So here's what I will do; it's what I've always wanted to do, it's what I've proposed for months: We need to have an international conference in which we put these global issues on the table.
We need to be prepared to have a high commissioner who is responsible for the management, decision-making and helps in the transformation so it's not an American transformation.
We need to have a sharing of the decision-making and the responsibility, and we need to have a sharing of the reconstruction so that other people actually have an interest in coming to the table.
And I believe that what America needs now more than anything is a new president with new credibility, with a fresh start for America, to bring people to the table and to leverage appropriately our global interests in standing up for success in Iraq and for having a shared responsibility about how we respond to terror.
The United States of America should never have allowed itself to be isolated by Islamic extremists. We should be isolating extreme Islam. And that means reaching out to moderate clerics and mullahs and imams and conducting a foreign policy not just dependent on our military might, but a foreign policy that's dependent on the power of American ideas and ideals and principles and values.
Working with other countries, my friends, in my administration will not be the sign of weakness it is for these people. It will be a sign of strength. And I will make America stronger.
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QUESTION: Senator, the Federal Communications Commission last year voted to allow media companies to further consolidate, allowing a single entity to gain greater control of television stations and newspapers in any given market.
QUESTION: The ruling, however, has been halted by a federal appeals court, which questioned the FCC's plan.
Critics complain that consolidation is concentrating too much power in one place, limiting diverse views and eliminating job opportunities. Media companies, however, argue that they need to operate in a free market with less regulations to compete and grow.
How do you propose to deal with this ongoing push for media consolidation?
KERRY: I'm against the ongoing push for media consolidation. I think it's contrary to...
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It's contrary to the stronger interests of the country.
I understand the world has changed with cable and Internet and the numbers of outlets that we have. But notwithstanding that, the concentration of power still remains, I think, a very significant issue.
I was in favor of the rollback. I voted against the expansion.
I've sat on that committee now for years; I'm familiar with all the issues. And as president, as I said, I will appoint people to the FCC, and I will pursue a policy that tries to have as diverse and broad an ownership as possible.
It is critical to who we are as a free people. It's critical to our democracy.
I mean, look, I don't know how many of you have seen "Outfoxed" or some of the other things that are going around. You can make your own judgments about it. I'm not going to stand here and give you a long critique here.
But I will say this, and I think most of you know it: that a lot of what is decided with respect to news and coverage -- look at the convention of the last week. I thought Barack Obama gave a brilliant speech.
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America missed it. America missed it, with the exception of cable outlets. Because broadcast decided to cover these certain hours, I had something like 30 million people watch, versus 7 million on a certain night.
I thought it was a very important evening, very important evening, when Ron Reagan talked about stem-cell research.
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My wife gave, I thought, a superb speech. These were moments that I think America ought to share.
If we're going to be a strong democracy, and if it's all driven by money, we're in trouble. I'm going to make sure we have diversity.
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QUESTION: Senator, you've said that one definition of patriotism is keeping faith with those men and women who have served America in a military uniform.
Many Filipinos fought on behalf of the United States during World War II, but after the Japanese invasion ended and the Philippines regained its independence, many of these Filipino veterans were denied benefits by the United States.
QUESTION: What will your administration do to keep the faith with those forgotten veterans? And do you support enactment and full funding of the Filipino Veterans Equity Act?
KERRY: Yes, I do.
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And I will -- I mean, this is something I've fought for for a long time. If I could just share with you, many people think of the veterans against the war back in the 1970s as mostly focused on the war. We were focused on the war, but believe it or not, we spent most of our time working for our fellow vets.
And out of our efforts came the extension of the G.I. Bill. For a lot of vets who went underground when they came home, because the country didn't welcome them home and they couldn't deal, and they lost their time to use their benefits. So we managed to extend it so people could get the benefit.
We created increases in the V.A. hospitals because they weren't getting the treatment they needed.
I personally wrote the Agent Orange legislation that we passed with Tom Daschle.
We extended the outreach centers. We created that. We were the first people to work with psychiatrists and with vets in the context of post-Vietnam stress syndrome, which now is being applied to vets of the Gulf War, vets of Iraqi Freedom. And we've opened whole doors of understanding about what happens to people.
I worked hard to keep faith on POW/MIA, so we got answers for families 20 years after they've lost their loved ones.
I have a 35 year record of fighting to keep faith with those who put themselves on the line.
Today, even as we're creating a new generation of veterans, folks, we've got 40,000 vets or so waiting months just to get their prescription drugs signed off on because they can't afford them. We've got 90,000 vets waiting to get into the V.A. We've got 400,000 vets who've been told, "Don't apply, because we don't have the money for you."
But once again, we've got the money for these great big tax cuts.
So I can guarantee you this is a fight that is a 35-year fight for me. And I will fight to make sure we do justice to those who fought with, fought for, wore the uniform of the United States of America in the interests of freedom and the defense of our country, and I will do that.
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QUESTION: Senator, the No Child Left Behind Act is supposed to improve education. Yet, because of the cultural bias in the testing, many of our native children are being left behind.
And also, what is the solution, and where is the money that was intended for it?
KERRY: Well, the money that was intended for No Child Left Behind is in your tax cut and in the war.
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It's $27 billion. We have a $27 billion deficit in what we should have for the full funding of No Child Left Behind.
Now, the president can come here, as he will tomorrow, and he can say to you, "We've increased funding for education." And it's true.
But that's not the test. That's like saying America is safer. But the test is, is America safe as we ought to be, given the options we had? And the test for education is, did we put the money into No Child Left Behind that was supposed to be there so they could do the job up to the standards that we required? The answer is profoundly no.
All across the country, there's a punitive system that's been put in place. And teachers are desperate. What they're doing is they're teaching to the English and math to the things that we test, but Social Studies are being pushed aside, other things, because teachers are terrified the whole system has been turned into this one test measurement.
And the result is, we're losing teachers. Almost 30 percent to 40 percent of the new teachers drop out of teaching very rapidly. We can't afford that in this country.
What I want to do -- and let me tell you something, I was part of the reform effort in schools. I helped to push No Child Left Behind. I want standards. I want measurements. I want to lift up our schools. You have to have accountability. And that was part of the theory.
But reform without resources is a waste of children's lives. And resources without reform is a waste of money. The theory was they would go hand in hand. They have not.
Here's what I'm going to do: When I roll back the high end of the tax cut, part of it, about $600 billion over 10 years, goes to the health-care plan we have to lower the cost of health care. Another part of it goes directly into the full funding of education, the funding of special-needs education, where the federal government has a mandate of 40 percent but local communities are only at 16 percent, so they're struggling. We are going to liberate our schools.
And finally, we're going to change three things: We're going to change the adequate yearly progress standard, so that a whole school doesn't get penalized because you have some demographic change in one particular class group in a year. We're not going to have a teacher who has taught out-of-field for 20 years be forced to go back and be recertified if people in the school say they're teaching brilliantly and they've been successful.
And we're going to have a measurement in the testing that tests -- because we have to test; we have to know kids are learning -- but also looks at the other factors by which you measure a child's progress. And we're going to reinstate into education the full measure of how you judge education in America.
And one final thing, I really would like to fight -- I don't know if the budget will let this happen in year one because of the deficit, but I am determined, determined, that the place where 90 percent of our children go to school, which is public schools, can once again become a place where we really give the full definition of education, which means restoring to those schools arts, music, dance, theater, science, the things that really lift us up as a society.
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MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you, Senator Kerry. We know you're on a tight schedule. Thank you very much for being here.
KERRY: Thank you all, and God bless. Thank you.
