The Massachusetts Democrat decries the Republicans’ budget plans, and he warns that Americans need to understand our country’s decreased ability to change things on the international stage. Excerpted from “Senator John Kerry,” April 1, 2011.

JOHN KERRY, U.S. Senator (D-MA); Chairman, Senate Foreign Relations Committee

 

Thank you for the invitation to come back here to The Commonwealth Club. I particularly respect [your] mission to be the leading national forum for impartial discussions on issues of public importance to our nation. I can actually remember when that used to be the job of the United States Senate. I’m here to talk to you about how we might be able to return it to that. I’m also relieved to be in San Francisco, because I know that when I talk to you about infrastructure, you’ll know I mean building roads and bridges. If I was in Los Angeles, they’d think I was talking about plastic surgery. You have to pick your audiences carefully, folks.

The truth is, there’s a reason for my saying that, because I think you may have a greater appreciation of historic investment, frankly, because you have more of it than many parts of the country. I met with a whole group of energy entrepreneurs, which is a particular topic that we’ll talk about a bit, but you all share a remarkable spirit of entrepreneurial activity and innovation.

We share that in Massachusetts. This great city is, of course, the home to one of the marvels of engineering, the marvels of building by Americans, decades in the making: the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s no exaggeration to say that that extraordinary landmark is to many the West Coast equivalent of the Statue of Liberty. It has become a symbol of freedom, a symbol of hope. It is the gateway, the gateway west for ships going to war, for goods going to the marketplace. It is also, on the flipside, the majestic entry into the United States for families, perhaps reuniting, for immigrants coming; it’s a statement about endless opportunities and possibilities, which define our great country, still.

Now, I want to remind you that that reputation of the Golden Gate Bridge that I just described didn’t come without a struggle. When the Golden Gate Bridge was completed, its chief engineer, Joseph Strauss, wrote a poem in which he celebrated the fact, and I quote, that “the mighty task is done.” The mighty task, “Launched ‘midst a thousand hopes and fears, damned by a thousand hostile sneers.” Now, I know how Joseph Strauss felt, because an awful lot of what has been proposed in Washington these days, whether to strengthen our economy to achieve energy independence, to fix our health-care system, or just to put the fiscal house in order, is damned by a thousand hostile sneers – or worse, a thousand filibusters.

Now, the tragic wounding of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January momentarily shook Washington out of the reflexive pattern of partisan routines, but I’m sad to say only momentarily. Here we are, a couple of months later, having arrived at an extraordinary moment in our history, where a small group of people driven by rigid ideology rather than common sense or reason are threatening to shut down the federal government if they don’t get their way. The folks who bring you the Republican budget, H.R.1 as it’s called, the Republican budget: a statement of values and principles, a statement of where you’re willing to go as a nation. They’re willing to slam the brakes on investments, and the research and development that we so desperately need so America doesn’t fall behind other countries in the global economy.

Unlike any farmer of good practice anywhere in the world and any true conservative, it seems that this new crowd is literally content to eat America’s economic seed-corn, even if it means going hungry tomorrow. They’re okay with shutting down the scientific and medical labs that are discovering the secrets of the universe and making breakthroughs in cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, and a host of deadly diseases that cost us billions of dollars. They’re all right with sidelining the Environmental Protection Agency when all the science is clear and compelling that climate change costs us, now, billions of dollars every year and threatens our national security.

They’re ready to shred the safety net that keeps tens of millions of Americans out of poverty. Those are just some of the all-too-real choices that are hidden behind the seductive simplicity of their rants about the never-ending deficit, which their own policies built up over eight years without one word of objection and which they then added to so flagrantly, undoing the economy of our nation as they allowed Wall Street to run amuck while their foxes guarded the chicken coops. Think about it. Let me assure you, folks, let me assure you that behind the politically staged positioning that you observe in Washington right now, the accusations about who might be responsible for a government shutdown – behind all of that, the stakes for our nation simply could not be higher.

We are locked in a fight over what kind of country we’re going to be. What do we intend to define ourselves as in the course of this century? We are in a fight for the soul of our country. Now, the choice they’re offering you, through us, is pretty simple: make cuts that will undermine our strength and standing in the world and hurt our most vulnerable citizens, or they will force a debt crisis for the United States government. It’s a choice that’s not only unacceptable in the most basic ways, it’s unjust, it’s immoral and it’s dangerous.

Here we are at a time in our economy when the upper 1 percent of income earners of our nation now take away nearly a quarter of all the nation’s income, every single year. In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent now boasts ownership of 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Twenty-five years ago it was 12 percent that possessed about 33 percent of the nation’s wealth, just to give you a sense of what happened.

 

Death by a thousand cuts

As the rest of America has gone down or clawed viciously just to hold their own, the wealthiest Americans have gone dramatically up. Yet, despite all the evidence, despite all the historical basis of how we got to be who we are as a nation, the House ideologues are threatening to shut down the government if we don’t give them a government of the 1 percent, by the 1 percent, and for the 1 percent. Now, I simply refuse to accept that. I simply don’t believe that the choices that congressional Republicans are giving us today are what the American people voted for last fall. They voted for honesty, accountability and transparency, but above all they voted for jobs. We’re learning fast and we’re learning the hard way that talking about jobs isn’t the same thing as creating them. Because a report from Moody’s Analytic Chief Economist Mark Zandi – who incidentally happened to advise John McCain during the course of the last campaign, he’s a Republican – shows that the Republican budget would in fact destroy 700, 000 jobs through 2012.

It’s not just the existing jobs that this plan would destroy. [In] the House budget plan, you have to look at what they’re specifically proposing to cut, and then you’ll really begin to understand how much this is dangerous, how much it threatens our competitiveness and our well-being as a nation for the long term. Let me describe it: They want to take $1 billion away from Head Start, meaning 157,000 children would go without preschool care. Now, I didn’t realize that we were doing such a good job of preparing our children for the next generation to excel or compete, or that every child in America was getting what they need, that it was time to start to scale back that particular effort. What analysis suggests that America would do better with less parents able to go to work because their kids are in childcare or with fewer children receiving the critical input that every child development doctor will tell you they need in those early stages of life? What analysis is there? None, but that’s what they want to do.

They zero out Planned Parenthood funding, decimating the 280 health centers that Planned Parenthood operates. [These are] centers where 90 percent of the work in the country on preventative primary health-care for Americans who can’t get it otherwise is done. What analysis suggests that less preventative health care’s going to reduce disease, increase the well-being of Americans, reduce the cost of the health-care system? None, but for the ideologues that doesn’t matter. They want to carve $5.7 billion from the Pell grants. Now there’s a really brilliant idea. Give the richest people in the world a tax break without any guarantee that they invest one dime of it here in the United States of America, and then pay for that transfer of wealth from the average American to the wealthiest by taking money away from needy students.

That gives new definition to the word immoral, in my judgment. The United States has fallen to 12th in the world – we’re not going up, we’re going down – in terms of the percentage of 25- to 34-year-olds with a college education. The last thing we need now is for House Republicans to plan to take away some or all of the Pell Grants that help 9.4 million low-income students be able to go to college so they can go compete in the global economy.

Ask any business executive, anywhere across the United States, and they’ll tell you: there’s a crying need for skilled workers in America. You know what? We’re changing our immigration laws, so that we allow more skilled workers to come and live in the United States, because we’re not producing them. Yet, they want to cut the capacity to produce them at a time when too many businesses simply can’t find enough people to compete in the global marketplace. I’ve got to tell you, with our economy facing strong competition from countries around the globe, please tell me, how does it make any sense to make it harder for kids to go to college? Is that going to make us more competitive? Is that going to help our economy create jobs? It is simply beyond question.

I’m only touching on a few of the choices. But it is beyond question that the rigidly ideological approach of the House Republican budget, voted for by all but about three Senate Republicans, is going to set our economy back and with it our nation’s future, and it will make us more dependent on foreign skilled workers, and provide an incentive for businesses to take their money overseas and invest and create the jobs where the skilled workers are. It doesn’t stop there, folks. With 13.6 million Americans out of work, is this the time to cut $2 billion for job training programs that help 8 million adults, many of them 55 years old, 48 years old, at a stage of life where it’s harder to make a transition? Is this the time to cut off their ability to make a transition that has been caused by something over which they had absolutely no control, and in a dangerous world, where everyone talks about homeland security? Is it really a good idea to take $856 million away from our state and local law enforcement agencies and trim the FBI’s budget by $74 million, and how smart is it to cut $1.6 billion from the National Institutes of Health, where we seek to cure diseases?

Eight hundred ninety-nine million dollars from energy efficiency and renewable programs, where we seek to increase our security and become energy independent? Just today, I met with 20 CEOs of companies, all of them right here in your backyard, creating jobs, providing an opportunity for the future, helping America to grow. They’re all telling me that [if] these [programs] get cut, the viability of their deals at the earliest stages, before America creates enough energy demand, will all be at risk.

Nine hundred fifty million dollars is going to be cut from clean water. Is that because our water is so clean in America? Because we don’t still get cancer from places that are next door to old toxic waste sites and brown fields? Where’s the rationale for that at a time when we need to reduce disease and increase our citizens’ health? One point three billion dollars being cut from community health centers where we help offer the poor the promise of a healthy future. Seven hundred fifty-five million dollars cut from the Centers for Disease Control, where we protect Americans from communicable disease.

Our country desperately needs better than a stalled process which delays the very tough decisions that we do need to make [about] how we’re going to reduce our federal deficit while maintaining our important investments in infrastructure, research, education, technology and clean energy. All of the things that will result in the new jobs and bolster our long-term competitiveness. The American people deserve a serious dialogue within the Congress about our fiscal situation, about discretionary spending, about entitlements, and about revenues. What we need to do is work toward a long-term solution to reduce both our current budget deficit and the staggering debt, and yes, we need to reduce federal spending and make appropriate changes to entitlement programs to meet the fiscal challenge.

Right now, we are staring at another economic opportunity of actually bigger proportions, extraordinary proportions – we’re staring at it right in our face, and so far, we are doing precious little about it while other countries are racing toward it. The current energy economy, my friends, is a market with 4 billion users today going up to 6, because that’s the planet’s population today, going up to about 6.5 billion in the course of the next 20-30 years, because that will be the population. The fastest [component] of that economy is green energy, projected to be a $2.3 trillion market in 2020. Yet as of today, most of this investment will be in Asia, and not in the United States.

 

Room for argument

Today, it’s possible for 41 senators representing only about one-tenth of the American population to bring the Senate and the country to a standstill. Now, certainly I do believe the filibuster has its rightful place. I used it personally to stop drilling for the oil in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, and we won by one vote. I understand the importance of it, but you can’t do it every day. You can’t have it be on every judge, every bill, every day. Even the motion to proceed to debate a bill and so forth. Sixty or more senators ought to be required to speak up and be present and be on the floor and take part in that debate, and let the American people decide whether it’s worthy of 60 votes, or 40 votes, or more.

We went to the moon, so don’t tell me we can’t build a high-speed rail system here on Earth. We split the atom, so don’t tell me we can’t harness energy from the Sun and the wind, and bio-fuels, and reinvent energy. We gave the world the Internet, so don’t tell me we can’t bring wireless Internet to every single American household, like Franklin Roosevelt brought electricity to every American household. Don’t tell me we can’t have an education system, having invented public education, that isn’t once again the envy of the world. What bothers me more than the argument that we can’t do big things anymore is the idea that somehow this rich country can’t afford to invest in its own future anymore. Even in these tough economic times. My friends, the Golden Gate Bridge; there’s a reason I started with that. The Golden Gate Bridge was built during the Great Depression. It was built during years when Americans were standing in breadlines, and one out of every four [Americans] was unemployed. And today, no one can imagine San Francisco without that bridge.

Reliable, modern infrastructure like the Golden Gate Bridge has never been a luxury. It’s the life-blood of an economy; it’s the key to connecting our markets, to moving products and people, to generating and sustaining millions of jobs for American workers. And, this is especially true in the face of global competition. Our competitors are investing more and more, and it’s going to get harder and harder for the United States to catch up if we don’t get going.

Other countries are doing what we ought to be doing. They’re racing ahead, because they created infrastructure banks to build a new future for themselves. If we want to keep America the leader in the world economy, we need to make America the world’s builders again, and we need to have our own national infrastructure bank. That’s exactly what the Build Act that I introduced a week ago is going to do: Create a new American infrastructure bank that will leverage private capital, with some small amount of public funds, into loan guarantees and help build the infrastructure and undo the deficit that’s plaguing our nation for decades.

Do we give up on the notion that America can lead in the 21st century and cede our leadership to others? Is that what you want? Do we stand by while China invests 9 percent of its GDP [in infrastructure] and Europe invests 5 percent and we invest barely 2 percent?

Or, do we find common ground, with creative thinking, that pushes the curve and remembers that American exceptionalism – that everyone likes to talk about – is not on automatic. It’s a birthright, but not a birthright where you don’t have to do anything. It’s a birthright of opportunity; a birthright for us to seize the moment and do the things we know how to do.

America is exceptional, because when it really matters we come together and do exceptional things.

When the Soviets were beating us in the space race, President Lyndon Johnson said, “First in space means first, period. Second in space is second in everything.” Today, second in infrastructure is second in everything.

Part of our problem is this [congressional] gridlock. But as bad as it is, I know we can reach a bipartisan consensus [for] this infrastructure bank. It is not often that you get Richie Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, standing with Tom Donohue, chairman and CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, together in support of any piece of legislation, but they came together the other day to say, “We can do this.” Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and I, along with our colleague John Warner, are intent on trying to get this passed.

We are builders. It’s part of our DNA. We build no matter what, through depression and recession, through surplus, through deficit, through war and peace. If you look at the 20th century, you know it was an American century. A century that saw us build the Panama Canal, rebuilt Europe and Japan after world war, a century in which the highway system was built; miles of asphalt and concrete shaped our countryside, our way of life. A century in which we leaped into space, wired the entire planet for communication, for commerce. That’s the story of the 20th century, and together we need to find the common ground to make the 21st century another American century.

Just like the Golden Gate Bridge, it is meeting mighty challenges that has always defined this country, and that is the dream that makes this the United States of America. We’ve got to get back to business, folks.

 

Question and answer session with DR. GLORIA C. DUFFY, president and CEO of The Commonwealth Club

 

DUFFY: You have pointed out that the majority of the Republicans’ cuts are from 12 percent of the budget. So let’s talk about the other 88 percent. Having pointed out that the U.S. budget is largely driven by the cost of Social Security, Medicare, defense, etc., what would you propose to cut in those areas?

KERRY: Well, I wouldn’t cut Social Security benefits. I don’t think you have to cut benefits in Social Security, and I don’t think it’s appropriate to cut benefits in Social Security. We can make Social Security whole well through this century. We did it before; we did it with Reagan back in the ’80s.

We have to put things on the table. Like, why do we stop asking people to pay into it after $106,000 of income? It doesn’t make sense to me that someone earning $40-50,000 ought to be sending a check to a multi-millionaire in their retirement once they’ve lived well beyond the period that the system was designed to pay out for.

Social Security is a wonderful system. We want to protect it. It was designed by Roosevelt at a time when the life expectancy was 62 and you retired at age 65. That’s a pretty good program. That works. But now life expectancy is about 85, so you have people that are living way beyond what the system was built to support. Bottom line, folks: it’s just not that complicated.

Medicare and Medicaid are much more complicated. They will, to some degree, depend on the full implementation of the Obama health-care plan.

DUFFY: The New York Times assembled a lot of poll data a while ago, asking Americans where they thought the budget might be cut, and weapons of mass destruction was very high on the list of what people thought were where too much money goes that doesn’t have a lot of utility.

KERRY: We still have hundreds, literally thousands, more warheads that we actually need to legitimately defend ourselves. Most threat analyses say we can do with less if we could get the other folks that possess them to do with less.

DUFFY: What’s your assessment of the future of U.S. nuclear power in light of tsunami damage to Japanese reactors?

KERRY: The initial question here is: What the hell was anybody doing building six reactors right on an earthquake fault where you have tsunamis? I don’t get it. I don’t think you damn the entire concept as a consequence of such sheer hubris, if not, stupidity. The marketplace is going to have a lot to do with this decision. Right now nuclear power in America anyway is out-priced. It’s just not cost effective, and Wall Street won’t support the funding of some site at this particular instant, I don’t think.

If you have sufficient design requirements, sufficient redundancy, sort of a failsafe standard, and particularly with respect to siting of it, it is possible, if it works economically, to be part of the mix. But the marketplace will decide if it works economically. I’m not sure if you could create or meet all those standards of redundancy and failsafe and siting and still wind up being economic. That’s the test, and as solar keeps coming on faster and faster, and wind and alternative renewable, one kind or another, it’s going to really compete against that [nuclear] possibility. But it has to be a part of the mix and consideration right now.

DUFFY: Given your role as chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, what do you think of President Obama sending advisors to Libya? Please explain the thought process supporting the theory that the turmoil in Libya possesses a security threat to our country, and what about the congressional role in approving the commitment of U.S. forces abroad.

KERRY: The pesident sent a formal notification, which [the law] requires, to the Congress, and we are drafting up an authorization in my committee; whether we need it or not, I don’t know yet. It says that within 60-90 days of the commission of American troops into hostilities, we have to sign off on it or else they have to be withdrawn. Which is good, there’s a check there, and Congress takes it seriously.

President Obama was well within, way within, his legitimate authority as president and commander in chief to respond to an emergency – in particular, the way that he did, defined in the limited scope that it is.

The president purposefully said America will join in this under the right circumstances. We shouldn’t do it unilaterally. We need to have the UN, and if the UN fails [and] if push came to shove and we needed to do something, we ought to have the Arab League and/or the Gulf states. We got them all, folks. Unexpectedly, the Arab League asked for this intervention. The Libyan opposition asked for this intervention. The Gulf States’ Cooperation Council asked for this intervention.

The best thing that could happen in that part of the world is to have transparency and accountability, and a process whereby people can begin to say, “We could have our life dreams fulfilled without having to go blow people up and think that the only thing left is to go to paradise as a martyr.” That’s in our interest, as far as I’m concerned. Because I can foresee this getting worse and bigger, as we go down the road, if you just leave millions of young people in the Muslim world to be unemployed and uneducated, and under the thumb of a dictator who’d be able to direct their anger against us. The best thing you could have is this breakout into the sunshine.