“I think it’s critical for people to understand what the Republican–how bankrupt, how fundamentally reckless their position is and has been. And the fact is–I mean, let me go a little bigger here for a minute. Our country is challenged economically as never before. You know, people talk about American exceptionalism and how there’s sort of this automatic for America. Yes, we are exceptional, but we’re exceptional when we do exceptional things, when we behave exceptionally. We’re not doing that today. We’re locked down into a gridlock status where other countries are racing by us. I’ll give you an example. Over the next 20 years, $600 billion is going to be invested in green technology and green energy. New jobs. New jobs that could be for Americans. Ninety percent of that investment’s going to be in other countries, David.”–John Kerry on Meet the Press
Two more excerpts from the interview:
“The president of the United States came into office with a president who’d left him with a $5 trillion add-on to the debt of this country, an unprecedented financial crisis. The fact is that the TARP that we passed that everybody hates–they hate the word, they hate the concept–it saved, it saved countless numbers of jobs in this country. The Recovery Act saved millions of jobs in this country and brought our financial system back from the brink. Wall Street ought to be singing this president’s praises. We’ve had a 60 percent increase in the stock market in two years. How often does that happen? You have a $3 trillion increase in the net value of the Fortune 500 companies, $3 trillion increase in two years. Under George Bush, in eight years, it only increased by several hundred billion. You’ve had the Hire Act, the Republicans opposed it. It created hundreds of thousands of jobs. The Recovery Act, the Small Business Act.”
“Here’s what the president is doing. The president is fighting to get unemployment insurance that they have held hostage. This is the point. People need to focus in America. The Republicans have been willing to hold unemployment insurance hostage to this bonus tax cut that has the least impact and adds to the deficit. And the phony recklessness of their position is this, they’ve said for months, “We can’t give you unemployment compensation because it’s unpaid for and it will add to the deficit.” But yesterday they were willing to vote for a $4 trillion increase that wipes out everything the debt commission is doing, in order to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people. Now, the president’s prepared to compromise to get unemployment insurance, to get the work for pay tax cut, to get a child care credit tax cut, to get additional tax cuts that go to average people and will create jobs. But he wants to do more than that, and this is the most important difference between us and them. The Republican agenda is tax cut and cut spending. We cannot cut our way to competition with these other countries. If we’re going to be a great power, if we’re going to project in the world, if we’re going to put America back to work and be part of the $6 trillion market that is the new energy market of the future with six billion users, we need to invest in America’s future.”
