John McCain
Town Hall
Cleveland, OH 05/01/08
TRANSCRIPT:
QUESTIONER: "...one of the issues that has attracted me to your campaign over any of your Republican challengers is the issue of free trade, international globalization . . . you will face a tide, a strong tide of anti-globalization sentiment from the Democratic Congress. What will you do to change the narrative and convince people in Northeast Ohio that perhaps their hesitance to enter the global economy has caused the slow economy...?" [applause]
JOHN MCCAIN: "...it's in some ways analogous to health care in this respect: the people in America think the problem with health care in America is the quality of health care, the problem is the affordability. I believe that the problem with free trade is not that we have free trade because I believe in free trade and I know I have history on my side. My friends, I study history... and every time this country is enact protectionism and isolationism, we've paid a very heavy price, including World Wars... but where we have failed and failed miserably and the reason why people, justifiably... in the heartland of America ... is that we have failed to give the worker another chance. We have failed... miserably to give education and training to workers... so that they can work in the information-technology revolution... the present programs for displaced workers... have failed miserably, they were designed for the 1950s... they were designed for a time in America's history when an economic downturn ...where people were laid off, the economy would come back and they'd go back to the old jobs. The old jobs aren't coming back... yet we don't have anything near the kind of education and training programs. Where's the best place we can go to educate and train displaced workers? It's the community colleges ...they should be the ones that we say: "Here's the funding, here's the local needs of the economy... there's no reason people should have to leave this beautiful state to go get a job someplace else. If they want to leave, fine. ... what I'll tell them is that I believe in free trade and I can make an argument that trade is free. I will also tighten up on some of the abuses. The next time a toy comes into the United States from China that's going to poison our children, that'll be the last toy from China that comes into the United States of America. And when there's a blood thinner that is actually taking lives of people, apparently... that'll be the last time... we obviously have to make sure that there are no imbalances in the free trade regimen. But I believe that if you raise barriers to goods and services you do two things. One, you harm our economy but two, you kind of show a little bit of disrespect for the American worker because I believe that the American worker is the best trained, best equipped, most intelligent, hardest working person in the world and we can compete anywhere with any worker as long as there is an opportunity and you have a trained and equipped workforce."
LABEL: JM OH 5-1 (EW#5) DAGH-ClipI
To download a high res version of this clip, VISIT: "PART 1: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/txll2dxk4k
PART 2: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/uj8um834s0"
To download the full campaign event, VISIT: Tape 1: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/56q9jm2ccs; Tape 2: http://issuealliance.box.net/shared/qwcj4u6scw
Loading...
4:32John McCain: Town Hall Meeting 07/07/08by IssueAlliance550 views
Link to this comment:
All Comments (0)