Q. Would each of you tell us what you feel are the most important points the voters should know? Mr. Altman, why don't you begin?
ROGER ALTMAN: Well, I think the most important thing for the voters to know concerns the Bush economic record. It's the worst in 50 years, in terms of real growth, job creation and decline in real income. It's a tragic record of failure.
RICHARD DARMAN: First of all, the Governor of Arkansas has managed to make his state somewhere between 48th and 50th in every key indicator. Second, it is a crucial moment in the history of global economic development. The world is moving toward the U.S., toward market-oriented systems. It would be a highly regrettable irony for America to head toward a highly interventionist, European-style system of the type Governor Clinton would produce. Those have failed.
Let me mention a few ways to look at the Bush record positively. Inflation is way down. Interest rates are way down. Housing affordability has increased. U.S. productivity still leads the world.
ALTMAN: Production workers in the private sector have experienced real pay declining to the levels of 1965. Does the Administration accept responsibility for this record of declining living standards? Do you think Americans are better off than they were four years ago?
DARMAN: In some respects yes, in some respects not. Why don't we talk now about how things are going to get better, because we certainly are not claiming that everything is rosy.
Q. Why don't you each give us the highlights of your economic plans.
DARMAN: The key for long-term growth is to get productivity up. And to do so, you need to reform the educational system so that we're sending into the labor force people who are more highly skilled and more adaptive in a world that requires greater math literacy, science literacy and computer literacy.
Second, one of the areas of slowest productivity growth in our economy is the health sector. So reforming it in the way that we propose -- reforming malpractice, increasing competition, providing greater power in the marketplace for individuals and small business -- will slow the rate of growth of these costs so that the economy is not suffering a deadweight loss to the $ health sector's excessive inflation.
Also, reforming the legal system, where we favor substantial limits on liability to cut down on all the things that discourage innovation because of the fear of excessive litigation.
Keeping tax rates low, as opposed to raising them. We believe that's a greater incentive for work and for investment.
Increasing research and development, which we have done; shifting the emphasis toward applied civilian R. and D.
ALTMAN: The main difference between Bush and Clinton in economics is that one man has failed and the other man should be given a chance.
As to how we think the economy will improve based on our plan, the key to this is getting the investment share of the economy to rise. Over the past 12 years, it has fallen approximately by half.