Complete Transcript: Democrats Participate in Calif. Debate
KING: Think about it.
(LAUGHTER)
KERRY: It's worth thinking about. At the right time, I might
think about it. But that would entitle my wife to be a president, so
it's a good idea.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: That's right.
What about you, Senator Edwards?
EDWARDS: I'm in the same place he is. It's not -- to be
honest with you, it's not something I've thought about, with respect to
our Constitution.
KING: Al?
SHARPTON: I would support Mrs. Kerry coming behind me in as
president.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
KING: Dennis, foreign-born president?
KUCINICH: You know, we are a nation of, beginning with Native
Americans, but also we're a nation of immigrants as well.
KING: We are.
KUCINICH: And I think that, being a nation of immigrants, we
should have an approach where someone who has lived here a long time and
has participated in this system should have the rights and aspirations
that any American would have.
I want to say something about this immigration issue, though. What the
immigration and the migrant workers who come up from Mexico -- what this
is all about is corporations seeking cheap labor, which, by the way, is
what NAFTA and the WTO are about.
And what we need to do...
(APPLAUSE)
... we need to make sure that any immigrant workers are protected by
the Fair Labor Standards Act so they can have at least the minimum wage,
time-and-a-half for overtime; that they're protected by the Occupational
Safety and Health Act, so they can have a safe workplace.
When you take away the incentives...
KING: We only have about...
KUCINICH: ... Larry, take away the incentives for cheap labor from
these corporations, and then you give people who are here some dignity,
and then they'll pay -- and then there's some taxes that will cover the
cost for the states.
(APPLAUSE)
KING: We have about 15 minutes left. We'll take a break and
be back with those minutes, cover some more bases, right after this. Don't
go away.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KERRY: I have to tell you that the only place in which I have
taken a different position is where George Bush is not implementing
something the way he said he would.
In Iraq, there was a right way to do it and a wrong way. He chose
the wrong way.
On No Child Left Behind, he abandoned his promise. He's not
funding it.
BROWNSTEIN: What was the right way?
KERRY: He's not funding it.
(LAUGHTER)
With respect to -- with respect -- trade, he doesn't enforce it.
Look, he has broken every -- this man is a walking contradiction. This
is the biggest say one thing, do another administration in the history of
our country. And he has broken almost every promise he made, about
Social Security, about children, about the environment, about deficits,
about creating jobs. And I think those are the real issues of this
campaign.
BROWNSTEIN: Can I ask you about one of those areas...
KERRY: Sure.
BROWNSTEIN: ... where you say he has not fulfilled his
obligation? No Child Left Behind. You voted for No Child Left
Behind in 2001, now you say he hasn't funded it enough. But you're
also saying the accountability provisions, the provisions that are
designed to see whether kids are advancing in reading and math...
KERRY: Right.
BROWNSTEIN: ... need to be changed as well.
BROWNSTEIN: Right now we measure schools by whether they improve
student performance in reading and math.
KERRY: Correct.
BROWNSTEIN: You say now they should also be judged by things like
teacher attendance, student attendance. Isn't the point of
accountability to measure not these inputs, but the output, whether
students are actually learning?
KERRY: Absolutely. The most important...
(CROSSTALK)
BROWNSTEIN: So why change it?
KERRY: ... is the result.
Because what's happening under the Bush administration is that they are
disrespecting teachers across the country, they're making it
punitive. The way they're applying the adequate yearly progress
standard, it's being done in such a broad, sweeping, uniform way, that you
can have a few kids who enter the school and may have language
difficulties that year of entry, and they could drag the whole school into
a status of failure as a result, which negates all the good efforts of
every teacher there.
It's so arbitrary, Ron, that it's destroying morale of the school
systems of our country.
Now, I'm for...
(APPLAUSE)
I fought to help pass it. I want standards. I want
accountability. But you cannot do it without the resources, and you
also can't do it in a way where you turn schools into testing factories
that are pushing social studies aside, and everybody's focused on being on
page 260 on day 53, and that's the wrong way to teach.
BROWNSTEIN: Do you agree, or is he watering it down?
EDWARDS: Well, I think, first of all, there are multiple problems
with No Child Left Behind. Let me go through them quickly.
KING: You voted for it, too, though?
EDWARDS: I did vote for it. Both of us voted for it. And
I think Dennis may have voted for it.
KUCINICH: I voted for it, as well.
SHARPTON: I was against it, by the way.
(LAUGHTER)
EDWARDS: I think the problem, if we can just sort of pinpoint the
most serious problem with No Child Left Behind, is not just the
accountability provisions. I also believe in accountability. We
need accountability in order to improve our public schools.
EDWARDS: But the problem is when they find the school that is
struggling, instead of doing the things that -- this thing is supposed to
be patterned on North Carolina, at least in part. Instead of doing
the things we did in North Carolina, which is to bring expertise,
resources to the school, to improve the quality of the school that's
struggling, that's not what's happening with No Child Left Behind.
And if I can just step away...
BROWNSTEIN: Well, when a school is struggling, they give the
parents the option to transfer their kids to another public school. They
give them afterschool tutoring. How are parents worse off if you
identify this school as struggling?
EDWARDS: Well, what about the -- but Ron, what about the other
kids in the school? If you'll let me finish.
BROWNSTEIN: Sure.
EDWARDS: If we can step away from this, we've spent so much time
tonight talking about what George Bush is doing wrong. And George
Bush -- this No Child Left Behind clearly has to be changed. It's not
being funded. I believe that.
But what about our alternative vision for America? What about what
we believe needs to be done about public education?
I mean, Al referred to this earlier. I think we not only have two
Americas because of the people who are doing very well financially and the
rest of America, I think we've got two public school systems in this
country. We've got one for the most affluent communities and one for
everybody else. It's wrong.
(APPLAUSE)
And the answer to this is not to just stop what George Bush is doing
and not to use the same old, tired Washington solutions.
EDWARDS: The answer is, in my judgment, to give incentive pay to
our best teachers to get them to teach in schools in less affluent areas,
to give scholarships to young people who are willing to do the same thing,
to seriously strengthen and expand our earlier childhood programs so that
they will go in much younger than 4 years of age, which is what Head Start
is aimed at. Doing the same thing with our afterschool and making
afterschool available.
And the one thing we haven't talked about tonight are the hundreds of
thousands of young people who want to go to college, they're qualified to
go, and they're not going because they can't pay for it. We ought to
let every young person in America...
(APPLAUSE)
... who wants to go to college and are willing to work there have their
first year of tuition...
(APPLAUSE)
KING: Al?
SHARPTON: I think we also have to deal with the issue of college
debt forgiveness for many that did go, that find themselves a decade later
trying to pay their way out.
I think that this is again why we need to have a convention where we're
strong. We keep hearing, "I'm against what Bush did, but I voted for
it."
(LAUGHTER)
And I think that is what has hurt our party, is that we switch and
bait. We vote here, but it's wrong there.
We need to unequivocally say where we want to bring America. We
want to save public schools, we want to give teachers pay, we want to give
people incentives to become teachers.
We need to talk about more of an urban agenda tonight. We're
dealing on Super Tuesday with urban areas where we have not really dealt
with in these early primaries.
What's going on with our child care? What is going on with foster
care?
(APPLAUSE)
What is going on with afterschool programs?
What is going on with police conduct? We've had problems in Ohio,
in Cincinnati, in LA, Donovan Jackson, Timothy Stansbury in New
York.
SHARPTON: I want to know our positions on what we're going to do
in the urban centers.
That's why I'm going to be in Boston with delegates, because I don't
want people just telling me who looks nice. I want us to have an
America that treats everybody right.
(APPLAUSE)
KUCINICH: I think we can -- we're coming close to a consensus
here. And the proposal that I introduced into the Congress is
something that I would hope that we could all agree on, and that is we can
close the achievement gaps by having a universal kindergarten program for
children ages 3, 4 and 5, where they can learn reading skills, social and
education skills, and have a nutrition component. That would be funded by
a 15 percent reduction in that bloated Pentagon budget.
Secondly, we can achieve...
(APPLAUSE)
We can achieve, John Edwards, universal college education for all,
fully paid at all public colleges and universities, by taking the Bush tax
cuts that are going to people in the top brackets and put that right into
a fund so our young people can go to college tuition- free.
This is how...
(APPLAUSE)
This is how, Larry, this is how we address the issues of poverty,
because in each case we lift people out of poverty by giving them a chance
to have day care covered. We lift people out of poverty by giving
them the opportunity to go to college tuition-free.
KING: We're running close on time. Do you want to add
something quickly...
(APPLAUSE)
CLAYTON: This is all well and good. But everything you guys
are talking about costs a lot of money.
KUCINICH: I just said how you pay for it.
CLAYTON: Where are you going to get it?
KUCINICH: Janet, I just said...
SHARPTON: The bloated Pentagon budget, canceling Bush's tax cuts,
dealing with re-regulating big business, where you have trillions of
dollars lost with offshore corporations paying no taxes. All you have to
do is have a system where the rich are not given a bye and the poor have
to pay all the taxes.
(APPLAUSE)
CLAYTON: We're in a war that's expensive. How are you going
to pay for it?
KING: One at a time. Quick.
EDWARDS: The way to pay for it is to stop Bush's tax cuts for
people who make over $200,000 a year. We cannot raise taxes on the
middle class and people who are struggling every single day. That's a
huge mistake.
CLAYTON: That's not nearly enough.
EDWARDS: That alone is not enough. Let me finish.
Second thing is we need to raise the capital gains rate for people who
make over $300,000 a year. The very idea that in our country, people
who make their money from investments are paying a lower tax rate than
people who work for a living is wrong, and we need to put a stop to it.
(APPLAUSE)
And that's what Bush is for.
And then we also need -- and I'll let you speak -- they also need to
close some corporate loopholes.
KING: Only got two minutes here.
KERRY: Under no circumstances should we allow George Bush or
others to pay for his tax cut by cutting Social Security benefits. We
don't need to do that. That is not fair.
(APPLAUSE)
And there are other alternatives, if you need to try to do
something.
But here's what's important. If you look at the closing of those
loopholes, and you look at the rollback of the tax cut, you can afford the
health care plan I've laid out, the education plan.
And there's one other piece.
KERRY: I want to excite national service again in our country. And
I think we can take young people...
(APPLAUSE)
... we can take young people who graduate from high school, and if they
will serve in their communities locally, helping other kids -- helping
kids who are at risk -- tutoring, mentoring -- helping seniors who are
shut-in -- if they will do that, we're going to pay for their full
in-state four-year college public education.
(APPLAUSE)
That's something we can achieve in this country.
BROWNSTEIN: Can I ask sort of a summary question for the two of
you? As you've listened to the differences between each other tonight
and through these dozen or so earlier debates, have you heard anything
that either one has said that would make it impossible for you to run
together as a ticket if it came to that?
(LAUGHTER)
Do you have any fundamental, philosophical objection...
KING: Would you run with John Kerry?
BROWNSTEIN: ... that would make it impossible for you to run
together in either order?
EDWARDS: I think an Edwards-Kerry ticket would be powerful.
(LAUGHTER)
And that's the ticket that I think we should have.
(APPLAUSE)
KING: Wait a minute.
BROWNSTEIN: Senator Kerry? Senator Kerry?
KING: All right, hold it. Are you saying -- hold it -- are
you saying now that if you get this nomination, you will ask him to join
you?
(LAUGHTER)
EDWARDS: He certainly should be considered. He's a very, very
good friend.
(LAUGHTER)
BROWNSTEIN: And?
KING: And where does Edwards stand in your thinking?
KERRY: I want...
KING: You have to be thinking about him. If you say you're
not thinking about it, you're kidding me.
KERRY: I want to thank him for the consideration. I
appreciate it.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Is he on your list? Is he on your list?
KERRY: I don't have a list. I'm running...
KING: You don't have a list?
KERRY: I'm running for the nomination.
BROWNSTEIN: But do you see any view that would make it impossible?
KERRY: I take nothing for granted in this effort. I'm
campaigning in every state. I'm working as hard as I can.
And when I win the nomination, if I do, then I'll sit down and think
about who I ought to run with.
SHARPTON: And that's why we all (inaudible) delegates, so
whoever's there, we're going to have influence on whatever list.
(LAUGHTER)
(APPLAUSE)
CLAYTON: So, Senator Kerry, I have a question for you, then. What
quality -- and his hair and smile don't count -- what quality does Senator
Edwards possess...
(LAUGHTER)
... that you wish you had...
SHARPTON: I thought you were talking about my hair and smile.
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Thirty seconds. What quality does he have you'd like?
KERRY: I think he's a great communicator. He's a charming
guy. I like him very much. He's a good friend of mine.
CLAYTON: Are you saying that's something you don't have?
KERRY: What?
KING: Charming.
CLAYTON: Is that a quality you don't have?
KERRY: I haven't thought about what quality he has that I would
like, but I do admire him. I respect him. And he's run a
terrific campaign.
KING: And, Al, do you expect to speak at the convention?
SHARPTON: I expect to accept my nomination...
(LAUGHTER)
KING: Thank you all very much.
Senator John Kerry, Senator John Edwards, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and
Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Ron Brownstein and Janet Clayton. I'm
Larry King.
And if you joined us late, this will repeated tonight at midnight
Eastern, 9 Pacific. You can see the whole debate repeated tonight at
midnight Eastern, 9 Pacific. And following us will be a special
edition of "NewsNight," recapping the debate.
Thanks for joining us from Southern Cal. Good night.
(APPLAUSE)
END
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