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Howard Dean on JobsFormer VT Governor; Former Democratic Candidate for President |
A: I favor increasing the federal minimum wage to $7 during my presidency.
DEAN: The way to support American farmers is to change the American farm bill so that big corporations don't get the majority of the money that goes out of the farm bill. We can support small family farms, and we should. But the money ought to go to the farmers, not the big corporations.
DEAN: "This president has lost 3 million jobs. 3 millions jobs lost is 3 million too many."
LIEBERMAN: "Three and half million people have lost their jobs."
FACTCHECK: In fact, as of November the job loss since President Bush took office in January 2001 stood at 2.26 million, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Even at the worst point of the job slump last August the job loss was 2.7 million-not 3 million or 3.5 million. Note: Many Democrats like to cite the loss in PRIVATE SECTOR jobs, not TOTAL employment. Focusing only on private-sector jobs ignores the tens of thousands of new government workers hired-including federal airport security workers-and makes the job slump sound worse than it was. But even the loss of PRIVATE-SECTOR jobs under Bush now stands at 2.7 million according to most recent statistics. It did go to 3.2 million at the worst of the slump, which is when many Dems started using the 3-million figure.
DEAN: I think that's true. 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 American workers who have lost their manufacturing jobs.
KERRY: 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. We need to encourage job creation and trade, but fair trade, and I've shown how that can happen.
DEAN: There are two things you can do. The first is do the things you're going to do for every community, invest in small businesses. Small businesses create more jobs than large businesses do, and they don't move their jobs offshore. That specifically helps in the African American and the Latino community because there's a disproportionate number of people who create small businesses and who work for small businesses in minority communities. Secondly, in my health insurance plan, which covers all Americans for about the same price the president plans to spend in Iraq over the next year, there's $9 billion of subsidy to small businesses to help health insurance.
DEAN: Our trade relations should rely on labor standards. It doesn't have to be American labor standards; it could be the International Labor Organization standards. We cannot continue to ship our jobs to countries where they get paid 50 cents an hour with no overtime, no labor protections and no right to organize.
LIEBERMAN: Dean, in The Washington Post, referred to American standards, not international standards.
DEAN: Either is fine with me.
LIEBERMAN: That's a reassuring change of position. I totally support the application of international labor standards to all of our bilateral trade agreements.
We also ought to invest in renewable energy because we ought to stop sending our foreign oil money to the Middle East where it's used to fund terrorism.