs, I'm going to say that.
That's what being president is all about: having a clarity of judgment and the courage to stick with it.
Here's the answer. I'm going to prosecute the war against terrorism…
WILLIAMS: Senator, you are…
LIEBERMAN: And win it even if it's unpopular because that's here our future security rests.
WILLIAMS: You are spending time spending time you do not have.
The transcript of the entire debate can be found here: September 25 Debate