Moderator: Jon Margolis, question for Sen. Quayle. Q: Sen. Quayle, in recent years the Reagan administration has scaled back the activities of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, prompted in part by Vice President Bush's task force on regulatory relief. The budget for the agency has been cut by 20 percent, and the number of inspections at manufacturing plants have been reduced by 33 percent. This has had a special effect in this area where many people work in the meat-packing industry, which has a far higher rate of serious injuries than almost any other injury, a rate which appears to have been rising, although we're not really sure because some of the largest companies have allegedly been falsifying their reports. Would you acknowledge to the hundreds of injured and maimed people in Nebraska, Iowa, and elsewhere in the Midwest that, in this case, deregulation may have gone too far and the government should reassert itself in protecting workers' rights? Quayle: The premise of your question, Jon, is that somehow this administration has been lax in enforcement of the OSHA regulations, and I disagree with that, and I'll tell you why. If you want to ask some business people that I've talked to periodically, they complain about the tough enforcement of this administration. And furthermore, let me tell you this for the record, when we have found violations in this administration there has not only been tough enforcement, but there have been the most severe penalties _ the largest penalties in the history of the Department of Labor _ have been levied when these violations have been found. There is a commitment, and there will always be a commitment, to the safety of our working men and women. They deserve it, and we're committed to them. Now, the broader question goes to the whole issue of deregulation, and has deregulation worked or has deregulation not worked? In my judgment, deregulation has worked. We have a deregulated economy and we have produced through low taxes, not high taxes, through deregulation, the spirit of entrepreneurship, the individual going out and starting a business, the businessman or woman willing to go out and risk their investment and start up a business and hire people _ we have produced 17 million jobs in this country since 1982. Deregulation as a form of political philosophy is a good philosophy. It's one that our opponents disagree with. They want a centralized government. But we believe in the market; we believe in the people. And yes, there's a role of government and the role of government is to make sure that those safety and health and welfare of the people is taken care of. And we'll continue to do that. Moderator: Sen. Bentsen? Bentsen: I think you see once again a piece of Democratic legislation that's been passed to try to protect the working men and women of America. And then you've seen an administration that came in and really didn't have its heart in that kind of an enforcement. A good example of that is the environmental protection laws that we were talking about a moment ago. This administration came in and put in a James Watt and Anne Gorsuch. Now that's the Bonnie and Clyde, really, of environmental protection. And that's why it's important that you have people that truly believe, and trying to represent the working men and women of America. Most employers do a good job of that, but some of them put their profits before people. And that's why you have to have OSHA, and that's why you have to have tough and good and fair enforcement of it. And that's what a Democratic administration would do to help make this working place a safer and a better place to be employed. Moderator: Jon Margolis, another question for Senator Bentsen. Q: Sen. Bentsen, since you have been in the Senate, the government has spent increasing amounts of money in an effort to protect the family farmer. But most of the subsidies seem to go, do go, to the largest and richest farmers, who presumably need it least, while it's the smaller farmers who are often forced to sell out, sometimes to their large farmer neighbor who's gotten more subsidies to begin with. Despite the fact that I believe you, sir, are rather a large farmer yourself, do you believe it's time to uncouple the subsidy formula from the amount of land a farmer has and target federal money to the small- and medium-size farmer? Bentsen: Well, I've supported that. I voted for the 50,000 limitation to get away from the million dollar contributions to farmers. You know, of the four that are on this ticket, I'm the only one that was born and reared on a farm, and still involved in farming. So I think I understand their concerns and their problems. Now, I feel very strongly that we ought to be doing more for the American farmer, and what we've seen under this administration is neglect of that farmer. We've seen them drive 220,000 farmers off the farm. They seem to think the answer is, ``Move 'em to town.'' But we ought not to be doing that. What you have seen them do is cut farm assistance for the rural areas by over 50 percent. We're seeing rural hospitals close all over the country because of this kind of an administration. We've seen an administration that has lost much of our market abroad because they have not had a trade policy. We saw our market lost by some 40 percent. And that's one of the reasons that we've seen the cost of the farm program, which was only about $2.5 billion when they took office, now go to about $25 billion. Now we can bring that kind of a cost down and get more to market prices if we'll have a good trade policy. I was, in January, visiting with Mr. Takeshita, the new prime minister of Japan. I said, ``You're paying five times as much for beef as we pay for in our country -- pay for it in our country -- six times as much for rice. You have a $60 billion trade surplus with us. You could improve the standard of living of your people. You're spending 27 percent of your disposable income on food. We spend 14 or 15 percent. When you have that kind of a barrier up against us, that's not free and fair trade, and we don't believe that should continue. We would be pushing very hard to open up those markets, and stand up for the American farmer. And see that we recapture those foreign markets, and I think we can do it with a Dukakis-Bentsen administration. Moderator: Sen. Quayle. Quayle: Sen. Bentsen talks about recapturing the foreign markets. Well, I'll tell you one way that we're not going to recapture the foreign markets, and that is if, in fact, we have another Jimmy Carter grain embargo. Jimmy --Jimmy Carter grain embargo -- Jimmy Carter grain embargo set the American farmer back. You know what the farmer is interested in? Net farm income. Every 1 percent of increase in interest rates -- a billion dollars out of the farmer's pocket. Net farm income -- increase inflation another billion dollars. Another thing that a farmer's not interested in and that's supply management the Democratic platform talks about. But, the governor of Massachusetts, he had the farm program. He went to the farmers in the Midwest, and told them not to grow corn, not to grow soy beans, but to grow Belgium endive. That's what his -- that's what he and his Harvard buddies think of the American farmer. Grow Belgium endive. To come in and to tell our farmers not to grow corn, not to grow soy beans, that's the kind of farm policy you'll get under a Dukakis administration, and one I think the American farmer rightfully will reject.
