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During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
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Get Four
|  | FEBRUARY 26, 2004
John Kerry's To-Do List [Page 2 of 2] Q: I recall candidate Clinton promising to pressure the Chinese and then flip-flopping.... A: I disagree. Clinton did, in fact, leverage some changes from time to time, and this Administration has been slow to rise to the challenge. Commerce Secretary [Donald] Evans was over [in Beijing] a few months ago. He rang a few bells. [But] I'm not convinced this Administration has done [enough]. Number Two, with our current-account deficit as bad as it is right now, we lose leverage because we're dependent on China to buy our debt. Q: You frequently assail corporate bigness -- Big Oil, big insurers, big HMOs, and big drug companies. Are you surprised that some CEOs get nervous? A: What I'm talking about is fairness. What the drug companies did in the [Medicare prescription] drug bill was unfair. It's simply a transfer payment that's asking taxpayers to pay more. Likewise with the oil companies. We're going to drill for the next 40 to 50 years -- I acknowledge that. I want the oil companies to be successful. But I'm not going to support drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) when we have other alternatives. Q: Do you favor a return to national industrial policy in the form of massive federal support for homeland security and energy independence? A: What I want is to create incentives. I'm not going to make decisions for people. In my judgment, that's industrial policy. We create incentives all the time. We have a national low-income housing credit. We have incentives for oil and gas drilling. The question is, what do we do it for? Q: Republicans claim you're antibusiness and, since you propose to raise taxes, a job-destroyer to boot.... A: Ha! Q: Still, you have made a lot of promises for expanded health care and education -- and everything is based on the problematic repeal of the Bush tax cuts, right? A: The repeal of the high-end cuts, only. I'm not going to repeal the middle-class tax cuts. Look, I'm going to pay more tax. But I think it's the right thing to do, and countless executives around the country have said the same thing. Q: But the linchpin for funding everything remains the Bush tax cut, no? A: Part of it. Part of it comes from closing some [tax] loopholes. But look, if we don't do that, we can't pay for [my programs]. Q: Then what? A gradual phase-in of new initiatives? A: Yes. You've got to pay for it, because I've pledged to cut the deficit in half in four years. I've always been up front with people. I say this is a choice election. They can have a tax cut for [rich] people...or we can invest in other things. Q: Where did all this anti-special-interest rhetoric in your stump speech come from? In 30 years in the Senate, you didn't strike many folks as a populist? A: I have fought against the oil companies over drilling in ANWR. I have fought developers and others who tried to change the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. I stood up to the insurance companies and banks over the bankruptcy-reform bill. The votes are there. There's a consistency in my battles against powerful interests.... I think the term "special interests" needs to be better defined, frankly. Q: Too hot? A: It's not so much the hotness of it, it's the lack of specificity. You need to find a better way to describe what you're fighting over, and that's something I'm going to try to do more effectively. Q: Once you were described as a neoliberal, then a New Democrat. Now the Bush campaign calls you a Ted Kennedy-style retro-liberal. Which is it, Senator? A: I don't think it helps to be ideological or doctrinaire. The principles that guide me are these: One, you want to maximize competition, you want to maximize freedom of entrepreneurial ability and create jobs and wealth. But you also need to regulate at an appropriate level so you're not concentrating too much power.
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