V.P. Debate Transcript: Page 3

Oct. 5, 2000 -- SHAW: Time. The next question goes to you.

Gentlemen, this is the 21st century, yet on average an Americanworking woman in our great nation earns 75 cents for each dollarearned by a working male. What do you males propose to do about it?

LIEBERMAN: Well, it’s a good and important question. Obviously,in our time, fortunately, great advances have been made by womenachieving the kind of equality that they were too long denied. But,Bernie, your question is absolutely right. Women, actually the numberI have, receive 72 cents for every dollar a man receives in acomparable job.

Al Gore and I have issued an economic plan in which we’ve statedspecific goals for the future. And one of those goals is to eliminatethe pay gap between men and women. It’s unfair and it’s unacceptable.

And the first way we will do that is by supporting the Equal PayAct, which has been proposed in Congress, which gives women the rightto file legal actions against employers who are not treating themfairly and not paying them equally.

Secondly, we’re going to do everything we can using governmentalsupport of business agencies, such as the Small BusinessAdministration, to help women business owners have an opportunity toinvest and begin businesses and make larger incomes themselves.

And there are other civil rights and human rightslaws that I think can come to play here.

So, bottom line, this is an unfair and unacceptable situation.And even though as the economy has risen in the last eight years,America’s women have risen with it and received more income, untilwomen are receiving the same amount of pay for the same job they’redoing as a man receives, we’ve not achieved genuine equality in thiscountry. And Al Gore and I are committed to closing that gap andachieving that equality.

You know, in so many families, women are a significant breadearner or the only bread earner, so this cause affects not only thewomen, but families and the children as well.

SHAW: Mr. Secretary?

CHENEY: Bernie, I certainly share the view that we ought to haveequal pay for equal work regardless of someone’s gender, and we’ve made major progress in recent years. I think we’ve still got a ways to go.

But I also think it’s not just about the differential withrespect to women. If you look, for example, at our opponents’ taxproposal, they discriminate between stay-at-home moms with childrenthat they take care of themselves and those who go to work or who, infact, have their kids taken care of outside the home. You, in effect,as a stay-at-home mom, get no tax advantage under the Gore tax plan,as contrasted with the Bush proposal, which, in fact, provides taxrelief for absolutely everybody who pays taxes.

And it’s important to understand that the things thatwe’re trying to change and the things that we’re trying to address in the course of the campaign, what are agenda is for the future, orplans are for the future, focus very much upon giving as much controlas we can to individual Americans, be they men or women, be theysingle or married, as much control as possible over their own lives.

Especially in the area of taxation, we want to make certain thatthe American people have the ability to keep more of what they earnand then they get to decide how to spend it. The proposal we havefrom Al Gore, basically, doesn’t do that. It, in effect, lays outsome 29 separate tax credits. And if you live your life the way theywant you to live your life, if you do, in fact, behave in a certainway, then you qualify for a tax credit and at that point you get somerelief.

The bottom line, though, is 50 million American taxpayers outthere get no advantages at all out of the Gore tax proposal, whereasunder the Bush plan, everybody who pays taxes will, in fact, get taxrelief.

LIEBERMAN: Bernie, might I have an opportunity to respond here?

SHAW: You can respond, Senator, but I caution you gentlemen thatif you do this consistently, we’re not going to cover a lot of topics.And after the senator responds, you don’t have to feel compelled torespond to the senator.

CHENEY: Depends on what he says, Bernie.

(LAUGHTER)

LIEBERMAN: Right. This is an important difference between us,and I want to try to clarify it briefly if I can. The first thing isthat, in fact, the tax relief program that Al Gore and I haveproposed, one of those many tax credits for the middle class that Dickjust referred to, includes a $500 tax credit for stay-at-home moms,just as a way of saying, we understand that you are performing aservice for our society, we want you to have that tax credit.

Second, the number of 50 million Americans notbenefiting from our tax cut program is absolutely wrong. It’s anestimate done on an earlier form of our tax cut program, and it’s justplain wrong.

And, secondly, although Governor Bush says that his tax cutprogram, large as it is, gives a tax cut to everybody, as thenewspapers indicated earlier this week, the Joint Committee onTaxation — again, a nonpartisan group in Congress — has said that 27 million Americans don’t get what the governor said they would in theirtax cut program.

Again, Al Gore and I want to live within our means. We’re notgoing to give it all away in one big tax cut, and certainly not to thetop 1 percent of the public that doesn’t need it now.

So we’re focusing our tax cuts on the middle class, in the areaswhere they tell us they need it: tax credits for better and moreexpensive child care; tax credits for middle class families that don’thave health insurance from their employers; the tax deduction I talkedabout earlier, a very exciting deduction for up to $10,000 a year inthe cost of a college tuition; a $3,000 tax credit for the cost —well, actually, for a family member who stays home with a parent orgrandparent who’s ill; and a very exciting tax credit program that Ihope I’ll have a chance to talk about later, Bernie, that encouragessavings by people early in life and any time in life by having thefederal government match savings for the 75 million Americans who make$100,000 or less up to $2,000 a year.

So very brief — very briefly, if a young couplemaking $50,000 a year saves $1,000, the government will put another$1,000 in that account. By the time they retire, they’ll not onlyhave guaranteed Social Security, but more than $200,000 in thatretirement fund. Now that’s …

SHAW: You’re time is up, Senator.

LIEBERMAN: Thank you, sir.

CHENEY: Bernie, you have to be a CPA to understand what he justsaid. The fact of the matter is that the plan is so complex that anordinary American’s never going to be able to figure out what theyeven qualify for.

And it is a classic example of wanting to have a program, in thiscase a tax program, that will in fact direct people to live theirlives in certain ways rather than empowering them to make decisionsthemselves.

It is a big difference between us. They like tax credits. Welike tax reform and tax cuts.

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