THE PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES: ROUND TWO : Excerpts: Candidates Sketch Ideas for Economy, Schools, Crime

Following are excerpts from Thursday night’s presidential debate at the University of Richmond in Virginia:

Trade and Jobs

Ross Perot: We’ve shipped millions of jobs overseas, and we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington where after you’ve served for a while you cash in, become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month, then take a leave, work on presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts and then go back out.

Now, if you just want to get down to brass tacks, first thing you ought to do is get all these folks who’ve got these one-way trade agreements that we’ve negotiated over the years and say, fellas, we’ll take the same deal we gave you.

And they’ll gridlock right at this point because, for example, we’ve got international competitors who simply could not unload their cars off the ships if they had to comply--you see, if it was a two-way street. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas. . . .

President Bush: The thing that’s saved us in this global economic slowdown has been our exports. And what I’m trying to do is increase our exports. And if, indeed, all the jobs were going to move south because there are lower wages, there are lower wages now and they haven’t done that.

And so I have just negotiated with the president of Mexico the North American Free Trade Agreement--and the prime minister of Canada, I might add. And I want to have more of these free trade agreements because export jobs are increasing far faster than any jobs that may have moved overseas.

That’s a scare tactic because it’s not that many. But anyone that’s here--we want to have more jobs here. And the way to do that is to increase our exports. . . .

Bill Clinton: I’ve been a governor for 12 years, so I’ve known a lot of people who have lost their jobs because of jobs moving overseas. And I know a lot of people whose plants have been strengthened by increasing exports. The trick is to expand our export base and expand trade on terms that are fair to us. . . . Let me just mention three things very quickly. Number one, make sure that other countries are as open to our markets as our markets are to them. And if they’re not, have measures on the books that don’t take forever and a day to implement.

Number two, change the tax code. There are more deductions in the tax code for shutting plants down and moving them overseas than there are for modernizing plant and equipment here. . . .

Number three, stop the federal government’s program that now gives low-interest loans and job-training funds to companies that will actually shut down and move to other countries. . .

The Budget Deficit

Clinton: The deficit now has been building up for 12 years. . . . I think we can bring it down by 50% in four years and grow the economy. Now, I could get rid of it in four years, in theory, on the books now, but to do it you’d have to raise taxes too much and cut benefits too much to people who need them. . . .

So, you have to increase investment, grow the economy and reduce the deficit by controlling health care costs, prudent reductions in defense, cuts in domestic programs, and asking the wealthiest Americans and foreign corporations to pay their fair share of taxes, and investing and growing this economy.

Bush: I don’t see how you can grow the deficit down by raising people’s taxes. You see, I don’t think the American people are taxed too little. I think they’re taxed too much. I went for one tax increase, and when I make a mistake, I admit it. I said that wasn’t the right thing to do. Gov. Clinton’s program wants to tax more and spend more. . . .

Here’s some things that will help: Give us a balanced budget amendment. He always talks about Arkansas having a balanced budget and they do. But he has a balanced budget amendment. . . .

I’d like to have what 43 governors have, the line-item veto, so that the Congress can’t cut. And we’ve got a reckless spending Congress. Let the President have a shot at it by wiping out things that are pork barrel or something of that nature.

Perot: While we sit here tonight, we will go into debt an additional $50 million. . . . Now, it’s not the Republicans’ fault, of course, and it’s not the Democrats’ fault. What I’m looking for is, who did it? . . .

Now the facts are, we have to fix it. . . . I’m here tonight for these young people up there in the balcony from this college. When I was a young man, when I got out of the Navy, I had multiple job offers. Young people with high grades can’t get a job (today).

People--the 18- to 24-year-old high school graduates--10 years ago were making more than they are now. In other words, we were down to 18% of them, we’re making--of the 18- to 24-year-olds were making less than $12,000.

Now that’s up to 40%. And what’s happening in the meantime? The dollar’s gone through the floor. Now whose fault is that? Not the Democrats. Not the Republicans. Somewhere out there, there’s an extraterrestrial that’s doing this to us, I guess.

Commitment to Issues, Needs

Bush: Let’s talk about these issues, let’s talk about the programs. But in the presidency, a lot goes into it.

Caring goes into it--that’s not particularly specific. Strength goes into it--that’s not specific. Standing up against aggression--that’s not specific in terms of a program. This is what a President has to do. So in principle, well, I’ll take your point and think we ought to discuss child care or whatever else it is.

Perot: Just no hedges--no ifs, ands and buts--I’ll take the pledge, because I know the American people want to talk about issues and not tabloid journalism.

Now, just for the record, I don’t have any spin doctors. I don’t have any speech writers--it probably shows. I make those charts you see on television even. But you don’t have to wonder if it’s me talking. What you see is what you get. If you don’t like it, you’ve got two other choices, right?

Clinton: Well, wait a minute, I want to say just one thing now, Ross, in fairness. The ideas I expressed are mine. I’ve worked on these things for 12 years, and I am the only person up here who hasn’t been part of Washington in any way for the last 20 years.

So I don’t want the implication to be that somehow everything we say is just cooked up and put in our head by somebody else. I worked 12 years very hard as a governor on the real problems of real people. I’m just as sick as you are by having to wake up and figure out how to defend myself every day.

Gun Control

Clinton: I support the right to keep and bear arms. I live in a state where over half the adults have hunting or fishing licenses or both.

But I believe we have to have some way of checking handguns before they’re sold, to check the criminal history, the mental health history and the age of people who are buying them. Therefore, I support the Brady Bill, which would impose a national waiting period unless and until a state did what only Virginia has done now which is to automate its records. Once you automate your records, then you don’t have to have a waiting period. But at least you can check. . . .

Bush: I’ve been fighting for changes in the exclusionary rule so if an honest cop stops somebody and makes a technical mistake, the criminal doesn’t go away. I’ll probably get into a fight in this room with some, but I happen to think that we need stronger death penalties for those that kill police officers.

Virginia’s on the lead in this, as Gov. Clinton properly said, on this identification system for firearms. I am not for national registration of firearms. Some of the states that have the toughest anti-gun laws have the highest levels of crime. I am for the right, as the governor says, I’m a sportsman and I don’t think you ought to eliminate all kinds of weapons. . . .

Perot: On any program--and this includes crime--you’ll find we have all kinds of great plans lying around that never get enacted into law and implemented. I don’t care what it is--competitiveness, health care, crime, you name it.

The Brady Bill, I agree with--that it’s a timid step in the right direction, but it won’t fix it. . . . We have become so preoccupied with the rights of the criminal that we have forgotten the rights of the innocent. And in our country, we have evolved to a point where we have put millions of innocent people in jail because you go to the poor neighborhoods and they’ve put bars on their windows and bars on their doors and put themselves in jail to protect the things that they acquire legitimately.

New World Order

Bush: Since I became President, 43, 44 countries have gone democratic. No longer totalitarian, no longer living under a dictatorship or communist rule. . . . I think we will have a continuing responsibility as the only remaining superpower to stay involved. If we pull back in some isolation and say we don’t have to do our share or more than our share anymore, I believe you’re going to just ask for conflagration that we’ll get involved in in the future. . . .

You know, it’s so easy now to say, “Hey, cut out foreign aid.” We’ve got a problem at home. I think the United States has to still have the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of caring for others. . . .

Perot: Well, it’s cost-effective to help Russia succeed in its revolution. It’s pennies on the dollar compared to going back to the Cold War.

Russia’s still very unstable. They could go back to square one and worse. . . . With all this instability and breaking into republics and all the Middle Eastern countries going over there and shopping for weapons, we’ve got our work cut out for us. . . .

You can’t be a superpower unless you’re an economic superpower. If we’re not an economic superpower . . . we will no longer be a force for good throughout the world. . . .

Clinton: The end of the Cold War brings an incredible opportunity . . . and it also requires us to maintain some continuity, some bipartisan American commitment to certain principles. . . .

There are three things that I would like to say. Number one, we do have to maintain the world’s strongest defense. . . . Number two, if you don’t rebuild the economic strength of this country at home, we won’t be a superpower. . . . And number three . . . we need to use our unique position to support freedom, whether it’s in Haiti or China or any other place. . . .

Education

Bush: You can’t do it (change the education system) with the school bureaucracy controlling everything, and that’s why we have a new program. . . . It’s being worked now in 1,700 communities--bypassed Congress on this one, Ross--1,700 communities across the country. It’s called America 2000. And it literally says to the communities, “Reinvent the schools.” . . . We have got to get the power in the hands of the teachers, not the teachers’ union. And so our America 2000 program also says this. It says let’s give parents the choice of a public, private or public school--public, private or religious school--and it works.

Clinton: Under my program we’d provide matching funds to states to teach everybody with a job to read in the next five years, and give everybody with a job a chance to get a high school diploma. . . .

We would provide two-year apprenticeship programs to high school graduates who don’t go to college--in community colleges or on the job. . . . We’d open the doors to college education to high school graduates without regard to income. They could borrow the money and pay it back as a percentage of their income or with a couple of years of service to our nation here at home. . . .

Perot: I’ve got scars to show for being around education reform. And the first word you need to say in every city and state, and just draw a line in the sand: The public schools exist for the benefit of the children.

. . . anytime you’re spending $199 billion a year, somebody’s getting it. And the children get lost in the process. So that’s step one. . . . You need small schools, not big schools. At the little school, everybody’s somebody. Individualism is very important.