Christopher Dodd

Transcript: Christopher Dodd during the second Democratic 2008 presidential primary debate (June 03, 2007) in New Hampshire

BLITZER: All right. Senator Dodd -- he voted against the funding as well. Senator?

SEN. CHRISTOPHER DODD (D) CONNECTICUT; Well, first of all, let me thanks John Edwards for the nice compliment. I appreciate that... (LAUGHTER) ... in the midst of all this.

Wolf, the first responsibility, and the first priority of an American president is to keep our country safe and secure.

This policy in Iraq has failed. It is a civil war. Everyone who has looked at this issue has drawn the conclusion that there is no military solution to it. It seems to me then it's incumbent upon us -- given the fact that we are less safe, less secure, more vulnerable, weaker today, not stronger as a result of this policy -- that we ought to try to bring it to a close. So I thought the right thing to do was to pursue and push this issue of having a date certain or it tied to funding. It's very, very important, so that we have the ability to move beyond this. This war has caused many casualties, not the least of which are our troops, obviously, but also the foreign policy. Your first question on terror has been directly affected because of this policy in Iraq.

BLITZER: Senator Dodd, you know most of the polls show an overwhelming majority of the American public favors making English the official language of the United States.

DODD: Well, I think the points that were made by Barack Obama and Hillary are very, very important here. This is the kind of question that does divide us.

Just a related point here: We need to be encouraging more language training in our country. At the time of the 9/11 attacks here, we had advertisements running in national newspapers for anybody who could speak Arabic, here.

We have too few of our people in our country that can understand second languages. This is the 21st century. This is a global economy. We need to encourage more diversity in that.

BLITZER: All right...

DODD: Certainly, we have a national language here. I speak fluent Spanish, along with Bill Richardson.

BLITZER: All right...

DODD: I'm proud of the fact I speak two languages. But we ought to be encouraging more of that in the country and not talking about how we have one official language in our nation. That's not helping our country.

BLITZER: Thank you, Governor. I promised Senator Dodd he could weigh in as well.

DODD: Well, listen, this is a -- there's not a person in this audience or who's watching this program who wouldn't tell you that they've encountered the problems of the health care system in this country. It is shameful. We rank 42nd in infant mortality in the United States worldwide. We rank 45th in life expectancy.

It is shameful that in the 21st century we have 47 million of our fellow citizens without health care coverage; 9 million children. And the number's growing every single day.

Look, as we've said here, there's basic agreement about universality here, dealing with information technology, preventive care, chronic illnesses -- what's been missing in all of this is the ability to bring people together to get the job done.

BLITZER: All right... DODD: That's what I've done for 26 years. That's what you need to be able to do... I'm going to...

DODD: ... because no one party is going to write this whole thing. It's going to take cooperation to get it done.

Senator Dodd, gas prices are at record high levels. Granite Staters are frustrated. Americans are frustrated. What would you do to reduce gas prices?

DODD: Well, this is a major crisis issue, obviously. Energy, related problems, obviously, problems with global warming, the dependency on the Middle East for so much of our energy supplies.

It's a national security issue. It's a health care issue.

The problems are profound here and require some very strong answers.

I also think this issue provides incredible opportunities for us to grapple with and deal with here, if we have the kind of strong leadership in the country. I believe we can make a difference here on reducing our dependency on those sources of energy while simultaneously rolling back the problems of global warning -- of global warming.

Today we have the solar -- polar caps melting, we have greenhouse gases that are accumulating at record levels way beyond expectations.

We really have the dual responsibility here of reducing the polluting effects of depending upon fossil fuels and also allowing us to develop the alternative technologies that would allow us to move beyond this issue.

I've introduced a plan here that would require a by the year 2017 50 miles per gallon standard for our automobiles. I believe that can be done. We ought to do it immediately, in my view.

And a carbon tax, in my view, so that you make the polluting dependencies, the polluting fuels, more expensive and encourage them through the use of revenues collected, to move aggressively on developing the alternative technologies of solar and wind and other sources of energy we could use.

BLITZER: Thank you, Senator, but the question is: What would you do right now to reduce the price of gasoline?

DODD: Well, what we've offered already, in fact, and that is, of course, we ought to be saying here that when the price of a barrel of oil gets beyond $40 a barrel, where there's plenty of profit here, that those dollars ought to be returned to the consumers in a rebate or plowed back into the research that would allow us to develop alternative technologies.

But the real way to get away from this here, our dependency on that kind of fuel is causing us serious problems across the board. So it isn't just a price of fuel issue here, it's also depending upon polluting technologies that are going to cost us so much.

BLITZER: Senator Dodd, are there relics of the Cold War, big- ticket military items that you would cut?

DODD: Well, first of all, thank you for your service as well.

And, by the way, whatever other disagreements there are about policy, all of us here on this dais applaud immensely the work being done by our men and women in uniform. I think a round of applause for... (APPLAUSE)

And that's the right issue, I think. We're not listening to our senior military people, by the way, who tried to engage in a transformation of our military needs here, recognizing that there are different threats we face today than we did during the Cold War.

And clearly, there needs to be a reassessment of what those priorities are, what those systems are so that we're strong enough.

We all need to say this, by the way. I think it's very, very important. No one's going to be elected president, ought to be president that's not going to have as their primary priority keeping us safe and secure. That is the principal responsibility of an American president.

BLITZER: All right.

DODD: But to do that, to do that you've also got to make sure that we're going to be prepared to use that force not as the first arrow we draw out of the quiver, but rather utilizing the other resources we have as a nation to advance our interests. That has not happened here under this administration. We need to get back to that as a nation.

BLITZER: But is there a specific military program...

DODD: Absolutely. Clearly, we've got systems here -- the F-22 we're looking at, for instance, other things that ought to be reassessed in terms of whether or not they fit into a 21st-century military needs of our nation.

BLITZER: Hold on one second. What about that idea, Senator Dodd, about possibly boycotting the Beijing Summer Olympic games if China doesn't use its influence to stop the genocide in Sudan?

DODD: I think that goes too far, Wolf. Here, look. This is a major issue. There are ways of dealing with this. We're not only going to elect a president in November of 2008. We're going to elect, arguably, the most important, if not the most important, leader in the world.

And it's going to be critically important that we use the tools available to us to exercise the influence we'd like on China, on Russia and other nations to be more cooperative and participate in solving some of these problems here.

That's going to require real leadership based on experience that knows how to bring people together -- certainly, reminding the Chinese of the importance of this issue -- utilizing those tools that are available to us.

But the idea that you go in and stop the Olympics from happening I don't think gets you there. I think that's more likely to delay the kind of influence and support China ought to be providing.

(CROSSTALK)

DODD: ... cancel the Olympics.

That's not a bad question. You asked the question.

(CROSSTALK)

DODD: I'd like to know how my colleagues would feel about it.

BLITZER: Is it time, Senator Dodd, as Congressman Charlie Rangel recommends, to bring back the military draft?

DODD: I don't think so, Wolf, at all. I served as a Peace Corps volunteer back in the 1960s, an American -- of course, I've been asked a million times why did I join the Peace Corps. And I did so because an American president asked me to. He asked a generation of us to be part of something larger than ourselves.

Some went off to join Vista; some got out into the civil rights movement; others went into the military; others went to the Justice Department. It was a very exciting time to be alive.

But today, in the world we're living in today, I don't think we need to go a draft at all. We don't need the numbers of people in the service.

But I like the idea, what we've tried to do with AmeriCorps and other things, to provide the kind of financial relief.

This young man is finishing high school. He's assumably going to go on to higher education.

I hope you are.

Looking at the staggering costs, the ripoffs that are occurring with people manipulating through deceit and fraud the student loan programs, I'd like to see us offer some real opportunities to you financially to give something back to your country. In return, we make it possible for you to get that higher education without incurring a lifetime of debt. That would be a valuable way of doing it in my opinion. (APPLAUSE)

BLITZER: Well, let's ask Senator Dodd. What about that? Would you agree to give up earmarks for Connecticut if you had your way? (LAUGHTER)

DODD: Thanks, Wolf... (LAUGHTER)

Well, listen, first of all, as president, we ought to be discouraging that behavior, because it is a problem. Clearly, the budget is getting out of control as a result of those practices.

But I wouldn't want to have a blanket approach to that. There may be some critical issues that occur -- events like Katrina and other events -- where the Congress needs to respond, you haven't gone through the process before. I wouldn't want to put us in that kind of a rigid straitjacket.

But, clearly, when you're going beyond that, we need to have more discipline in the process.

I've been a long-time supporter -- offered the first, one of the first pay-as-you-go budgets back some 23 years ago in the United States Senate -- the question that came up earlier about specific policies and ideas.

I think, with rare exceptions you ought to be able to have accounting for either the tax cut or the spending program and pay for them.

We've gone on too long allowing for these things to build and grow, and the deficits are a problem. Dennis is right: $2.2 trillion of public debt being held outside the country.

The good news is that the Chinese are buying it. The bad news is the Chinese are buying it, because it puts us in a very disadvantageous position when it comes to arguing against currency manipulation. So getting better control of our fiscal policies -- our fiscal policies ought to reflect our moral values. Our fiscal policies ought to be fair. They ought to be practical. They ought to be pro-growth. And they ought to be responsible.

BLITZER: Senator...

DODD: That's not happening when you have earmarks year-in and year-out and not having the kind of influence that would eliminate them except in those rare circumstances where you may need to have them.

Senator Dodd, very quickly. We've got five seconds.

DODD: Well, I'd kind of restore the constitutional rights in our country. This administration has done great damage to them. I would do that on the first day. I wouldn't wait 100 days on those issues.

Read Christopher Dodd's transcript from the first primary debate here

2008 Democratic Candidates:

Joe Biden
Hillary Clinton
Christopher Dodd
John Edwards
Mike Gravel
Dennis Kucinich
Barack Obama
Bill Richardson