Iowa Press; 1419; Presidential Hopeful Bruce Babbitt

What are yours. Well it's really this really where press 14:19 recorded to 787 what were major funding for this program was provided by friends of Iowa Public Television. Were. It maybe the first of its kind to write a bike across Iowa. He's the former governor of Arizona a candidate for president.

Breaks down the theory trying to sue. The city politician Gracie. Tonight a talk with Democratic presidential hopeful. This is the sort of the February 8th edition of our will process. Here is the board. Good evening. He may not be a household name but Democrat Bruce Babbitt lacks in name recognition he's compensating with an early start on the campaign trail. In January he became the first Democrat to organize a formal 1988 presidential campaign committee and heading his committee are some of the same staff that directed former vice president Walter Mondale's presidential bid in 1984. It's not a course which reports back but it's also getting an early start to becoming known for his ideas. Perhaps it is no surprise that 48 year old Bruce Babbitt goes for unusual

campaign gimmicks like bicycling for votes. For it is unusual circumstances that put him in the governor's seat of Arizona. In 1077 then Arizona governor resigned to take another job the next in line for the office. The secretary of state assumed the governorship but died a few months later. Consequently Babbitt as the state's attorney general was next in line. He was re-elected twice serving nearly nine years as governor. As governor one of his more notable accomplishments was during the 1986 legislative session he won passage of a tough law to protect Arizona groundwater from pollution. One of his more controversial acts as governor was in 1983 during a labor strike at a copper mine. He sent in the National Guard to protect nonunion strike breakers on national issues. Babbitt favors taxing the Social Security and Medicare

benefits of wealthy individuals in agriculture. He favors federal farm programs targeted to the family farms. He favors a joint federal state voucher payment system for day care to help working parents cope with child care costs. And like many Democrats Babbitt is critical of President Reagan's Star Wars proposals. Currently governor Babbit is considered a long shot at winning the Democratic nomination for president but then it wasn't that many years ago that the same thing was said about another Governor Jimmy Carter who tried and won in his endeavor to move from the State House to the White House. But Babbitt has been making strong attempts to become a household name. He has been to Iowa New Hampshire several times and campaigned nationwide so often that during his term as governor some of the media in Babbitt's home state of Arizona joked about his being an absentee governor such cartoons will no doubt change their focus. It's Babbitt turned over the keys to his office in

January to a new governor. The focus now on the campaign for the presidency and that's what we'll be discussing tonight with Arizona Democrat Bruce Babbitt. The question by David DSN political reporter for the morning register and by John McCormack a columnist with The Burlington Hawkeye and other Harris newspapers. Governor Babbitt the field is getting formal in Iowa who again this year and. Wonder what sets you apart from all of the Democrats who were running for the nomination and you know roughly we have Jesse Jackson on the left and Sam Nunn on the right. Where would you fit subway in between there and why should I wonder. Look you look at you in the in the pack. John I'm a centrist with some pretty radical ideas. Govern successfully growth state for the last nine years. What I've been stressing is the need to deal with economics or to get some economic growth going in this country to deal with international problems. My background in social issues is pretty traditional Democratic. I was in the civil rights movement

that spent a lot of time with education health care but I have stressed the need to set priorities to be more tough minded about how it is we govern as progressives in light of all the economic necessities of faces. Governor one of the functions of a caucus campaigns is to have a party start picking its candidates how they how they would run as a horse. The last two presidents of the United States have been governors in a lot of people think they've screwed the country up. And I certainly agree with with a lot of the second well there are those who say that Jimmy Carter a relatively unknown governor from a relatively small state did the same thing and I wonder how do you how do you respond to that argument that the demo some Democrats make that we should not bet on candidates like Bruce Babbitt because they either can't win or they're not competent enough to do the job. Well that's tantamount to saying that we should never have elected Woodrow Wilson to lead the progressive area of the arrow that we never would have considered Franklin D Roosevelt those were different eras of the Depression. The principles the same I think ultimately the issue is.

Who is the person. And what is he or she believe in. But are you competent to deal with the Congress having never dealt with it before been a part of it. I've dealt for 9 years with a bulletproof Republican legislature and put together I think one of the more progressive records in this country. Now is the United States Congress different 535 members and stead of 90 some of the Democrats are also critical of your labor record. You did call out the National Guard to deal with the strike situation can you explain what you did and why and how do you address that concern. Yeah Arizona Dave I think you'll find that I've had an you know good relationship with labor there was one incident over three years ago a violent copper strike that really got out of hand it finally culminated in the random shooting of a 5 year old girl who took a bullet through the forehead. It really got out of hand and at that point I did what I think anybody with guts asked to do and that is to say that keeping the peace. You know it was my first responsibility. I used the National Guard to protect

strikers non-striker's after us I mean there were no more incidents in which anybody was hurt. Have you patched up your relations with there as on the labor movement you are sure hell one thing I'll be doing and I was bringing some of those Arizona people in to talk with I will labor about you know exactly what went on and to put it in perspective to say look this guy was around for nine years. We wish we had him back. I think I made my peace with national labor a talk with the leadership of national labor. They haven't said they will endorse me but they've made it clear that they're willing to consider the totality of Bruce Babbitt and that's all I mean Governor whatever your success Ed. sash of a small state governor in domestic politics to get me there is the concern about why do someone like yourself that can handle the following relation. They had a very serious problems America has around the world how do you address that. Well it is for a question I've spent a lot of time abroad I lived in Europe for two years and I have spent many many months in Latin America I speak fluent Spanish. During my nine years of Governor I've

spent a lot of time in the Far East dealing with economic issues so I'm on a first name basis with the heads of state and many of the Central American countries spend a lot of time dealing with Mexico dealt with the arms control issues. You know many many different contexts and once again I think the the real issue is put to the test. You know I need to get past how would you change I pace in the Central American policy if you would basically. Well I would terminate our support for the Contras. I think it's outrageous that Caspar Weinberger asked me as we have many other governors to send the National Guard to Nicaragua. I went down there I spent a couple of days of talking with Daniel Ortega I mean I'm sure all of those you have to well to Nicaragua via Honduras. I was OK. I said I'm not going to do it I said to the people of Arizona this is a blind alley it's not going we're going to stop our support of the conference. We should sit down. They make the best we can of the Contador process get a treaty and get on with what we really need to be doing down there which is building some strong economies and some strong government.

Well I were very concerned about the Mideast in the Far East. You've lived next door to Mexico all your life. Do we overlook. That there a problem there. Right opportunity there. John I think the real issue in Central America is Mexico. The Reagan administration has this obsession with Nicaragua to a tiny little country of less and 3 million people there are 80 million people in Mexico and they're not two days drive away I mean they're right on our border and it's being badly neglected and I would submit that dealing with Mexican debt. There's a tremendous depression in that country and things could get out of control unless we step up to the issues of the debt that are getting some economic growth going and recognizing that you know just maybe outside the Soviet Union it could be the most important relationship we have. Would you say that's a powder keg that we're over looking at and what should we specifically be doing there as a nation then what it really says is if you shoot is the debt Mexico owes a hundred billion dollars how much is a hundred billion dollars well it's a lot of pesos. And as a

percentage of Mexico's GNP it is greater than the reparations were imposed on Germany by the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War 1. Now think about that. We're going to cut that debt service we need to go up to the New York banks and say the national interest of the United States of America demands that we cut that debt service in half and then in the context of doing that I think what we would do is is lay down negotiate some conditions about liberalizing the Mexican economy entering into the a more competitive trade environment that kind of thing. Governor I'd like to turn to domestic issues for a moment and explain to us your Social Security program. You're into a sensitive area of means testing in and gearing benefits of people who need them and that has traditionally been a very difficult political thing to pull off. So outline those for me if you would. So my position is this. In an era of relatively limited resources when we're struggling with all these budget realities we need to lay out some general rules about how it is we set priorities. One of my general rules is that we ought to go look at

programs and ask the following question How do we focus the programs a little more carefully on the people who really need them. Farm benefits here and I were a classic example. You know I thought we invented that program for family farmers and all of a sudden we see the company in California getting a 10 million dollar check to outrageous lots of other examples of mortgage interest deductions. That was a program targeted to enable young couples to buy homes. All of a sudden it's turned into a subsidy to buy second and third homes in Vail and Florida California and elsewhere. The issue is Social Security and Medicare is my contention that there ought to be universal programs that the benefits ought to go to people who need them but not the Rockefellers the melons and the Duponts a lot of least include them on their tax return as a way of focusing the benefits a little more care so everyone gets it. But the well-to-do pay taxes on it. Young people say well what would you do with with the taxes I'd say put him back into the trust fund and use them to expand the programs for example catastrophic

assistance for Medicare. How does this play with with older audiences. Again I mean we go back to his recent history in politics if you tinker around with Social Security there's political hell to pay if you do that. Have you had much success in selling this to older audiences. You know there is. A tendency in politics to say I won't rock the boat. I will never say anything that might be misinterpreted and therefore we will treat Social Security Medicare as if they had been cast in bronze never to be improved. And no politician will ever have the guts to stand up and talk about it. I went over to the American Association of Retired Persons in Anaheim last year. I thought maybe you know all that or the Lion's Den tell him what benefit taxation means and what I would do with the proceeds. I'm going to rethink response. I have some apprehension of you know from the advance notice that I was some sort of ogre. But they listened carefully and I think they said yeah you know we can improve these

programs. Let me follow up on the other in the political spectrum. Do younger voters respond to this new baby boomers. Those of us who are worried that we may never see all the money we put into Social Security are they responding to that message. Well only I think when it's cast in the context of a broader proposition when you when you say to them now if we are going to have the guts to set some priorities and to get the federal government under control doesn't it make sense to target programs and then go through things like farm subsidies or mortgage interest deductions or taxation of benefits and I think then the light goes on and people say. Yeah that's that's a pretty sensible way of getting things under control. Seems to me there are two things you'd have to be addressed if you're going to get government under control as you mentioned. One is that the two trillion dollar debt and annual deficit and the trade deficit along with the I do it

the billion dollars a day in the defense budget. Taking those who want to time what could come what could we do about the debt and the deficit. John I agree with you. What we're doing is living off credit cards foreign credit cards trade deficit. The domestic credit card is the fiscal deficit and I think ultimately honest candidates are going to have to talk with some specificity about what we do with those. The trade deficit I think is susceptible of a solution. I think we do what we do is we go back and rewrite the rules that were them have been rewritten significantly for 40 years and a lot of things. A new rule I think would simply say we're going to require balance. Each and every one to one trading relationship will say the rules will require the big players to balance their account. I consented chiva bill and it can't be done by the Congress has to be done by a president who has the guts to say we're going to stop the erosion of the farm economy of the industrial economy. We care about what kinds of jobs we have in America.

Fiscal deficit. I think you have to have restraint in defense spending in domestic spending and raise revenue. And my own judgment is that the first president who had the vision and the courage to stand up to the Congress and say we need restraint on all kinds of spending and some revenues and put them together as a package that could get it done. What kind of revenue a grade would you favor. Well I think there are all kinds of possibilities. One of my own personal favorites is the estate tax. I think Americans ought to be entitled to. Become Wealthy and make a fortune it's part of the American tradition but I think it's appropriate to give a reasonable sum up up up when you've you know passed from this mortal coil. I think a lot of other possibilities you could look at tacking a couple of points on the top bracket of the income tax. I'm a believer in the progressive income tax. What about oil imports surcharge.

I don't think for an oil import fee what it is is an illegal tariff. Under the GATT rules what I would say is number what I said about balance training. I would say you could levy. A countervailing fee against any oil export country which was running a multilateral surplus if you characterize it that way you get I think a somewhat similar result but the tariff would not apply to countries like Mexico which are in trouble. The other side of my question was if you fancy spending what you just mentioned in passing but that. All candidates give it lip service but when when it comes to the crunch they're afraid to cut very much out to fans for fear of being charged with being soft on communism. Have you thought seriously about how much to defend that you could be slashed in the head just where you would get it. Well I'm not sure that I'm a slasher. The important thing about budgets is stopping the growth. I believe that if you could contain the defense

budget of approximately its present level and terminate this exponential growth you know over a period of a few years everything would converge and you would have balance. Now in order to do that we must get on with this issue of arms control. And I think that's virtually everybody in this country recognizes that. We've lost an enormous opportunity on the arms control front and we have to come back to a sense of sanity about the meaning of Star Wars about the need for the weapons cuts like well probably be more specific on the Star Wars would you would you care like if you became basically President told us that the Star Wars was an Astrodome. It isn't and he now admits that if it's not an asteroid what it really is is an ABM system. Now we went through that debate back in the 70s with a lot of wise Republicans and Democrats and we decide it was in our interest to have an ABM Treaty. Nothing has changed conceptually since then so

I think the bottom line is that the idea of funding the deployment of Star Wars is a tragic mistake. Stop it. Can you preserve some research. For one thing it's always important to have scientific research effort out there to hedge against something that you know we may not know about. Since Iowa has an agricultural based economy I'd like to go back and cover a little bit about your ideas on on aid to family farms I heard a bit about it earlier and I I thought I heard you say not to big corporate farms but to family farms. Exactly. Well what is it about the family farm that you think needs to be preserved and how do you how could you justify cutting it just a portion of agricultural aid and targeting it toward family farms and not giving it to mom and pop businesses for example which are about the same thing. Well look you have my position I would get all of the agribusinesses including agribusinesses in Arizona out of the trough completely cold

turkey. Why. When the farm program is put together and really what 1932 1933 a judgment was made and it's a judgment that I agree with that there are important in objectives and I'm keeping a balanced economy. A rural economy a family farms that's what all those towns in Iowa in the Midwest are all about. And they did a pretty well in those days they invented a concept called parity which said we will invent a price support program which is keyed to some notion parity was a notion then that a farmer family farmer would be guaranteed a reasonable rate of return based upon the cost of production plus a reasonable return. Now why it is we've drifted so far from that concept. It is something I don't understand it was it was good 50 years ago and I think we ought to be able to invent with the contemporary equivalent of it. But but that why only agriculture. Why not for a similar business of a farm as a business family for my

business. Well you know that debate was had 50 years ago too. In the in the course of the New Deal and the I think the arguments are the same and valid today. Agriculture and commodity prices run on a roller coaster. They're up and down and ultimately you can't keep a stable. Family oriented kind of economy whether it's in small towns on the rollercoaster the small guys will be all gone. If you believe in family agriculture it's a necessary condition of keeping it there. Just one follow on about that then how. How do you feel about the process that you're going through right now in trying to get the Democratic nomination. Here you are campaigning in Iowa New Hampshire concentrating their efforts there. States that really you might say are representative of the United States as a whole and yet your future depends on what you do in those two states how do you feel about the process. Well first of all contrary to

you know a lot of these things are when it's not all root canal therapy and cold showers and misery. It's actually an exhilarating process. It's an extraordinary opportunity to meet the most diverse and wonderful country on earth. It is I will representative state. No but there isn't a representative state I mean that's what America's all about was this credible diversity and I frankly understand the arguments of those who say you know it's unfair but I can't think of a better way back to that time question for a minute. If one of your your competitors Congressman Gephardt has teamed up with our Senate to hire could I NEED US production control. To be able to save this family farm. Have you had a chance to study that. John how does it look to you. I've not read the bill in its entirety but I think we're all converging on the same concepts that is that we must get agribusiness out of the

trough and you do that by restricting the loan rate program or whatever it's equivalent would be to a basic family unit of production. And you mix that with some measure of direct production control as you have under the set aside program now. I think a deal the details are far less important the concepts and the concepts are correct. Governor I've noticed state legislators interested in two areas that you've talked about as governor. Children and the environment. Whether you go anywhere in a presidential campaign you are talking to members of our legislature about these issues. And in some of them are saying they want to copy some of your ideas. So if we could just take a spend a minute on each what do you what was your program to help children in Arizona. My argument to the people of Arizona was that children are now the most neglected abused and unattended portion of our population. Three years ago I went to the Arizona legislature and I said this year we're going to talk

only about children. We're going to talk about casework an intervention to prevent abuse and neglect. We're going to talk about making daycare a voucher form available to mothers. So we want to leave your kids at home. Too many houses with kids coming home with nobody to watch after him. Talk about expansion of the Medicaid program. It's outrageous that one out of every four kids in this country lives in poverty and only half of them are eligible for medical care. I persuaded the Arizona legislature to reconstruct and re work our Medicaid program and to use the savings to cover kids that there are other issues preschool public education that was one of those my follow up is that those are state things now expand that out what do you see the federal role in dealing with children as being. Well I see three things and they are extensions. Of my own experience.

The first one is expand Medicaid. We did in Arizona but I'm not saying that it's easy or there can be done everywhere. Simply don't expand Medicaid and say every kid below the poverty line is entitled to health care. Period. Put together a state federal voucher system which says to working mothers. But if you're to be in the workforce you're intitled on an income scale basis to assistance for daycare. The last thing the other thing I would do and I think it may be of some interest here in Iowa is. I've wrestled with the issues of public education for 10 years and years and we've done a lot in terms of standard an achievement that sort of thing. I think times at hand for some federal help I would do it in this fashion. I would federalize health care public health care programs and then say to states you can use the savings as a condition of the federal government taking the burden of health care you must use the savings to step up support public education teacher salaries. What about the environment groundwater questions you face them there an issue here. You know one of the one of the great surprises was to come on RAGBRAI last summer. To stop to

talk to farmers when I was you know all prepared to talk about parity concepts alone write programs and to my utter amazement. What did they really want to talk about groundwater. Now you know we have a serious problem in Arizona because you know water is the scarcest commodity there is out there. And what we did was put together a coalition of farms and cities dedicated to the proposition that we all have a common interest in preventing groundwater contamination. Agriculture was originally a little bit reluctant because there was this notion that you know the city folks were going to stomp on them and put them out of business. Well we put together a very complex process and it involved a statute which is based on a notion called best management practices we have a process for setting out standards for the application of nitrates pesticides and herbicides that results in regulations which simply say everybody will be held to the standard of the model farmers. How's it working. Well it's just in the implementation phase. But I'm confident it's the

right idea. It got back to world affairs for a minute you will be talking to labor groups group in Iowa another strong group in Iowa. It has one of the strongest United Nations associations in the country and if you haven't run into them yet you probably will. I have indeed and I wonder how you feel about the decimation that has gone on that the present administration and I support the United Nations and what you would do about storing that support and respect in the world. Couric again that sort of thing. You know it's ironic if you look around the world. American ideals are flourishing more than they ever have a look at career Japan Taiwan Hong Kong and now China. At last at last market economies are springing up and they bring in their wake a demand for political liberty you can see that in China. I think the momentum is on our side. The irony is that the Reagan administration at the very time

that these trends are happening seems to be saying we're going to win the hearts and souls of the third world by force of arms. We don't believe in the United Nations we don't believe in the Third World we believe that any sparrow that falls from a tree anywhere in the world is cause to send soldiers. I think it's a very short sighted view. Should we be supporting multilateral agencies. Yeah. My own feeling is that it is time to step up to a complete rewrite of the international economic institutions particularly the World Bank the IMF. We have an opportunity out there. It's headed our way. And it's really ironic that we're walking away from it at the very time that it's finally really looking promising. When you say to walk away we have to do that right now I'm sorry Governor bet we are out of time. Thank you very much for being our guest tonight and I will press. That's it for this week. Thank you for joining us for paddle us David Epstein and John Macaulay I'm dien board. Take one is next on the Iowa Public Television Network.

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