:patriot:
Dean Offers New Direction for America on CBS' 'Face the Nation'
10/29/2006 2:46:00 PM
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To: National Desk
Contact: Stacie Paxton or Luis Miranda, 202-863-8148, both of Democratic National Committee
WASHINGTON, Oct. 29 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Today on the CBS Sunday talk show "Face the Nation," Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean contrasted the Republican Party's stay-the- course policies with the new direction Democrats are offering the American people on everything from creating middle class tax fairness to being tough and smart in defending America. Below are excerpts from his appearance:
On the Republican War on the Middle Class:
"We Want Middle Class Tax Fairness"
"We want middle class tax fairness. We think there is a war that hasn't been discussed and that's the Republican war on the American family. A million people have lost their health care every single year that George Bush has been President. We need a minimum wage, America needs a raise. The congress has gotten their raises but the American people haven't gotten theirs, so I think you are going to see a lot more middle class tax fairness but you're not going to see across the board big tax increases on anybody. That is just the usual scare tactics that the Republicans always bring out in order to try to win elections".
"I think we will pay for that (middle class tax fairness) by making sure that those big oil companies who just reported record profits are going to pay their fair share, because they haven't been doing it under the Republicans."
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On the New Direction Democrats Offer America:
"We Need to Be Tough and Smart"
"We are interested in moving the agenda forward. Here is why we're running. We want middle class tax fairness for the American people. We want middle class Americans to benefit from this economy, not just the folks that are contributing to the president. We want a defense policy that is tough and smart. The fact is, the Republicans have failed us on defense. Iran is about to get nuclear weapons, North Korea has exploded a bomb after the President has been in power for six years and done nothing about it. Osama Bin Laden is still at large, and we're in the middle of as Jack Murtha says, a civil war in Iraq. Explain to me how the Republicans have made us safer. We need to be tough and smart not just try to scare people at election time with tough talk."
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On the Iraq War:
A Democratic Congress Will be a "Positive Influence"
"The president will still be in charge of foreign policy and the military so the influence of a Democratic Congress will be I think a positive influence but I don't imagine that we're suddenly gonna force the President to reverse his course. We don't have the ability to do that, but I think we will put some pressure on him to have some benchmarks, some timetables, and a real plan other than stay the course. What you'll see happen is the Iraqis will finally get down to the business of a political settlement. Right now, they are basically using our troops so that each folks', each one of their different parties can get advantage hoping that we will be there long enough so they can take advantage. That puts our guys in the middle, and our troops are great and they don't deserve that. They deserve to be served better by their civilian leadership.
"One of the things democrats believe if we should take over and if we eventually take back the presidency is that we are going to need to leave a force of special operations folks in the Middle East. Not in Iraq, but on the periphery of Iraq so that we can deal with terrorism in a timely manner. We don't believe having, since the President chose to send us there and has created conditions of terrorism in Iraq where there were none there before, we don't believe now that we can suddenly pull everybody out. We would like to bring as many people home as possible as fast as possible, but most of the Democrats that I know believe that we are going to have to leave a special operations force in the Middle East in order to deal with the terrorist situation."
"We need political leaders that are going to make decisions. Tough decisions and smart decisions."
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Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee,
http://www.democrats.org. This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.
http://www.usnewswire.com/http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=75250
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