Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry addressed a conference of minority journalists in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, August 5. Here is a transcript.
SEN. JOHN F. KERRY: Good morning. Thank you very much.
I was backstage watching, and I knew this organization was growing, but I was stunned to watch President Sotomayor grow right before our eyes.
(LAUGHTER)
It's wonderful, truly wonderful, to be here with you this morning. Thank you for the privilege of letting me come here.
I've actually -- I'm grateful to you because I've been bouncing around on a bus for several days, and you got me off the bus for a few hours. I'm glad to be here.
And I want to try to leave as much time as I can for questions. I think that's, perhaps, the most important part of this exchange and this sharing.
I don't know how many of you noticed it, but the television reports that three banks were robbed in Davenport, Iowa, while we were there yesterday.
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I just want to assure you that both President Bush and I have very firm alibis.
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And, as you know, I'm going back to Saint Louis later today to get on a train, so half of my trip is on a bus, half of my trip is on a train. That's what we in politics call fair and balanced, ladies and gentlemen.
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Thank you, President Sotomayor, for a gracious introduction.
As you know, right after our convention, John Edwards and I set off on a journey to meet face to face with people all across our country and to share our plan, a specific plan, for a stronger America at home and a more respected America in the world.
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But more importantly, we wanted to go out and listen to what people have to say to us. And today, I am honored to take a detour from our westward journey to come back east, because I want to share with you my own views about our country and our future, but I also want to hear your ideas, which will be expressed through the questions asked. And hopefully we'll even have a chance to chat a little before I leave.
As Americans, we are living in a time that has been transformed by 9/11, but we have to keep it in its perspective and treat it properly. Ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and repeated increases in the threat levels are constant reminders that our soldiers and our homeland are still in harm's way. As journalists, you're all operating in that new world.
But I also believe that, new as it may be, there are enduring principles that apply here. We won't win this struggle by hiding or ignoring the facts. You have a critical part to play, not as partisans, but as truth-tellers.
Because the key to victory in the war on terror is not just the power of our arms, but the power of our ideals, our principles, the power of our values that we need to transfer across the world.
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The information, the commentary, the debate that you bring to the eyes and ears of America and to the world are critical to an informed public making the right decisions and critical to correcting the wrong ones.
We're in this fight because we are a democracy, and we have to win it as a democracy. And one of the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of our democracy is and always will be and always has been, going back to the founding fathers, the freedom of the press.
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You have another great power and a privilege in this decisive time. As Americans prepare to decide the direction of our free society, not just for the next four years but perhaps for decades to come, you will report and referee the arena of a great national campaign.
You know the questions that people are asking because you hear them every single day: Who has the right plan to win the war on terror and make America safe? Who has a real plan for a stronger America that will create good-paying jobs? Who has a realistic plan to hold down the cost of health care and open up access to health care to all Americans?
Who is being straightforward about taxes, about the need to cut taxes for the middle class and roll back an unaffordable, unwise tax cut for individuals who make over $200,000 a year so that we can invest...
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... in education and health care and cut the deficit in half in four years?
And, above all, who is truly committed to bridging the divides in this country that continue to separate, sometimes willfully, intentionally and politically, that continue to separate race from race, group from group and region from region?
Some people, as I said the other day, may see America as red states and blue states. I believe we need leadership that sees America as one country -- red, white and blue, period.
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These are the questions that are important to Americans, and they're important to communities of color and to every part of our nation. As the motto of Frederick Douglass's North Star newspaper proclaimed in 1848, "Right is of no sex. Truth is of no color. God is the father of us all, and we are all brethren."
We're really going -- John Edwards and I are determined that we are really going to unite the country. We're going to put in place the policies that will bring us together and move America forward. I will be a president who listens to and meets with the Civil Rights Conference of the United States, I will meet with the Congressional Black Caucus, meet with the Hispanic Caucus, reach out to the people of this country and bring them to the table, the American table.
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We are being told this week, again and again, that we've turned a corner. We're being told to look at the results. Ladies and gentlemen, I agree. Let's look at the record.
Have we turned the corner when 44 million Americans, 4 million more than four years ago, don't even have basic health coverage in America?
Have we turned the corner when we've lost nearly 1.8 million private-sector jobs?
Have we turned the corner when we're told that outsourcing jobs is good for America and the jobs that are taking their place pay $9,000 less, on average, than the jobs that have been lost?
My friends, just saying that you've turned the corner doesn't make it so; just like just saying there are weapons of mass destruction...
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... doesn't make it so; just saying you can fight a war on the cheap doesn't make it so; just saying "Mission accomplished" doesn't make it so.
Slogans don't matter to Americans, not to the Americans I'm meeting out in the streets of our country. Results matter. And results are what make a difference in the lives of people.
John Edwards and I and all of you here, we all believe in America. We're all Americans. And we believe that America can do better.
Our plans for America embrace all Americans.
Now, I'm also aware -- how could you live in America and not be aware -- of the special challenges facing people of color. Fifty years after Brown v. Board of Education, in too many painful ways, America is still a house divided.
Too many Americans continue to be separate and unequal in health status, educational status, living standards, access to capital, schools, all of the things that make a difference. And despite all the legal gains -- and that journey isn't finished either -- America cannot be fully America when millions still face barriers to the ability to live up to their God-given potential.
How, for example, can we accept a situation where 50 percent of African-American men in New York City are without a job? How can we accept the fact that at some cities in America, 40 percent of Hispanic kids are dropping out of school? How can we accept the fact that one out of five Asian-Americans attempting to buy or rent a home faces discrimination?
This is unworthy of a nation that values equality, and we have to change it.
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I believe with all my heart that America can do better and that we will. And the best way to lift up those who've been left out is to honor the united values that we share, show the true face of America: faith, family, hard work, responsibility, opportunity for all.
Those are the things that the Americans that I meet who are out there playing by the rules, struggling, getting up every day, taking care of their kids, trying to get ahead, some of them working two or three jobs and still not quite able to grab ahold of the brass ring.
Those are the things that we have to do so that every child, every parent, every worker has an equal shot at living up to their God-given potential. That is the heart and soul of my plan for a stronger America, my friends.
Now, we're not just talking about it. The details of that plan were just released two days ago in book form, that John Edwards and I have put together. The book is detailed and clear. I hope everything about it is straightforward. I know the title is. It's simply called, "Our Plan for America: Stronger at Home, Respected in the World." And you can download the entire volume at johnkerry.com.
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Now, I'm not going to turn this into a John Kerry book-reading. But let me highlight some of this plan, if I may.
The plan has three basic parts. The first part focuses on security.
I will fight this war on terror with the lessons I learned in war. I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president of the United States.
I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history.
I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists, wherever they may be, before they get us.
To strengthen our homeland security, we're going to do what we should've been doing for the last three years: protecting our ports, securing our chemical and nuclear power plants, and supporting our police officers, our firefighters and our EMTs.
Let me tell you something. Color-coded warnings aren't enough if we continue to let 95 percent of container ships come into our ports without ever being physically inspected.
The second part of the book focuses on expanding economic opportunity. It offers a real plan to keep and create good-paying jobs in America, to end tax breaks that reward companies for shipping American jobs overseas, to revitalize manufacturing and to encourage investment in the new industries of the future.
That's what we did in the 1990s. Don't forget it. Don't forget it.
After years of talk about deficits and deficit reduction and line-item vetoes and constitutional amendments, without one vote from the other side, we passed the Deficit Reduction Act. We had the lowest inflation, the lowest unemployment. We not only balanced the budget, we paid down the debt for two years in a row. And we created 23 million news jobs, and every sector of American society was lifted up in its income.
That's why John Edwards and I intend to restore fiscal discipline, not only by rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, but by closing tax loopholes that are nothing more than corporate welfare, and by making government live by the same rules that most families in America try to live by: pay as you go. We will restore that to the American political system.
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Third, our plan focuses on strengthening families.
John and I don't want working families to just get by. We want them to get ahead. That's why 98 percent of Americans will pay lower taxes under our plan, with additional tax breaks to the middle class and those struggling to get into the middle class to help them cover health care, child care and college.
In the past week, four years into a presidency, our opponents haven't offered a plan of their own or a defense, a real defense of their record. Instead, after four long years, what we've been given is a new slogan.
In the past week, four years into a presidency, we've suddenly been told, again and again, that America has turned the corner.
Well, you know, the last president who used that slogan, who told us that prosperity was just around the corner, was Herbert Hoover during the Great Depression.
Now, we've been called pessimists, we've been called pessimists, for pointing out the facts and being honest about the struggles of hardworking families in America.
Here is my answer to that: There is nothing more pessimistic than saying that America can't do better than we are doing today.
You know and I know that just saying that you're turning the corner on the war on terror, on jobs and opportunity, on building one America, doesn't make it so.
We've got a lot of work to do, folks. We've got a lot of work to do. And we need to bring everybody to the table in order to do it.
The vision and values that John Edwards and I have for our country, for our plan for America, can actually bring our country together again. We can build stronger communities. We can secure equality and strengthen opportunity. We can demand and support responsibility from everybody.
For us, these values are not just words. They're about results. They're about the causes that we champion and the people that we fight for.
(SPEAKING IN SPANISH)
Values are more than just words.
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They're about good jobs. They're about our families. They're about schools for our children that aren't separate and unequal. They're about good prescription drug coverage for all of our seniors. And they are about respecting our parents and Social Security and Medicare and bringing a nation together, not splitting it apart.
John Edwards and I have a record to stand on, and we have a real agenda to make America stronger.
Let me tell you what values mean to me and John Edwards. Values mean having an opportunity agenda for America. It means bringing capital, small-business capital, small-business opportunities, micro- lending, other kinds of loans.
Aida Alvarez, who I worked with when she was in the Clinton administration at the Small Business and I was chairman of Small Business, can tell you -- and she's here; she'll be able to share with you the kinds of things that we can do to put capital into the hands of people that the banks say no to, to put capital into communities that people somehow look at and think, "Oh, we're not going to be paid back."
We can bring this opportunity, rather than cut the amount of lending that's taking place, especially in our central cities and in the surrounding metropolitan areas.
Values mean funding for homeland security and port security so that the people in our metropolitan areas are able to move around freely and safely with a sense of security, with good jobs and live without fear.
Creating opportunity also means creating good-paying jobs. That means investing in science and technology.
Front page of the New York Times, I think two months ago, big story: United States of America losing its lead in graduate students, people graduating with graduate degrees in science, in biology, in technology, in engineering -- the very areas that we need to be able to create the jobs for the future.
More than a million Americans who were working three years ago have lost their jobs. African-American unemployment is now at 10 percent, double the rate for whites. And the new jobs that are being created in America pay you less than the jobs that they're shipping overseas.
John and I have a plan to create and keep good-paying jobs right here at home.
And when I am president, no longer will our tax code continue to require American workers to subsidize the loss of their own jobs. That's going to stop.
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We're going to close the tax loopholes that actually pay companies to move jobs overseas. We're going to reward companies that create the jobs here, with a manufacturing incentive, with a science and technology and research and development incentive.
And we're going to bring -- this is important -- we're going to bring fundamental fairness back to the American workplace, a place where today companies, unfortunately, some of them, despite great CEOs around the nation, hire people to stop people from even organizing to be able to try to do better in their lives. That's not the American way.
Values also mean giving all our children a first-rate education.
Today, 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, we still see two school systems in America, one for the well-off and one for the left-out. Too many children of color are being told they have to lift themselves up in schools that are literally falling down.
And for us, values means opening those doors of opportunity. It means following through on the promises of education.
You can't reform education in America without the resources to do it, so teachers have a class size where they could actually teach and kids have after-school programs where they can actually be safe and learn. And I believe that's critical.
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I used to be a prosecutor, my friends, and I used to talk to those kids who were in trouble, 14 and 15, 16 years old. There wasn't a kid I met in the system, not one, who didn't look at me and tell me the story of neglect or abuse. They were there in the system because adults weren't there sufficiently in their lives.
How do you break that cycle? How do you stop running a farm system for prisons? I'll tell you how: with leadership, with priorities, with values that know where you have to invest.
And I am determined, as president, that we're going to stop being content in this country to spend $50,000 a year to house a young person in prison for the rest of their life when we should be investing $10,000 a year in Head Start, Early Head Start, Smart Start, early childhood education, and give kids the best possible start in life. That's a clear value.
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I'll tell you something else values tell me -- and this is what my parents taught me: Values mean making health care affordable and accessible for all Americans.
In the last four years, 4 million of our fellow citizens have lost their health insurance. Forty-four million Americans don't even have it.
Everywhere I go, people look at me with tears in their eyes, "Senator, my husband lost his job. I've got breast cancer. I have to go to chemotherapy. Every day I go to work even though I feel sick and I want to crawl up in a corner and feel like I'm going to die because I'm terrified of losing my health insurance."
The truth is that nearly 60 percent of Hispanics and 43 percent of African-Americans went without health coverage for all or part of the last two years. And today, people of color are significantly more likely to suffer or die from diseases like cancer or AIDS and diabetes. And the life expectancy for Native Americans is 17 years shorter than it is for other Americans, largely because of poor health.
America can do better than that, and we will.
When I'm in the White House...
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When I am in the White House, we are going to stop being the only industrial nation on the face of this earth that doesn't understand health care is not a privilege for the wealthy or the connected or the elected, it is a right for all Americans. And we're going to make it affordable and accessible.
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I pledge to you, on day one that I am permitted to send a bill to Congress, day one of my presidency, I'm sending health care -- a bill to make health care affordable and accessible to all Americans.
We have a plan to cut the waste and greed. We can lower the premiums by $1,000 per family.
And it also means that we will make it easier for businesses to compete in the world, because $1,200 to $1,700 of every automobile made in America is just health care. And if we can lower that cost by $1,000, we become more competitive in the world.
I also believe that it means affirming or reaffirming the truth, the bringing together of America means reaffirming the truth that America is now and always has been a nation of immigrants.
Within the first 100 days of my administration, I will send Congress a reform bill that lets immigrants earn legalization and encourages family reunification while protecting our borders in ways that are fairer and more effective.
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As president, I will also restore respect for tribal sovereignty throughout the executive branch, and I will reopen the doors of the White House itself to the first Americans.
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We understand the struggles of our Native American brothers and sisters. And in addition to the health-care crisis facing tribes, we also know that poverty is rising in America. And nowhere is it worse than on our reservations.
To ensure that your voice is heard on these and other vital issues, I will appoint Native Americans to key positions in the White House and throughout my administration.
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And I will do my part to bring more diversity into the media.
Right now, people of color make up 32 percent of the nation's population but only 13 percent of daily newspaper staffs.
And people of color represent only a tiny fraction of the numbers of editors, anchors and executives at our nation's premiere news organizations. Right now, only 4.2 percent of radio stations and 1.5 percent of television stations are owned by minorities.
I look around at all the talent in this room and I say to the management of these organizations, "We can do better, and we should."
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As president, I will expand opportunities for people in the media by appointing FCC commissioners committed to enforcing equal employment and ensuring that small, minority-owned broadcasters are not consolidated into extinction.
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Thirty-nine years ago tomorrow, when Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law, he said, quote, "Every American citizen must have an equal right to vote. Yet, the harsh fact is that in many places in this country, men and women are kept from voting simply because they are Negroes," closed quotes.
My friends, the harsh fact now is that in the last election, more than 1 million African-Americans were disenfranchised in one of the most tainted elections in our history. We can do better, and we have to.
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We have to see to it that in November, every vote counts and every vote is counted.
And along with shared opportunity, we have to also demand shared responsibility. All of us, from the president in the White House to the people in their homes and schools and workplaces, have to be responsible for our actions. And we owe it to all the people who follow the law to hold accountable those who don't.
That begins with having a president who tells the truth to the American people.
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It means staying vigilant to ensure that every American company plays by the rules and does right by its workers and customers.
And it means giving young people alternatives to gangs and gang violence by first sending them a strong message that the violence must stop, and if it doesn't, police and prosecutors will hold them accountable, period.
But second, by sending young people a strong, clear message that there is another path. And if they're willing to take that path, we are going to be there with them, with job training, with job opportunities, with drug treatment, with after-school programs, with the things that adults should do for children in a civilized society.
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Shared responsibility, shared opportunity -- that's how we're really going to make America stronger and bring real hope and real help and real opportunity to Americans.
So I want to thank you for doing your part every single day. No one in public life doesn't have some complaint at some time about the fourth estate. But your persistent vigilance makes us all better, and it makes you the watch men and women on the walls of liberty.
I believe this is the most important election of our lifetime. Everything is at stake: jobs, health care, children, America's role in the world, the character of our country.
Your role in the next months is as important as at any point in our shared history. Your questioning, your demands for honest answers, your reporting on our progress, your holding us accountable for our promises are indispensable as a force in moving America forward.
Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to measure me by my results, not just my rhetoric, by my actions, not just by my words. Results do matter.
And let's not forget as a model for that the role that so many of your brothers and sisters in the media have played in exposing historic wrongs, lifting up communities of color and building one America.
Where would we be today if it weren't for the stirring images of the civil rights movement that were captured for Life magazine by the camera of Gordon Parks or the searing wartime photojournalism of Nick Ut?
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Where would we be without the pioneering word pictures that were painted by Ruben Salazar for El Paso Herald Post and Los Angeles Times?
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Where would we be without Carole Simpson, Frank Del Oma (ph), Bernard Shaw, Ed Bradley or Max Robinson?
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Where would we be without the famed Native American historian and journalist Arthur Caswell Parker, founder, American Indian magazine, or Ignacio Lozano, founder of La Opinion?
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Where would we be today with UNITY 2004 and all of you?
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So, above all, today...
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... I thank you for all that you have done, but I thank you for all that you will do to help us become an America we were truly meant to be, the America whose best days are yet to come.
Thank you. God bless you all.
And I'm happy to answer your questions.
Thank you.
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My pleasure to answer questions. I don't know what the order is, but I'm yours.
QUESTION: Thank you, Senator Kerry, for that message.
We're pleased that you've agreed to stick around and answer some questions, so we'll go right to them.
The entertainer Bill Cosby recently caused quite a stir when he commented on some of the perpetual problems plaguing the low-income African-American population. He suggested that black people should stop blaming others and, instead, take responsibility for their economic status, their high rate of incarceration and their educational shortcomings.
Who do you think is most responsible for these dire conditions and for fixing them, government or the people who live in these communities? And why?
KERRY: I think all of us are responsible, all of us.
I understand exactly where Bill is coming from in his comment. It may be excessively exclusive in the breadth of it, in the sense that it sort of targets just the responsibility side, but that's an important side.
But let's be honest with each other, ladies and gentlemen. If you have a school system that depends on the property tax, and you have a community that doesn't have any property tax base, and it's dependent on the largess of either state or federal assistance, but the great ethic of the politics of our nation is no tax -- no available resources because it's more important to give a tax cut to people earning more than $200,000 a year, we got a problem. And that is exactly the problem that we face today.
KERRY: I've been in those schools, and so have many of you. I remember going into the Jeremiah Burke School in Boston, which is largely African-American, some Hispanic, but almost all people of color.
And I was shocked when I went into that school. It was a number of years ago, now. But there weren't enough lockers. The library was half open. The kids had a tiny little gymnasium for all of this incredible youthful energy to work its way out.
And the teachers didn't have materials to put in front of the kids. I talked to the teachers and the teachers tell me, "Senator, we reach into our pocket, and we spend $1,500, $2,000 from our meager pay just to put materials in front of these kids." That's wrong.
And those school doors would shut at 1:30 and 2 in the afternoon because they couldn't pay the custodians to be able to keep the doors open so the kids had a place to be and to be safe.
And then when they go out in the streets, how many of them get the access to a boys' club or girls' club or a YMCA or YWCA or take part in Big Brother or Big Sister or YouthBuild or AmeriCorps or any of the other efforts? Because all of those are struggling for resources.
Let me tell you a story about responsibility -- and I'll tell you quickly. In 1992 I was asked to go to Harlem to visit a building on 118th Street, a brownstone building. And I went to visit it, and there were 15 kids in that building. Those 15 kids were working, rehabilitating the building, bringing it back from a crackhouse to a home, restoring the community.
Every one of those kids came out of an at-risk program, every one of those kids came out of a gang, every one of those kids came out of a diversion from the court system or off the street, alone, drop-out.
And they said to me, "Senator, this is the first time in my life I've had to be responsible for another kid. This is the first for myself. This is the first time I have to get in the morning and report for duty and be, sort of, working cooperatively with people. This saved my life."
I was so impressed by the conversations I had with those kids -- I was then chairman of the Housing Committee -- I went back to Washington here, and I just wrote it into the law.
KERRY: And I'm proud to tell you that today, ladies and gentlemen, it's in 173 cities, it's in 43 states. There are 25,000 graduates who are now full citizens in America, not inmates of a prison. It's called YouthBuild, and it works.
But, tragically, every time I've tried to raise the $65 million to $100 million, $120 million, to get more kids into it, I'm told we don't have the money.
But we have the money for a great big tax rate for the biggest companies in America. We have the money for a big tax cut, over $1 trillion too, for those who get dividends from their stocks and for the largest earners in America.
My friends, Bill Cosby's right, people in the community have to accept responsibility, and we need to empower people, churches and parents and schools, to further that.
But we also need to do the things that we need to do as a civil society to empower those people, to have places for those kids, to make the world safe. It's all of us together.
And that's the kind of president that I intend to be.
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QUESTION: You talked this morning about bridging the divide in America and being inclusive. And yet there are some people of color who believe that the Democratic Party has taken them for granted, especially after the votes have been counted.
What would make the Democratic Party different under John Kerry, especially compared to Bill Clinton's eight years in office? And how will you walk the talk?
KERRY: Well, I've done it for 35 years.
From the moment I came back from Vietnam and I stood up, and when I testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971 about the war, I didn't just talk about the war, I talked about what was happening to minority servicepeople who had been drafted in huge numbers out of the barrios and out of the inner cities, who didn't have the power to make the choices of other people, and how they were coming back to a country that was still divided, where they didn't have full opportunity. I talked about racism in 1971.
In every office I've ever run -- district attorney, lieutenant governor and senator -- my staffs have reflected the face of America, and my administration will.
In every vote I have cast -- 100 percent NAACP rating last year -- I have voted to expand the rights, to enforce the rights, to be inclusive.
I worked with President Clinton to fix affirmative action so we didn't end it; we mended it. So there were a lot of questions about quota. I support affirmative action. I've practiced affirmative action.
I stood alone and fought to keep the minority-business set-asides in the Small Business Committee so that we could guarantee that we were trying to empower people and open the doors of opportunity. Today, those are being reduced. Those quotas aren't being met. Those goals aren't being met. The standards are being reduced. The lending is being cut.
I believe that what you need is somebody who record shows a demonstrated, persistent commitment to opening up those doors of opportunity.
I'm proud that my campaign has people like Bill Lynch and Alexis Herman and Aida Alvarez and Henry Cisneros and a host of others who are helping me to reach out to communities all across this country.
And we can always do better in America, but I'll tell you this: No one will ever have to twist my arm, ever, to know that you cannot possibly govern effectively if you don't meet with the Hispanic Caucus, the Black Caucus, the Civil Rights Conference...
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... and leadership, and bring people to the table to lead this country.
And that is exactly what I did in the Senate. It's exactly what I'll do as president.
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QUESTION: Speaking of defending our country, American Indian tribes are sovereign nations, yet currently tribes have to go through states or counties to access homeland security funds. Currently, there's legislation proposed to have funds go directly to tribes.
What is your position on that?
KERRY: I think some of the funds need to go directly to tribes. I think there are law enforcement, jurisdictional difficulties right now in the dealings with many of the tribal jurisdictions, and we need to work those through, particularly in the Southwest. I'm prepared to do that.
Some of the funds clearly ought to go directly. Some of them need to be used in coordination. And there are some coordinated efforts, but what we have to do, fundamentally, is a better job of coordinating, and that hasn't been taking place. So you've actually had resistance to mutual interest in border issues and others.
I think we have to recognize that the Native American community, which has not been recognized, has as much desire, has as much interest and is as prepared and is as capable and always has protected America with as much zeal as any other community, and we ought to trust it and provide the funding necessary as a separate jurisdiction where that coordination is not absolutely necessary.
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QUESTION: If there is a clear line in the minds of many of the voters who are straddling the fence right now, it is on the issue of terror.
The question is, how would you lead as a president in the age of terror?
Specifically, what would you have done if you had been caught in a Florida newsroom -- or, I'm sorry, a Florida classroom on September 11, 2001? Would you, given the power of hindsight, have taken the nation to war, as President Bush has said he would, given hindsight?
And lastly, what would you do to get the nation out of Iraq, specifically?
KERRY: Great question. And I appreciate...
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I'm going to take a minute on this question, because it's one of the most important questions facing the nation, obviously.
First of all, had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, "America is under attack," I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to...
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... and I would have attended to it.
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Secondly -- and this is important, ladies and gentlemen, because Americans want to know that the person they choose as president has all of the skills and the ability, all of the mental toughness, all of the gut instinct necessary to be a strong commander in chief. I'm asking you to trust our nation, our history, the world, your families in my hands, and I understand that. It's a big ask, and it's a tough judgment you have to make. But I believe, in this case, there is a very clear choice.
I come to the job of commander in chief with the rare, gratefully, but important experience of having fought in a war. And the war that I fought in was a war where we saw America lose its support for the war, where the soldiers came back having had to do what our soldiers are doing today, carry an M-16 in another country, try to tell the difference between friend and foe.
I know what it's like to go out at night on patrol and you don't know what's around the next corner.
I know what it's like to write home to your family and tell them, "Hey, everything's OK," even though in your gut you're scared stiff and you don't know if it is OK.
And I believe we need a commander in chief who understands the test before you send young people to war. You got to be able to look parents in the eyes if they lose their son or daughter and say to them, "I tried to do everything in my power to avoid this, but we had no choice as a nation, as a people, because of the challenge to our country, to our fundamental values from a threat that was real and imminent."
I believe in my heart of hearts and in my gut that this president fails that test in Iraq. And I know this because I, personally, and others were deeply involved in the effort with other countries to bring them to the table. I met with the Security Council of the United Nations in the week preceding the vote in the Senate.
I voted to hold Saddam Hussein accountable, because, had I been president, I would have wanted that authority, because that was the way to enforce the U.N. resolutions and be tough with the prospect of his development of weapons of mass destruction.
But the president said he would go to war as a last resort. The president said he would exhaust the remedies of the U.N. The president said he would build a legitimate international coalition.
And here we are, several years later, having made an end-run around the United Nations, alienated our allies, put our soldiers at greater risk than they needed to be, asked the American people to pay almost $200 billion, because we didn't have the patience, we didn't have the maturity to exhaust the remedies available to us and truly build that coalition and understand the nature of the threat.
My friends, I believe there is a firm conviction with which I approach defending our country. And that is that the United States of America, through all of our history, has set up a standard: The United States doesn't go to war because we want to; we only go to war because we have to. And that's the standard that I will apply to the presidency.
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Now, might we have wound up going to war with Saddam Hussein? You bet we might have -- after we exhausted those remedies and found that he wasn't complying and so on and so forth. But not in a way that provides -- you know, 90 percent of the casualties are American, and almost all of the cost.
And the American taxpayer, just think of that $200 billion for the schools, for health care, for the things that we could be doing in America. The choice, it seems to me, is clear.
Now, what do we do to get out of there? What do we do to achieve our goals legitimately? Well, let me tell you.
Is there anybody sitting here in this room who doesn't believe that every Arab country in fact has a real and legitimate interest in not having a failed Iraq, in not having a civil war on its borders? But they're not at the table.
Is there anybody here who believes that Europe, with its own Muslim populations and its own geopolitical issues, as well as its global responsibilities, doesn't have an interest in not having a failed Iraq and a civil war? But they're not really at the table.
And the fact that they're not, I believe, underscores dramatically the failure of diplomacy and statesmanship by this administration.
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.
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END
