In the two days since John Edwards arrived in Columbus, Ohio and delivered a speech in the Plumbers & Pipefitters Local #189 union hall, I’ve not seen any full transcript of his remarks provided by either media outlets or Edwards’ own campaign website. So, on the theory that someone might like to know what is on the mind of a candidate for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, I’ve decided to transcribe my audio of the event and provide a full text version of Edwards’ speech, along with some quick snaps of the candidate and the local that day. I’ll withhold any editorial remarks I might have on Edwards’ speech for following posts.
Thank you, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you Marilyn very much for the introduction, and thank you for your support. I’m proud to have your support. Glad to be here with all of you. I want to send you first a personal message from my wife, Elizabeth. She’s in California today, but doing great, absolutely great. I don’t know about you, but I kind of enjoyed her little dustup with Ann Coulter.
I think we have an awful lot at stake in this election. We need desperately to change Washington DC. I think the system there is broken, that it’s rigged against the interests of ordinary Americans. And you can see every single day the cost to America. Why don’t we have universal health care? I’ll tell you why we don’t have universal health care. We don’t have it because of drug companies, insurance companies and their lobbyists in Washington DC. That’s why we don’t have universal health care. And we’ve got to stand up to these people. We will not have universal health care until we have a president who’s actually willing to take these people on. It’s that simple. It will not happen.
Some say the way we get to universal health care is we bring the lobbyists and the drug companies to the table. You give the drug companies a seat at the table, and they’ll eat all the food. They’ll be nothing left for America, and we have to take on this fight. We have to be strong. We have to bring America to this effort. We need change, serious substantive change in America in the worst kind of way. So let’s start with health care. The first day that I’m president of the United States, this will be my message to the Congress and to my cabinet: if you don’t pass universal health care by July of 2009, July of this year, then you lose your health care. Because there’s no excuse for politicians in Washington having health care when Americans don’t have health care.
What kind of health care do we need? We need health care that’s mandatory for every man, woman and child. We need to require by law that everyone be covered. We need to ensure that all cracks in the health care system are fixed, which means mental health parity, mental health treated the same as physical health, ban pre-existing conditions, includes preventive and chronic care, long term care, all hospital costs. Good care, decent care ought to be covered. And you’ve got to be able take your health care with you, any place you go in America. There’s no excuse for people losing their health care when they get laid off, when they can’t get a job, when they move from one place to another.
Now nothing in my health care plan is free, it costs $90 to $120 billion dollars a year, but I do have a way to pay for it: get rid of Bush’s tax cuts for people making over $200,000.
We also have extraordinary economic inequality in the United States of America, the worst it’s been since the Great Depression. It’s just, you know, those pictures that came out of the 9th ward of New Orleans? You know, I started my presidential campaign from the 9th ward of New Orleans. Those pictures: we’re not the only ones that saw them! The whole world saw them. I saw a headline overseas after the hurricane hit. It had pictures of the victims of the lower 9th ward. Big headline: “The Shaming of America.” Brothers and sisters, we don’t need a surge in Baghdad. We need a surge in New Orleans.
It’s so obvious what needs to be done. We need to make the city safe again. The levees need to be rebuilt. They need more police officers. The infrastructure needs to be rebuilt. We need to help create jobs. Now here’s a novel idea: instead of bringing Halliburton in, and giving them hundreds of millions of dollars, suppose they gave those jobs to the people of New Orleans and let them rebuild their own city.
What are we going to do about the incredible inequality that exists in America today? There are many things that we have to do. You know, back in the 1990s we didn’t get universal health care, but we got NAFTA, and since that time we got CAFTA, and we got a whole series of trade agreements that have been devastating for America and American workers. Listen, the question has been asked in the past about trade deals, “Is this trade deal good for the profits of big multinational corporations?” That will not be my question. My question will be, “Is this trade deal good for working middle-class Americans? Is this trade deal good for jobs in America? And we will have real environmental and labor standards in those agreements. I will enforce those standards, and we’ll close those tax loopholes that give tax breaks to American companies that are taking jobs overseas.
There are a few other things we need to do. Congress finally raised the minimum wage; it’s going to go to $7.25 an hour. Great. It’s not enough. The minimum wage ought to be at least nine and a half dollars an hour. It ought to be indexed to go up on its own. The greatest anti-poverty movement in American history is the labor movement. I want to say, first, thank you to all the men and women from organized labor, thank you to my hosts for having me here tonight. God bless you for that.
Here’s the way I think about this. First of all, if we’re going to maintain strength and growth in the middle class in this country, we must strengthen and grow the organized labor movement, the union movement. And I intend to be the president that walks out onto the White House lawn and talks about the importance of the union movement in the history of America, and the importance of growing the union movement in the future of America. I have a very simple view about this. In my America, when I’m president of the United States, if you can join the Republican Party by signing your name to a card, any worker in America should be able to join a union by doing exactly the same thing. That’s democracy in the workplace. And I’ll say something else to my brothers and sisters in the union movement: when I’m president, and it becomes necessary for you to go out on strike, standing up with strength and courage for decent wages, for health care, for pensions, when you’re walking that picket line nobody, nobody will be able to walk through that picket line and take your job away from you. Not when I’m president of the United States.
What about access to college? Bush has taken billions of dollars out of the federal budget for financial aid for kids to go to college. This is insanity. We should do exactly the opposite. Here is my idea, really simple. It’s called College for Everyone. We say to every young person in America, “You graduate from high school, qualify to go to college, and commit to work at least ten hours a week while you are there, America pays for your tuition and books. And we’ve actually started a model of this idea in Eastern North Carolina, Elizabeth and I did, we raised the money privately, but it’s been hugely successful so far. It only applies to the first year of college, because that’s all we could afford, but it’s been hugely successful so far. You don’t give it away; these kids have to earn it. I worked when I was in school; it didn’t hurt me, it’s a healthy thing. And then they graduate from college without so much debt that so many of our young people are faced with every single day. We have brought a level playing field over there. We’ve want to give everyone in this country a chance.
I also want to say a word about what I think is a crisis: the crisis of global warming. You know, I read a piece in a foreign newspaper, I believe it was a week or so ago, and it said in 23 years, if America doesn’t change its — the world, not America — doesn’t change its behavior, the polar ice cap will be gone. This is a serious problem. We are 4 percent of the world’s population; we put out 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. We are the worst polluter on the planet. Here’s what I think we should do. I think we should cap carbon emissions in America. I think we ought to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 80 percent by the year 2050. That cap ought to come down every single year. We need to make polluters pay to have a permit to emit carbon dioxide. That money ought to be invested in wind, solar, cellular based biofuels. I am against building any more nuclear power plants. Beyond that, I am against building any more coal-fired power plants unless they can capture their carbon. And I also want to see us investing a billion dollars into making sure America is making the most creative, the most innovative, most fuel-efficient vehicles on the planet — with union workers.
And then finally, finally, it’s time for the president of the United States to ask Americans to be patriotic about something other than war. It’s time for the president to say, “We are in this together. If we’re going to fight global warming, if we’re going to preserve this planet, we’re going to actually have to be willing to sacrifice.” You know, I think of that great John Kennedy inauguration speech: “Ask not what your country can do for you.” We are at that place again. The president of the United States needs to ask Americans to be willing to sacrifice. In this case, to conserve in your homes, conserve in your workplaces, drive more fuel efficient vehicles. We’re going to raise the fuel efficiency standard to at least 40 miles to the gallon over the course of the next few years.
I also want to say a word about what’s happening in the world, because I don’t believe — I’ve spent a lot of time overseas over the last few years. I don’t think George W. Bush has injured our reputation in the world. I think he’s destroyed it. We have so much work to do to turn that around. I just have to say — I just want to make an editorial comment here, because the Republicans spend all their time rushing to the mike and the T.V. monitors when MoveOn ran their ad about General Petraeus. Well, yesterday Rush Limbaugh said on the air that the men and women wearing the uniform of the United States of America coming home from Iraq and speaking up against the war on behalf of their fellow men and women wearing the uniform were “phony warriors.” And here’s what I want to see. I want to see if those same Republican leaders are rushing to the mikes now. I want to see if they’re rushing to the television monitors now, to the television cameras to speak out against Rush Limbaugh speaking falsehoods about patriots who wear the uniform of the United States of America. Because in my America, dissent is not unpatriotic. Dissent is democratic! We have to defend a democracy where people can speak their voice.
I know what we have to do. What we have to do to reverse what has happened over the last seven years is we have to start by reversing the damage of what Bush has done. The starting place is to end this mess of the war in Iraq. The Congress has a huge responsibility here, because the American people gave them a mandate in the election of November of 2006, and that mandate was “Force George Bush to end this war. Use the power that you have, the funding authority, to make him end this war.” They shouldn’t submit a single funding bill to this president that doesn’t have a timetable for withdrawal. And if he vetoes it, they should send another one with a timetable for withdrawal, and if he vetoes that, they should send him another one, until George Bush promises to start bringing troops out of Iraq.
And I have to tell you that on some of these issues, there are differences. There are obvious choices that have to be made by Democratic voters. Because there was an important vote that took place in the Senate last Thursday. And that vote was a resolution to call the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, a military organization in Iran, a terrorist group. That was the resolution. Now, I’m against it, I was against it, I’m against it, because I do not want to give George Bush the authority or the first step in moving toward the authority to go into Iran. Others, you know who I mean, have felt differently. And there are real — take a wild guess who I mean. My view is you cannot give George Bush that kind of authority. Have we not learned our lesson? I learned mine. And I do not want to see this happen again.
Now, it’s more than ending the war, and by the way, let me make very clear that if I were president today I’d pull out forty to fifty thousand troops immediately, continue to bring our combat troops out of Iraq over the next eight or nine months. I would engage, I would have dialogue for a period of time. I would make sure that the Iranians, the Syrians and other countries in the region were engaged in helping stablize Iraq and try to push for a political solution. Because there is no military solution. The Shia and Sunni have to reach an agreement that brings stability to Iraq.
The world stage beyond Iraq: I think Guantanamo is a national embarrassment, and I will close Guantanamo. I will stop the illegal spying on the American people. No more secret prisons. No more torture. This is my America. And it’s an amazing thing that a presidential candidate has to say these things. I mean, really, what does it say about how far we’ve come?
But beyond that, that’s to get rid of the negative, there’s so much opportunity for America to do great things in the world. It’s just riding the crest; we just have to take advantage of it. For example, suppose instead of spending $500 billion and counting in Iraq, American led an international effort to make education, not a loan, to make education available to 100 million children in the world who have education at all. Suppose we led on stopping the spread of disease with simple things like sanitation and drinking water. I’ve seen it with my own work in Africa, how important these things that we take for granted, how important they are and what an enormous difference they can make. Economic development: you know, simple things like micro-loans, microfinance.
Look, this is not just “do good.” This is very much in the interest of the United States of America, because right now, there’s an entire generation of young people in the world, and they’re sitting on the fence. On one side is Bin Laden, al Qaeda, Islamic Jihad. And on the other side is America. Which way will they go? That depends on us. Because if they see us as selfish, bullying, only interested in the expansion of American power, we will drive them in the other direction. If, on the other hand, they see America as a source of hope and opportunity, a country who actually meets its responsibility to humanity, it will pull them to us like a magnet. We need to be that magnet again.
And I want to say you’re so important. You’re so important in bringing about this change that I’ve just been talking about. Because I do have another difference from some candidates for president. Because I don’t believe that what we want to see happen is a bunch of Washington insiders negotiating with each other. And I don’t believe we should replace corporate Republicans with corporate Democrats. What do we need instead? Your voice must be heard. We need a president who actually believes that an America exists outside of Washington DC, who cares what the American people think, and who mobilizes and motivates America to take action. The great movements — and that’s what we need; this is a movement for change. The great movements in America history, they did not start in the Oval Office. I grew up, and some of you did, with the Civil Rights Movement. I know where it started. It started in places like this, where people had backbone and courage and spoke out and marched and worked hard at change. The same thing instructed the same things out and changed the moral equation. Whether you were protesting Vietnam, or are this war in Iraq, every single day.
But we need you. We need you. Your voice needs to be heard. To paraphrase Gandhi, you have to be the change you believe in. I listen to Bush about as little as I can get away with. And when I listen to him, this is what I hear: “Stay home, watch television. Dick Cheney and I, we’ll take care of you. We’ll protect you.” I don’t want that guy taking care of me! I don’t trust him, first of all, and second, that’s not America! That’s not who we are. We work hard for it; we’ll take care of ourselves.
So while I’m thinking about it, I saw a bunch of you with your cell phones taking pictures and doing other things. If you want to join the movement, you text today to 30644 and we will then know how to give you the information to join this movement. But we need you. We need every single one of you in this movement. The question is, well I’ve been through a personal experience which all of you already know about, where I was in a hospital room for many hours back a few months ago, and Elizabeth and I had to decide what we were gonna do. I do want to tell you a quick story about that, because it’s so Elizabeth. I said, “Sweetie, I will do whatever you need me to do. I’ll come home, we’ll stay at home,” and she said, “And then what? Stare at each other?” But this is the cause of our lives. This movement for change, this cause on behalf of working men and women in this country, this is who we are. So that’s what I’m going to do for the rest of my life. But we need you in this movement. We need you to join in this movement. I’ll tell you: if you want to live in a moral, fair and just country where everybody gets a chance no matter where you live and what your family is — I don’t know about you, but I didn’t win a genetic lottery. No matter the color of your skin, no matter who your family is, if you want to see an America once again leading a moral and just world, your voice needs to be heard. We need you. We need you involved. Join us in this cause. Join us in this movement. And together, build an America where all of us are a part of it, and we’ll live in a world where the rest of the world joins us in mutual respect. That’s our America.
