Excerpts
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): President Clinton, thank you very much for talking with us.
FORMER PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: Glad to do it, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We are here at the hotel in New York where the Clinton Global Initiative is meeting. For the last five years, the main focus has been on developing countries -- the rest of the world.
This year, you've expanded the focus to this country, your home country -- a struggling economy, the need to create jobs. Why do you think -- well over a year after the recession ended -- the economy still hasn't taken off here?
BILL CLINTON: Because of the nature of this recession, primarily, and because of the way it played out in people's lives. Let me just give you a couple of examples. We lost about $3 trillion in immediate economic activity. We actually have done a better job coming out of it in the last year than other countries have. We've recovered 70 percent of our GDP growth, Germany: 60 (percent), Japan: 50 (percent), the U.K.: 30 (percent).
But that's not enough to get people back to work and everybody is still spooked. Banks have $1.8 trillion in cash now. The financial system was saved. That cash is uncommitted to loans. So, and then it takes a long time to start these new jobs. The stimulus bill did not fail, but only a third of the stimulus was ordered to creating new jobs and it's going to have a big impact but there is a long lag time.
Then the final problem is ... in the last decade, we dropped from first to 12th in the world with the percentage of our people with college degrees at the time when the difference between people with a college education without it got bigger. That is, the unemployment rate -- the chart and all the press yesterday -- the unemployment rate among non college graduates is about 11 percent and it's right at 4 (percent) for those have degrees. And for the first time now, we've got posted job openings in America going up twice as fast as new hires. If we were just filling for those jobs with skilled people we'd have 5 million more people at work.
JUDY WOODRUFF: You know so many business leaders as well as political leaders, why do you believe that they are not using -- you've said, I think -- $1.6 trillion in cash they are sitting on in these businesses to create jobs?
BILL CLINTON: Well, the good news is they don't want to spend the money overseas or they would have already done that because about 80 percent of this money -- $1 trillion plus -- is in the hands of 75 companies. And that's one where probably neither party can give you the answer.
I think my party's got the right answer on the job training and on where the jobs are growing in small business and manufacturing and green energy, and I think the financial oversight bill will lead to more lending in positive ways and I think repealing it, which the other side wants to do, will lead to more gambling -- which got us in trouble in the first place.
But neither party has done this. I think that in order to answer your question really what we need to do is to interview those 75 companies that have 85 percent of this money and find out what it would take to get them to invest.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Because I'm asking because you know so many of these...
BILL CLINTON: I do.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Is it your sense that they are justified in not spending the money to create jobs?
BILL CLINTON: Well, it's not that they don't want to. I mean let's take Cisco. I talked to John Chambers today. They've actually created 6,000 jobs in America this year. But they've got a lot more money they can use.
I talked to another executive who's got $1 billion in the bank said he could create 10,000 jobs tomorrow. He's trying to determine what the new environment will cost him. That is, he wants to know over the next five years what are his taxes, will he spend more or less for health care. If so, how much? What are the environmental rules going to be?
I think a lot of this is just settling down. People were so traumatized by all the horrible things that happened from, you know, after the financial meltdown in 2008, it was a real problem. But I think, that I think is a fairly easy, straightforward thing to do.
The real money though -- the banks have multiple, so if they have $1.8 trillion in cash they could loan $18 trillion in money and end the global recession. The job training program.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: Politics. I have to ask you about this. We are 5 and a half weeks away from the midterm elections, it's looking like a tough reckoning for Democrats in November. Few people know the American electorate as well as you do. Can President Obama still get people to listen to him to get a message across? Or have people just stopped listening?
BILL CLINTON: Well, some have stopped listening. They do that. I found it myself. I told him the other day, as far as I could tell they hadn't said anything about him they didn't say about me in '94. And part of it is just frustration because people don't feel better. Then there is this larger -- the Republican narrative against him has two points.
One is: They had 21 months to fix this mess, they didn't fix this, put us back in. The larger narrative is he's a closet socialist who wants to spread this bureaucratic government pall across the country and crush the spirit of liberty and individual initiative and small business vitality and it's not American.
I think what he should say back is to their charge: They put us in a $3 trillion hole and 21 months wasn't enough to get out of it. They dug, you gave them eight years to dig this hole, just give us two more years, give us four years to dig out of it. Just half what you gave them and if it's not better you can throw us all out in two years. That is: people are angry and you need to do it.
But then I would advise him and all the Democrats to talk about what we are going to do now and ask them who is more likely to do it. In other words, if this is a referendum on people's anger and apathy -- so our side stays home and their side's inside -- we don't do well. If it's a choice between who is going to do what, we can do well. And that's what I hope it will be.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But the president has been saying for some weeks, maybe months he has been saying the election is a choice between continuing with present policy or going back to the Republican policies of the last administration, and so far Democrats are not nearly as energized as Republicans, conservatives and certainly not as energized as the tea party.
Readers, please pay close attention to the following, particularly the last paragraph ...
BILL CLINTON: That is because he needs to explain, he and all of the Democrats each on their own -- and I'd like to see some national advertising -- explain why we didn't get out of the hole, but then the stimulus it did more good than it was projected to do, not less. And talk about how, their position is inherently not tenable if you are thinking. I mean we had Republican presidents for 12 years before I became president. They quadrupled the national debt. We paid $600 billion down on the national debt. They could have stayed with the budget I had, we'd be out of debt by 2012. They only care about the deficit and spending when Democrats are in.
Instead of staying with my budget plan they went back to trickle-down economics. They doubled the debt all over again, before the financial meltdown. Before the meltdown, we only had 2 ½ million jobs -- 10 percent as many as in my eight years. The American people say we don't care, we're angry, we're frustrated -- and they are buying all this. Our side is neither defended the -- they just have taken these attacks without an effective defense. And since people are literally not feeling better, they may be going back to embracing the changes, the policies that got us in trouble.
Let me just give you one example. There was a big chart in the paper yesterday, unemployment among non college graduates almost 11 percent. Among college graduates 4 percent. Where new job openings are going up twice as fast as job hires because there is a big skills mismatch. OK. Here is one thing this election is about:
The Democrats support the student loan reform that makes it cheaper to finance a college education and gives every single college graduate from now on the right to pay their loan back as a small percentage of their income over 20 years. Massive economic significance. The Republicans are committed to repealing it, taking the money they were giving the students and giving it back to banks for basically no risk. In other words they are running on a promise to make it more expensive and harder to go to college, on a record that saw us drop from first to 12th in the world in the percentage of young adults who are college graduates for the first time since World War II.
And people want to be apathetic in the face of that, or do they want to vote for that? No, they say, 'Bill I'm sorry that's going to happen but I'm just so angry. I have to vote anyway.' I mean we need to make this election about something real and clear and if it is than we should honorably embrace the results and not feel bad. I don't think we're putting up a good fight yet.
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JUDY WOODRUFF: One last question, I've looked at your schedule over the next few weeks, you are slated to appear with a number of Democratic candidates. I am told you are going to be out on the road for much of the month of October. In fact, you are in greater demand in a number of these races, these competitive races, out on the trail than the president is. How do you explain that?
BILL CLINTON: Well, they always like you better when you're gone. They always do. I think that, you know, and it may not be popular to say this is but what I honestly believe -- I'm not running for anything anymore. I can't run for anything. But I do spend an hour a day studying this economy. I love my country and I want us to do well.
I believe the president and the Congress have done better than the American people think. I'm not upset that they are not getting credit for it because Democrats get hired when the country is messed up and people hire us to fix things. People don't feel better. They don't feel things fixed. So it's OK they are not getting credit for it.
But what the American people need to do is to do what's best for themselves and their family. The only things that really matter are: what are we going to do now? And once you settle on that, who is more likely to do it? If the election is about that, I think we'll do fine. Take a few licks in the marginal races that we shouldn't probably have won anyway. If the election is about my anger, my apathy, my amnesia about who's going to do what, then that's a tough environment for us.
But the Republicans have been really very straightforward in what they want to do. It's not just repeal health care. They want to repeal the student loan reform. They want to repeal the financial oversight. They want to move toward privatizing Social Security and Medicare. They want to do, in short, what they've wanted to do for 30 years.
And we now we had all this experience. It doubled the debt, produced 10 percent as many jobs as I did, got us in the mess we're in. And so our answer is we're going to throw the Democrats out after 21 months and bring back the people who made the decisions that put us in a hole in the first place?
I think what the Democrats need to say is: 'we share your anger, we honor your anger. If we fail you throw us out but you gave them eight years, give us four. Just half as much as you gave them. Give us four. If it's not better in two years, you can vote us all out. But give us enough time to get out of the hole and move America forward,' and then say what you're going to do. I think that's the main chance they've got to make this a good election.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And they've got five weeks to do it in.
BILL CLINTON: Five weeks. That's plenty of time. If you look at the, the one interesting thing is both parties are held in fairly low esteem and people just think 'well if I throw the Democrats out maybe they'll be forced to work together.' In other words, it's not really, but there is not much understanding of these specific differences in what they are offering to do.
And I think maybe the apathy vote is more important for the Republicans in their surging even in the tea party vote. The tea party vote, its manifestation is their base voters are going to show up. That always happens. Once you are out you feel more threatened, you get more energized, you want to show up.
What's more important is that all those people who voted for the first time ever in 2006 and 2008 realize that this is not, there are no one-time miracle votes. Citizenship is a lifetime job and if you want to protect the votes that you cast and protect the policies you support, you've got to show up again and if don't you can't complain if you lose and everything you voted for is washed away. It's your fault for staying home. That's what people have to understand.
Bold-blue emphasis mine
President Clinton is saying the same thing I have in this blog. President Obama and the Democrats have NOT been in control long enough to dig our economy out of the 8yr hole the Republicans dug.
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