RACE FOR THE UNITED STATES SENATE: INTERVIEW WITH KIT BOND

On Wednesday, Oct. 14, Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, Christopher (Kit) Bond, was interviewed by Southeast Missourian Editor Ken Newton; Managing Editor Joni Adams; Political Editor Jim Grebing; Perspective Editor Jon Rust; and Publisher Gary Rust.

MR. BOND IS A UNITED STATES SENATOR. FOLLOWING IS THE TRANSCRIPT OF THE ONE HOUR INTERVIEW.

What do you see as the single most important issue in this campaign?

Well, from my standpoint, a strong, sound, economy is the most important thing we have to deal with. And, there are some positive things the government ought to do and some negative things the government ought to stop doing.

The most important thing that the government ought to stop doing is running up the deficit. That's why I have taken what is regarded as the politically unwise step of advocating and voting for a plan to cut spending to get our budget balanced in five to six years: by freezing domestic spending, freezing international spending, cutting defense spending, putting a lid on the growth of entitlements so they can grow no faster than inflation plus the growth of the entitlement class.

Beyond that I think the government could do some positive things to continue to create jobs. And I think we need to encourage a high savings, high investment economy.

We made mistakes in the 1986 tax act in destroying some of the incentives for savings. I think we need to push for infrastructure development. That's why the highway monies we were able to win for the state of Missouri are so important. They not only put people to work right away, building good highways and highway access, and bridges, they bring jobs and economic opportunity to the state.

Training and retraining for workers, either workers entering the work force or workers being laid off from one industry moving to another, that's vitally important.

I would favor that the domestic budget be frozen in many places, and cutting expensive projects we can't afford like the Super Collider, Super Conductor and Mission to Mars. This would allow us to put more money into training and other priority items like immunization and child health care.

I think that we ought to fight aggressively for openings in the export markets. I hear from a lot of small businesses that they're having trouble getting into the European Community. It's not enough for us just to negotiate open markets and free trade agreements. We've got to be aggressive in cracking down on those countries that refuse to go along with the terms of their agreement.

Nowhere is that clearer than in the oil seeds case. Twice, American soybean producers have brought charges before the GATT panel challenging the unfairness of the EC oil seeds policy. Twice they've won that case and twice the EC has refused to do anything about it.

We've taken a very strong stand, charging the European Community to do something about it. About a month ago, I was appalled, as was Jack Danforth, when the deadline passed. We asked Carla Hills what she was going to do about it, and she sent a strongly worded demand to the European Community to consider submitting the matter to binding arbitration. They turned it down.

We're going to have to do something if we're going to open up that market. We're going to have to retaliate because we cannot continue to look the other way when the European Community violates its trade agreements. These are the things that I think are vitally important. And, obviously, where my opponent stands on most of them is something I have not been able to discern.

You have a thorough and specific plan for balancing the budget. Do you want to discuss that a little bit?

I think you all have my position paper on balancing the budget. I outlined it, the five steps that we would take.

I would add by way of embellishment that at our only debate the only debate that apparently Ms. Rothman-Serot's handlers are going to let her attend she said the deficit is a problem. Previously she had told the Farm Bureau she didn't favor raising taxes, she didn't favor cutting spending, but she thinks the deficit is a problem. At the debate, I asked her repeatedly to give specifics. What would she do about it?

She said she'd cut the size of government. But she didn't say what or how much. Later on she promised that she would take the savings from cuts in defense and spend them on domestic priorities not the deficit.

Now, depending on which defense number she takes, she either cuts $750 billion out of the defense budget over five years, which is what she stated in her first television commercials. Or, after I pointed out that that would cost 200,000 jobs, she came back and told the people in the Whiteman Air Force Base area that she would only cut $150 billion over five years in total. Which means she's a bigger spender than George Bush, who proposed cutting $166 billion over five years!

I proposed cutting $177 billion.

So, depending on whatever she cuts, she's either the biggest military spender running for Congress this year if she only wants to cut $150 or she wants to cut more than anybody else I've seen but she wants to spend that on domestic priorities and she doesn't favor any lids, entitlements, or anything else. So there is no deficit reduction plan from Ms. Rothman-Serot.

There's a lot of reduction plans out there, what is it about your plan that might help it get through Congress?

It was a bipartisan plan. It was co-sponsored by leaders like (Warren) Rudman, (Sam) Nunn. But we only got 28 votes because George Mitchell launched a strong political attack on it and used election year politics to grip the Democrats in line.

I would say there were 43 or 45 senators who were interested in voting for it, if they could get it through. When they saw it was not going to make it, they dove off into the creek.

When you were here prior to the primary, you really focused on how more candidates like you needed to step forward and talk about the budget cuts. You were willing to do that even though it wasn't particularly popular. Yet the deficit hasn't been the primary focus in any of your advertisements, especially your TV advertisements. It seems like it has almost become a secondary issue.

I have made proposals and I have made speeches all over the state. In each of these I talk about the deficit. But the first series of TV ads I ran had to answer the question: "What have you done?" I spent a month-and-a-half laying out my record because in some areas in the state, where they don't enjoy good news coverage, people didn't know what I had done.

So, I laid out in detail the things I have done.

Now, in my ads I have also focused on what has become the biggest problem in this campaign, which is not a national issue. The problem in the campaign is that my opponent plays fast and loose with the truth. She says one thing and does another. She has flatly misstated on repeated occasion what my record is. I am dealing with a problem I haven't faced before. I'm dealing with an opponent who makes up things as she goes along.

I mean, she said I voted against the minimum wage, I voted against unemployment compensation extension, I voted against extending the statutes of limitations for Savings and Loan malpractice. That's not true.

She stated before the Kansas City Star editorial board that I didn't have anything to do with the highway compromise, and I even voted against the bill. I was dumbstruck. To think that somebody would sit there and say that I had nothing to do with it. I fought for it. I won the compromise that made it possible. And she says I didn't support it?

I am faced with a very real problem, because she is affirmatively misstating my position. I voted against a minimum wage increase that didn't have a training wage for teen-agers, but I voted for the $4.25 current minimum wage with the training wage. I voted for an unemployment compensation extension which was paid for and which had 13 weeks of benefits for Missouri workers. I had opposed one that had only six weeks of benefits for Missouri workers and one that was not paid for.

In the legislative process you have to vote against proposals that are insufficient in order to get better proposals and I have done that.

There has been much discussion recently about the need to reform Congress. You have been an advocate for congressional reform. Could you discuss your plans for reform?

I think certainly there are significant reforms that must be made.

I would cut committee staff by a quarter. I would establish a mandatory adjournment date. I would reform the ethics committee and provide a panel of retired judges to hear cases involving alleged ethical wrong doing. I would make Congress live by the laws that it passes for others.

I support a nationwide term limit for members of Congress. I would reduce the numbers of congressional committees. I would put a limit on the length of time anyone could serve as a committee chairman so that we would have fresh ideas and we would not have one member of the Senate or the House for lengthy periods of time serving as the chairman and controlling the work of the committee.

Do you believe that congressional reform will really happen?

It's not natural but there are some very strong forces working for us, some good things that are happening on that. And with 20 new senators coming in and with the next 34 senators coming up having had the wits scared out of them in this election, I think there is a much more fertile field for congressional reform.

It's difficult, trying to pass laws in a body that doesn't want to be reformed. But, we have the most favorable factors including the widespread upheaval that this election is sure to bring to get some push behind this strong reform movement in Congress. That's why I think there is a possibility we can get it done.

To have real reform in government, particularly in the legislative branch, doesn't there need to be changes in campaign finance laws, such as limits on amounts candidates can spend or curbing the impact of PACs?

I favor congressional campaign reform, but I don't favor having taxpayers finance our campaigns. I think that is an outrage to suggest that we ought to get in the taxpayer's pockets to fund our campaigns.

I believe along the lines recommended by the bipartisan commission appointed by the Republican and the Democratic majorities of Congress, who review campaign spending. I say get rid of PACs, limit out-of-state contributions and out-of-district contributions. I think there should be full disclosure of independent expenditures. There ought to be full disclosure of soft money expenditures. Those are areas of significant abuse.

I do not believe, though, that we should have taxpayer funding. I think that if we have Bill Clinton and a Democratic Congress, they will pass campaign taxpayer funding and make D.C. and Puerto Rico states. They will try to lock in their control. They will have motor voter registration. They will play the game politically to stack it in their favor so they don't have to be accountable. They may even get taxpayers to run their campaigns and take advantage of their incumbency to make it difficult if not impossible for anybody, except a multi-billionaire who wants to finance his or her own campaign, to crack into it.

So, you speak in terms of controlling the amounts of contributions and who contributes in what way rather than to try to limit the actual spending...

I favored the limit on campaign spending. I supported that and Common Cause when I carried that petition drive in '74. I obeyed and abided by the campaign spending limits of '76. I got four years to think about it, too.

I think full disclosure is the best way. One of the special interests the trial attorneys in Missouri put out a very strong letter of endorsement soliciting money from all the trial attorneys for my opponent because I have favored malpractice reforms to keep medical malpractice cost down. I have favored court reform and product liability reform because we have a system that rewards plaintiff's lawyers, not those people who are injured.

I think that is one of the major causes of our declining competitiveness. We have too many lawyers and too many lawsuits and they've kept worthwhile products off the market. They've killed our general aviation industry, and I'm one of the ones who want to do something about it.

Trial lawyers have gotten together and sent out a very compelling letter to other trial lawyers saying you've got to buck up with Geri Rothman-Serot. These kind of things should be fully disclosed.

Aren't there any groups that are doing the same thing on your behalf?

There are a lot of groups who support me strongly, but they don't tell me how to vote.

There are many people who are petitioning Congress and urging Congress to do things and that is part of the system. I think it is important that any political contributions they make be out in the open, that contributions be fairly collected, that they not be coursed through PACs. That's why I would dissolve PACs and have full disclosure.

You sponsored the Family Medical Leave Act in the Senate, which the President vetoed. Would you discuss why you supported the act?

I spent a lot of time working on issues of importance for children and families. And I talked to an awful lot of people in Missouri, who first came to me from the children's hospital side.

They talked about how a sick child needs a parent to be with him or her and how many parents couldn't get away from work to be with that child.

And people like the folks in the Alzheimer's organization, they talked about the need to have a child who could be with a parent, to help take care of the parent and provide assistance.

I found these compelling arguments. But the employers said the original family medical leave bill was too burdensome.

I continued to be impressed by the fact that many of the people who were arguing the case for the family medical leave, however, were businesses themselves, who said, look, family medical leave makes sense.

I said there has to be a way to work this out. Chris Dodd, who is a sponsor, came to me and asked since I had taken a lead in family issues if there were reforms that we'd like to make. So, we sat down and incorporated the reforms that the employers brought to us. It obviously didn't solve all the concerns. But I think we adopted a number of major reforms that dealt with some of the significant problems.

I believe that out of all the burdens I've seen proposed on business, and government regulation is a burden, this is one where the benefits to the family structure, to the worker, and ultimately to the community outweigh the cost.

I think it's a good bill. I think the President now believes there is something to it; his counter proposal to provide tax credits to small businesses, I think, could be helpful for providing incentives for businesses with fewer than 50 employees. I don't think the tax credit alone is sufficient to deal with the entire problem, but I hope to be able to work on it and achieve something that is a workable solution in the future.

How does Kit Bond define family values?

I think family values has been vastly overrated and misstated. I think the Republican party made a mishmash out of talking about family values. I think family values is something that develops within the family. The government should not be saying what those family values are. But I think that we as governmental officials need to work for policies that will make it possible to keep families together.

I think Barbara Bush probably got it out the best, family values are what your family thinks they are.

But we ought not to pursue policies that break families apart. Welfare has kept the man out of the house. That doesn't make sense.

In St. Louis they told us one of the big problems a lot of the social services agencies found were families who were trying to be good parents to their children having their children taken away because they didn't have adequate housing. The families were eligible, but housing vouchers weren't high enough on the list.

That's why I pushed through last year a family unification project, where we set aside a pot of $5 million for social service agencies to assist families about to lose their children or having just lost their children solely because of inadequate housing. There's a pool of housing voucher money that will go to them to allow them to keep the family together.

Child care is also very important. Too often there's a situation in a working family where the parent or parents, either single parent or both parents are working, and can't be with an elementary school child before or after school, and that child comes home as a latchkey child with no adult supervision. We can do better than that.

As a result of an amendment I proposed, we can now set up latchkey programs in our schools where outsiders come into the school building, keep the children with their classmates in that same setting until the parents can pick them up after work. In terms of doing something for the family, making sure that the child doesn't go off unsupervised, where he or she could get into trouble, or twice as likely to get into drugs or alcohol or behavioral problems, this is what we need more of.

These are positive steps that the government can take to help families.

How do you believe the United States should change its military emphasis now in light of the end of the Cold War?

We need a smaller, mobile, ready, technologically superior force. We don't need nuclear weapons. We ought to be negotiating those away and significantly downgrading our nuclear emphasis.

We need to rely more heavily on the Guard and Reserves.

We need to emphasize mobility, fast ships, and C-17s, that deliver people to places we're going to need them. We don't need the super sophisticated vehicles designed to counter the next generation of Soviet technological advances.

But we still need to reach a defense system against an accidental launch or a terrorist launch of ICBMs at the United States. The Patriot, thank Heavens we had the Patriot. It was the one thing that gave some comfort to people of Tel Aviv and Riyadh during Desert Storm.

We have the ability and the need to go ahead and deploy a limited ground-based ABM compatible anti-missile system. We need to continue to develop that because by the year 2000 the CIA estimates there will be some 15-20 countries including countries like Libya, Iraq, Iran, Syria that will have ICBM capability ... and at least the capability of chemical or biological warfare, if they don't have nuclear capability.

With democracy breaking out all over the world, how do you see the United States assisting these emerging democracies?

I think primarily through advice and counsel. I would hope we would show by our own example that democracy and the free market system works. I'm not sure we always do a great job of it. But I think we ought to be encouraging and I think we ought to use whatever persuasive power and negotiating power we have to force countries towards democracy.

I think we are far better off dealing with other nations that are democratic and free market economies. We may have disagreements with them, but if you have a democracy, if you have a free market economy, you are much less likely to have an adventuresome military tyrant who threatens the peace and stability of the world.

I think we ought to increase trade with these emerging democracies. I think our trading guides with China have been the most significant liberalizing force within China. The actuary tables are working against their leaders. And sooner rather than later the new generation of Chinese will be pushed by the examples of the successes of free market economy towards a free political market, the marketplace of ideas, as well. We need to continue pushing all countries toward democracy and towards free market economies.

What about the former Soviet Union and the emerging democracies there? What role would you have the United States take?

I think Bill Bradley had it right. We ought to applaud their efforts and not pay for it.

I think where we do provide assistance and as I have said, I would freeze the international aid budget around 1 percent of our total budget we can provide assistance tied to specific requirements.

Everybody said it was bad to tie your aid to developing countries on the requirement that they buy from you. Well, we followed that policy and the Japanese just ate our lunch.

Now our policy toward Russia is to send them the dollars to buy America goods. And, I think that's the way it should be. But probably even better is sending our energy exploration companies to Russia to develop their energy sources in partnership with the Russians.

It's a great example for them. While our private investors invest their own companies, take a risk and lose their shirts, or make profits, countries like Russia and the other former Soviet states learn how the free market system works. I think that's the best means of promoting the free economy and free democracy. They'll learn it's the best model. They'll see how it works.

What role should the federal government play in dealing with the health care crisis? Would you talk about your plans to address issues like controlling spiraling costs, expanding coverage to the uninsured and increasing portability?

I would, if you would permit me to submit for the record the full health care proposal my staff and I have put together. We have gone into great length to do it because there is no single, simple, silver bullet answer to health care. Anybody who tells you there is one is on the wrong track.

Some of the issues: affordability, making premiums fully deductible for farmers and self-employed people, provide tax credits for people who don't have health insurance, don't qualify for Medicaid. Provide assistance for small businesses through joint purchasing to lower their administrative cost, pursue administrative reforms using electronic filing which can significantly reduce the $50-$80 billion we waste each year on shuffling paper.

That's the kind of reform I see as necessary. You'll also need other things. Number one, for the consumer, lessen the burden of filling out the forms. If you're away from home and get sick, at the emergency room you hand your card to the doctor, he or she gets the information up on the computer screen and can treat you better. But it also helps identify the patient; the electronic system can monitor for abuses in Medicare.

The FBI says up to $100 billion a year is wasted on Medicare fraud, double billing, unnecessary tests, up-coding, things like that, which we can get a better handle on. Waste can be addressed through the electronic filing system.

Medical malpractice: $30 billion a year we waste on medical malpractice. Defensive medicine. Lawsuits that enrich the plaintiff's lawyers. Here we have one of our strongest disagreements. My opponent affirmatively opposes any kind of medical malpractice or any kind of court reform.

She has talked about the injured. We all want to compensate the injured people. And sure, we want to get the bad doctors out. But medical malpractice suits don't get them out. It's strong licensing boards that get them out. People who suffer because of malpractice ought to be compensated, but we spend more than half of the $30 billion each year on malpractice just putting it into the lawyers' pockets. That is one area we should and must reduce cost.

We need to emphasize preventative health care. I've sponsored immunization, satellite and rural health clinics to get the care out to people who are not served, put financial incentives on keeping people well instead of treating people at very sickly stages at the end of the game. We need to work to keep people healthy.

Here is where we have a tremendous disagreement, too. My opponent favors the national universal health care plan which could force everybody into a Medicaid system. They would have the federal government specify what has to be afforded. The state's role would be limited to deciding whether they want to pay for cosmetic surgery, private room care in the hospital.

There are no caps on spending.

There is no cut back in cost.

There is no limitation on medical malpractice.

The cost to moving to that system, according to OMB, would require more than a doubling of the income tax in the first year. We collect over $500 billion a year in income tax, personal and corporate. The first year added cost to the universal plan would be $580 billion, and that isn't the worst news. That would double the total income tax table.

Under her proposal the national health board would estimate what the health care cost would be for the following year. Then they would issue an order as to how much tax rates would have to go up. And Congress would have 60 days to disapprove that order and if they didn't disapprove that order it would go into effect automatically.

Where are the Boston Tea Party patriots when we need them? I mean, this turns over to a federal health care board the ability to increase taxes after you've already doubled the total take from all the income taxes. What kind of a scheme is that?