Dan Quayle |
May 19, 1992
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Dan Quayle
Vice President (1989-1993); Senator, Indiana (1981-1988); Congressman, Indiana (1976-1980)
Answers to Written Questions from the Floor:
Q: How would you explain the fact that last week only 44 of the 154 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted in favor of President Bush's modest proposal for emergency loans and grants to help Los Angeles recover from the riots?
A: The explanation is very easy in the fact that the money that the Republicans in the House were voting against included only money and not the programs that the President suggested to reform urban America. The President and the administration are for both the funding that would go with FEMA and small business. But they're also for the programs that I mentioned, the Enterprise Programs, the HOPE programs, the empowerment programs, because we don't believe that just money alone is the answer. And what the Republicans were saying to their Democratic colleagues, "fine, two can play this game. Our priority is reform, the reform agenda. Your priority is money." The President says we need to have both. And today he met with the leaders in Congress to point out the importance of moving this agenda forward, but it takes more than just money and that's what the Republicans in Congress, in the House of Representatives, were saying.
Q: We are told that a space station will cost us $14 billion. Shouldn't we put off that expenditure and use that money to help our cities?
A: I don't think it's a choice of either/or. We need both. We need a bigger space exploration program. We need to reform cities, we need to help the cities, we will help the cities, but we've got to continue with the space program. Those achieved in space just last week with the space shuttle Endeavor was truly remarkable. I hope, once again, that it captured the imagination and the support of the American people for a bigger space program.
I can tell you that when I go into schools all over America, especially the elementary schools, one of the more interesting issues that I talk to them about - which gets a very positive reaction - is our space program. I talk to them about the need to study mathematics, study science, that we need more engineers, aerospace engineers. But look, the next frontier is space. We are pioneers at heart. Think of all the pioneers that came to California. The next frontier is space, and if we don't explore and develop our space opportunities, who will?
I just returned from Japan. They're very interested in our space program. If we don't do it, are we going to leave it to Japan? Do we leave it to the Europeans? I think it's in our interest to continue an aggressive space exploration program. We can reform the space program. We have a new administrator, Dan Goldin from the Los Angeles area, who is going to reform NASA. We have to have a balanced program of manned and unmanned missions, but we should not cut back on the space station. We should not cut back on our space program. I know that it's difficult from a political point of view because this is an investment in the future. And so often in the political world, people are only interested in investment today. This is tomorrow, but if we don't make adequate investments today, where are we going to be tomorrow? So it's not an either/or proposition. We need both.
Q: According to the news media, President Bush sided with you rather than the Environmental Protection Agency and decided upon a regulation for the Clean Air Act that does not require companies to notify the public of increased emissions and pollution. Would you comment on this?
A: Well, first I would say, don't always believe the news media. [Applause] Thank you very much. Keep going!
This issue that was reported in the media was a highly complex and technical issue. The idea that has been put out by the media is somehow this is going to compromise clean air standards and compromise preserving our environment. That's simply not the case. As a matter of fact, let us step back for a moment and see who's responsible for the clean air legislation.
President George Bush was the one who suggested the clean air legislation, got bipartisan support in the Congress and pushed it through, the most significant piece of environmental legislation in a generation. Now we have to impose regulations and the debate that took place was whether there should be a notice and a rather lengthy process when there was a diminimus increase in emissions by an entity (i.e., basically a corporation).
This does not mean that emissions are not going to have a permit. They're going to get a permit to have emissions and they have to get a permit. They have to get a permit every five years. This is a new law, and you all will enjoy the benefit of this new law - one, in preserving the environment and two, understanding how we're going to go about and comply with it. Now the latter is costly. The cost associated with the Clean Air Act legislation is anywhere from 20 to 25 billion dollars. A five-year requirement to get a permit is adequate, it is sufficient, and we will have a public hearing. If there is a diminimus insignificant increase during that time, notification yes, but you don't have to go back through that lengthy process. It is reasonable, it makes common sense, it is practical. And furthermore, I predict it is a more direct way to implement the clean air legislation, because if you have a lot of bureaucracy, a lot of complications, a lack of understanding of what the law is, there is going to be a reluctance on the enforcement of it. There's going to be a reluctance on the compliance of it and it will just make the EPA's job that much more difficult. So this is a good compromise that was worked out and the one that has far more consensus than some would lead you to believe.
Q: A just-released national presidential poll by Time magazine and CNN gave Ross Perot 33 percent, President Bush 28 percent, Bill Clinton 24 percent. What do you think accounts for the strong support for Ross Perot?
A: I thought that question might come up. Ross Perot is tapping into the frustration in Americans. I can identify with that frustration, the president identifies with it. The economy is not doing as well as we had hoped for. We're trying to change the economic environment, we have a job legislation that now has been pending on Capitol Hill for months, if not years. We've been unable to get our domestic agenda through, get it passed. So he is tapping into a sense of frustration that the country is headed in the wrong direction. The polls and public opinion certainly support that. I don't know what's going to happen in this presidential election as far as Ross Perot is concerned.
If history is any judge, third-party candidates normally rise in the polls early on and then it goes back to the traditional level of anywhere from 7 to 10 percent. That may happen to Bill Clinton this time. And so we might have the rather unusual circumstance that this fall our main opponent will be a gentleman from Texas who has done very well in the private sector and has a remarkable private-sector record, and I wish him well - in the private sector.
Q: Recent polls found that a majority of the people responding supported your proposals for Tort reform, including a cap on punitive damages and the limiting of contingency fees. But just last week, the United States Senate rejected legislation of this nature. Is this the end of the battle, or is there still life in your proposal?
A: There is life in our proposal. In all due respect, because I know that you support me on a lot of these reforms, but our legal system, friends, is simply out of control. We have to reform the legal system. When I was in Japan, I visited Keio University and had a roundtable discussion with a number of students. And as they got up to ask the question, they would identify what they were studying. Business, the environment, government, agriculture, you name it. I had about 15 questions, I guess, in the period of an hour, and not one student stood up and said, "I am studying to be a lawyer." So I tried to convince my Japanese friends upon departure that it would behoove them and that it would enhance their productivity in competing with the United States of America if they would produce more lawyers. And I don't know whether they bought it or not, but we are, unfortunately, the most litigious society in the world!
Our legal system costs the consumer $300 billion a year. We have counted 5 percent of the world's population and we have 70 percent of the world's lawyers. You know, it used to be "reach out and touch someone?' Now, it's "reach out and sue someone!" We have got to change the attitude. We cannot deny access to our legal system to those that need it. If you have a dispute, it ought to be resolved. That's why people should sue, if they have a dispute that can't get resolved otherwise - to be last resort, not first resort.
We shouldn't sue at the drop of a hat. We ought to try to work things out. But let me just share with you one of my anecdotes that I've collected along the way, talking about civil justice reform. It happened in Beaumont, Texas. A gentleman there named Tom Harken - not from Iowa, this is the good Tom Harken - a small-business man, had an employee that was injured. He cut himself with a knife and was injured on property where business was conducted. And Tom Harken and his employees, being good Samaritans that they were, cleaned up the wound, took him to the hospital, and he had a number of stitches. Well, he didn't hear from this employee for approximately ten days. And on the eleventh day he got a letter from this employee's lawyer saying that a lawsuit was about to commence for several hundred thousand dollars because Tom Harken, as an employer, had violated the rule and law of practicing medicine without a license. Small-business man, potential liability, according to the lawsuit, several hundred thousand dollars, and he said, "What do I do?" and they said, "Settle." What did he do? Settled for $23,000. And folks, that kind of nonsense has got to get out of the system.
This is an idea which is not going to be denied. I know the votes that you referred to in the Senate, but there's going to be another vote this year. The people are on our side, the consumers are on our side. I have received more mail on this issue than any other specific issue since I've been Vice President. When I made that very non-controversial speech to the House of Delegates of the American Bar Association last August. And the support is overwhelming. Lawyers support our proposal. Four to 1 support our reforms. Non-lawyers support it 100 to 1, but there is genuine support, the idea is alive, and legal reform is coming soon.
Q: According to the press, the Bush administration agreed to the proposed treaty on global warming to be signed at the United Nations Earth Summit in June only on the condition that it not include a provision requiring reduction of greenhouse gases in 1999 levels by the year 2000. Doesn't this take the heart out of the treaty?
A: I think it was the 1990 levels that they were talking about in that treaty. Look, we as a nation have the strongest, most important, most effective environmental laws in the world. We have the toughest enforcement of our environmental laws in the world. But we simply cannot abdicate our sovereignty and our decisions to some international body that doesn't like the fact that the United States is a prosperous and wealthy country. And had not the President been able to attain this understanding, it would have been very detrimental to our economic development and our economic progress.
Tell me another nation that has the tough clean air laws that the United States of America has. There is no other nation that has the laws that we have. We are committed, we are leaders when it comes to the environment, and we're proud of that. But we are simply not in a position to say, because of our wealth, because of our industrial capacity, that we are going to, severely limits us in our economic options in the future. And, I say that there will be a lot more standing in the international community when they start to adopt some of our tough environmental laws. And I welcome that, because many of these countries that are complaining, their own countries are an environmental mess. And especially some of the countries that need help the most that have had these statist economies. Centralized government, centralized planning has not done anything at all except to tear up the environment.
You look at the free-market countries around the world and they are the ones that are sensitive to the environment and are working to clean it up. You look at the ones that have central planning, the ones that believe in statism, the ones that have had managed economics, and they're the ones that have environmental problems and environmental messes. So I think that the compromising result was an appropriate one and one that the President strongly supports on his way to the Rio Conference.
Q: When you were a candidate in 1988, you talked a great deal about the job-training legislation that you and Senator Kennedy co-sponsored. We don't seem to hear much about this anymore. What is taking place and are you still involved?
A: I'm involved with our Secretary of Labor in making sure that it's implemented. I did refer to it in the speech because it is part of the philosophy that we're now seeing in the enterprise approach, the "Weed and Seed" approach, the homeowner approach, because the Job Training Partnership Act, which was passed in 1982, had these same principles and the same philosophy.
The basic philosophy was, it is far better to teach the person how to fish than to give him the fish. Be independent, get a job, we will train you. We want you to go to work because we know that you want to go to work. But JTPA today stands as a model of success, though I heard a congresswoman from Los Angeles just the other day say, "Get rid of the Job Training Partnership Act and bring back CETA." Well, the Job Training Partnership Act junked CETA because it was a program that didn't work. It was basically a political patronage program, dead-end jobs, no accountability, no performance standards, no involvement from the private sector, no involvement other than the federal bureaucracy and the state bureaucracy and the local bureaucracy that ran the program. And the JTPA program stands as a hallmark of success on how we can approach the problem.
The principles are this: decisions are decentralized, made here in the local areas. When we were at the Hunters View project this morning, as we were talking to the people there about empowerment, giving them the power to make decisions, some gentleman came up to me and said, "What are you going to do about minority contractors?" I said, "I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I want to give you, the people in the neighborhood, the capability to make the decision on how the housing's going to be built and how the services are going to be provided for. We want you to help us and to work to take back the streets and take back the neighborhood." And the way that you're going to do that is to empower people and give them respect, self-esteem, dignity, independence, instead of the CETA approach, which was dependence, makeshift types of jobs, that's the old way. It didn't work. JTPA, enterprise zones, HOPE, and Weed and Seed, that is the new way. New ideas, new strategies, the power to people. And I could tell you, sitting around and talking to the people today was, it was quite inspiring. Magnificent individuals, people that want to see crime out of their neighborhood, want drugs out of the neighborhood. Want good schools for the kids. You know what one mother told me? She said, "I almost hate to send my young boy to school, because I don't know whether he's going to come home again because of violence."
You should have been with the mayor and myself as we rode back downtown in our car, my car, with three young kids who told me about gangs, told me about living in the inner city and the fear that gripped them on a day-to-day basis. And these were smart kids. I told the one young girl, I said, "You ought to go into politics. You are a marvelous speaker." She couldn't wait to get back to her class to tell her class about her day, about what she saw, what she learned, what she wanted to do. We have got to come up with these new ideas, these new strategies, and give respect to our people. Let them make the decisions, give them the power to make the decisions and then, as I told them, once the decision is made, you've got to be held accountable. It's not somebody else. Accountability is very important, and that is the theme and a philosophy of the JTPA program. Fortunately, we have JTPA today and not CETA.
Q: The spotted owl controversy has in resulted environmental groups saying that the Bush administration is not properly supporting the Endangered Species Act. What is your response to that charge?
A: I love the spotted owl. We're going to save the spotted owl. We're going to enforce the Endangered Species Act, but as we save the spotted owl, we're going to save jobs, too!
Q: Critics of the proposed free trade agreement with Mexico say it will result in many American companies moving their manufacturing operations south of the border to take advantage of cheap labor, and this will bring about a loss of jobs for American workers and unfair competition for businesses that remain in the United States. Would you respond to this?
A: I've heard this argument and we've dealt with it. I don't buy it. Look, we will benefit by a free-trade agreement whether it's with Canada, with whom we have one, whether it's Israel, with whom we have one, or whether it's with Mexico, with whom we're going to get one. It will be beneficial to the people of California. It will beneficial to the country as a whole.
I know there are certain concerns about Mexico and what it's going to mean to businesses and business opportunities here in California. And you have some unique issues, especially in agriculture, and I am very sensitive to those issues, as is the President. But look, by opening markets we create potential exports for our businesses here. If Mexico was more developed, we would have more opportunities, not fewer. If the standard of living is increased in Mexico and Mexico becomes a stronger country because of the free trade agreement, that's to the good of Mexico and that's to the good of the United States. Look at the immigration problems that we have with Mexico.
If you had a stronger, more developed Mexico, we would have less of an immigration problem, less of a border problem. So I do not fear competition as long as it's fair and as long as it's open. The great majority of the American people don't fear it either. There are obviously some complexities and some unique circumstances that have to be considered. And we will consider them. But this is in our interest to pursue this free-trade agreement with Mexico. And assuming that we are able to conclude it and the Congress will approve it, which I think that they will, then we can take this concept throughout Latin America. I've been to Latin America about nine times since becoming Vice President. The third trip down there, I attended an inauguration of the newly elected president of Honduras, Rafael Callejas. And at a luncheon President-elect Callejas had for us, he told me, and other Latin American presidents were there, that they really weren't interested in the direct assistance from the United States, that they were far more interested in trade opportunities. And that said a lot to me because in the past, the old thinking, the old strategy was, well, if we just give more direct assistance, more financial aid, more guaranteed loans, then things will get better. And they're saying no, trade opportunities, come trade in our country. We'll trade in your country. We want you to build our country up and we will help your country as well. And that's the type of attitude we ought to take, especially when you look at the Western Hemisphere. This is going on all over the world, free-trade agreements, economic development, economic strategy. You've got one in the Pacific with the ASEAN countries taking a lead on what kind of an economic relationship and partnership. Europe is trying to figure out and here it is 1992, remember EC92? They kept talking about EC92; well, here it is, 1992, and they're moving closer to a so-called, "United States of Europe." They haven't quite decided on how they're going to move to this common currency. I'll wait and see how that's going to work out. They haven't worked out where the bank's going to be. About three different capitals in Europe think they're going to have the main bank in their city. A few minor elements like that haven't been worked out, but they're moving to see what they can do for Europe. Asia's moving to see what it can do for Asia. The United States of America ought to work to see what we could do in our own hemisphere.
Q: A number of our members are aware that you just returned from Japan, and there are a number of questions in respect to trade. This member asks, we should have free trade if it is fair trade, but is it fair trade when Japan sells billions of dollars worth of automobiles in the United States but will not permit the U.S. to sell products there, such as rice and many manufactured goods? Would you comment?
A: We have trade differences and trade challenges between the United States and Japan. It is a bilateral issue that is in the process of being resolved on many, many fronts. First, the Tokyo declaration that the President signed with Prime Minister Miyazawa in January is being implemented. Areas like automobiles, paper products and computers are, in fact, being, or those programs that we agreed upon, are being implemented. What we are doing is more access for our paper products, more access for computers.
Today, Japan is, in fact, beginning government procurement of American computers. They hadn't done that in the past. And when I was over there last year, for the first time we got Japan to consider government procurement of American-made communication systems. They are moving in the right direction as we work out this bilateral relationship. Now, automobiles is a category all by itself. We have a trade deficit today with Japan of approximately $66 to $69 billion. Forty-one billion dollars of the $68-9 billion, $41 billion is automobile related. Basically, two-thirds, or over two-thirds, is related to automobiles. When the President was there we got a commitment to move from $6 billion of Japanese purchase of automobile parts to $19 billion over the next five years. That is a significant increase. We also have GM and Toyota working together on the announcement of a joint partnership dealing with dealerships where our American automobiles can actually go in and be sold in Japan. Now, one of the complaints that the Japanese have had in the past about the American automobile, built in America and shipped to Japan for potential purchase, is it is not a left- or not a right-wheel driven car. And it has to be a right-wheel driven car because Japan drives on the left-hand side of the road. And now our American automobile industry has announced that it's going to start making more right-wheel driven cars here in America. GM and Toyota have worked out this dealership partnership, and so we are beginning to make progress.
Well, look, we have got to continue to talk about it. It is an issue that we talked about in some detail on this trip, although primarily I was there for the anniversary of the reversion of Okinawa to Japan and also to try to get, which we did, was a commitment in global partnership and, in particular, the contribution to Eastern and Central Europe. But it's a sensitive matter and one that we will continue to monitor and continue to work with.
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Dee Dee Myers