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On Taxes – In Their Own Words
First Democratic Debate
April 26, 2007
South Carolina State University
MSNBC

Williams: Let's talk about health care, an issue that currently ranks a solid second in virtually every opinion poll in the United States. Senator Edwards, you have said you would raise taxes to pay for a health care plan. The question is: Which ones?

Edwards: I would get rid of George Bush's tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year. But I want to say, this is an example -- we've had a lot of discussion tonight -- not a great deal of discussion so far about the substance of the very specific ideas that each of us have on big issues. I'm proud of the fact that I have a very specific universal health care plan which I think is different than some others on the stage who are running for president. And I think we have a responsibility, if you want to be president of the United States, to tell the American people what it is you want to do. Rhetoric's not enough. High-falutin' language is not enough. And my plan would require employers to cover all their employees or pay into a fund that covers the cracks in the health care system -- mental health parity, which others have spoken about; chronic care; preventative care; long-term care; subsidized health care costs. Give people a choice, including a government choice; no pre- existing conditions -- banned as a matter of law. And the law actually requires that every single American be covered.

Williams: Senator Biden, a quote from Tom Friedman in The New York Times: "Unfortunately, today's presidential hopefuls are largely full of hot air on the climate energy issue. Not one of them is proposing anything hard." What would you propose for the average American that would be hard?

Biden: I thought you were going to read Tom Friedman's quote saying I was the only one who had a plan on Iraq. You ought to read that one, too. I thought that was the one, when you said Tom Friedman. Now, all kidding aside, it is a simple proposition. We have to make a equivalent of what Freedman was talking about, a Manhattan Project. We have to fundamentally shift the way we do it. The way we started off -- Barack and I have a bill to make sure that every automobile sold in the United States is a flex-fuel automobile; every gas station in America, by the year 2009, has to have 10 percent of it's pumps pumping E85 ethanol. We also have legislation in requiring we invest $100 million a year for the next couple of years while this president is president in order to be able to find lithium battery technology to be able to power our cars.
We also have legislation talking about capping emissions. Cap them now; not wait. Cap them where they are now. Time's running out. But you have to be willing to make multi-billion dollar investments over the next 10 years and set hard goals in order to be able to get to the point where we are no longer dependent.