Women's Issues in the Debates
Vice Presidential Debate Excerpt: Working Women
The complete transcript of the Vice Presidential debate is available from the The Commission on Presidential Debates
Bernard Shaw:
Gentlemen, this is the 21st
Century. Yet on average an American working woman in our great nation
earns 75 cents for each $1 earned by a working male. What do you males
propose to do about it?
Supporting the Equal Pay Act
[and] using governmental
support ... to help women
business owners ... invest
and begin businesses
|
Joe Leiberman
It's a good and important question. Obviously in our time, fortunately,
great advances have been made by women achieving the kind of equality
that they were too long denied. Bernie, your question is absolutely
right. Women -- actually the number I have received 72 cents for every
$1 a man receives in a comparable job. Al Gore and I have issued an
economic plan in which we've stated specific goals for the future. And
one of those goals is to eliminate the 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 Pay Act which has been proposed in Congress which
gives women the right to file legal actions against employers who are not
treating them fairly and not paying them equally. Secondly, we're going
to do everything we can using governmental support of business agencies
such as the Small Business Administration to help women business owners
have an opportunity to invest and begin businesses and make larger
incomes themselves. And there are other civil rights and human rights
laws 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, until women are receiving the same amount of pay
for the same job they're doing as a man receives, we've not achieved
genuine equality in this country. Al Gore and I are committed to closing
that gap and achieving that equality. In so many families women are a
significant bread earner or the only bread earner. So this cause affects
not only the women, but families and the children as well.
Our opponent's tax proposal
discriminate[s] between
stay-at-home moms with children
...and those who go to work
|
Dick Cheney
I share the view that we ought to have equal pay for equal work
regardless of someone's gender. We have made progress in recent years,
but I think we have a ways to go. It's not just about the differential
with respect to women. If you look at our opponent's tax proposal, they
discriminate between stay-at-home moms with children that they take care
of themselves and those who go to work or who, in fact, 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 opposed to the Bush
proposal. It provides tax relief for everybody who pays taxes. It's
important to understand the things we're trying to change and address in
the course of the campaign and what our agenda is for the future, or
plans are for the future focus very much about giving as much control as
we can to individual Americans, be they men or women, be they single or
married, as much control as possible over their own lives, especially in
the area of taxation. We want to make certain that the American people
have the ability to keep more of what they earn and then they can get to
decide how to spend it. The proposal we have from Al Gore, basically,
doesn't do that. It in effect lays out some 29 separate tax credits. If
you live your life the way they want you to live your life, if you behave
in a certain way, you qualify for a tax credit and at that point you get
some relief. Bottom line, though, is 50 million American taxpayers out
there get no advantages at all out of the Gore tax proposal, whereas
under the Bush plan everybody who pays taxes will get tax relief.
Joe Leiberman
Might I have an opportunity to respond?
Bernard Shaw:
I caution you if you do this consistently we won't cover a lot of
topics. After the Senator responds, you don't have to feel compelled to
respond to the Senator. Depending on what he says.
one of [our] tax credits
[is] a $500 tax credit for
stay-at-home moms
|
Joe Leiberman
This is an important difference between us. I want to clarify it
briefly if I can. The first thing is the tax relief program that we've
proposed, one of the many tax credits for the middle class includes a
$500 tax credit for stay-at-home moms just as a way of saying we
understand that you are performing a service for our society. We want
you to have that tax credit. Second, the number of 50 million Americans
not benefitting from our tax cut program is absolutely wrong. It's an
estimate done on an earlier form of our tax cut program and it's just
plain wrong. And secondly, although Governor Bush says that his tax cut
program, large as it is, gives a tax cut to everybody, as the newspapers
indicated earlier this week, the Joint Committee on Taxation, a
nonpartisan group in Congress, says the 27 million Americans don't get
what the governor said they would in the tax program. Al Gore and I want
to live within our means. We won't give it away as a tax cut and
certainly not to the 1% of the public that doesn't need it now. We're
focusing on the middle class in the areas they tell us they need it. Tax
credits for better and more expensive child care, tax credits for middle
class families that don't have health insurance from their employers.
The tax deduction I talked about earlier. Very exciting deduction for up
to $10,000 a year in the 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 or grandparent who is ill. And a very exciting tax credit program
that I hope I'll have a chance to talk about later, Bernie, that
encourages savings by people early in life and any time in life by having
the federal government match savings for the 75 million Americans who
make $100,000 or less up to $2,000 a year. Very briefly, if a young
couple making $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
only have guaranteed Social Security, but more than $200,000 in that
retirement fund.
[Their] plan is so complex
that the ordinary American
is never going to ever figure
out what they even qualify for.
|
Dick Cheney
You have to be a CPA to understand what he just said. The fact of the
matter is the plan is so complex that the ordinary American is never
going to ever figure out what they even qualify for. It's a classic
example of wanting to have a program, in this case a tax program, that
will, in fact, direct people to live their lives in certain ways rather
than empowering them to make decisions for themselves. It is a big
difference between us. They like tax credits, we like tax reform and tax
cuts.
More Vice Presidential Debate Excerpts
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