A: What I will be saying to the new President of Mexico when he takes office is that we want to continue cooperation, and we recognize this is a threat on both sides of the border. We obviously generate a lot of demand for drugs in this country, and guns and cash flow south at the same time as drugs flow north.
Q: How many more people have to die?
A: Well, what we need to do is to weaken the grip of these drug cartels, and there are a couple of things we can do. The US can focus on drug treatment and prevention, and helping people deal with addiction, making sure that young people are not getting hooked on drugs. If we can reduce demand, that means less cash flowing into these drug cartels. The other thing that we try to do is to work much more aggressively in preventing the flow of guns and cash down into Mexico. And so interdiction has to work both ways.
A: The Fast and Furious program was a field-initiated program begun under the previous administration. When Eric Holder found out about it, he discontinued it. We assigned an inspector general to do a thorough report that was just issued, confirming that, in fact, Eric Holder did not know about this, that he took prompt action and the people who did initiate this were held accountable. And the strategy that was pursued, obviously, was completely wrongheaded. Those folks who were responsible have been held accountable.
Q: But if you have nothing to hide then why are you not releasing papers to this?
A: We've released thousands of papers...
Q: But not all of them.
A: The ones that we don't release typically relate to internal communications that were not related to the actual Fast and Furious operation.
A: Well, keep in mind this is not just a crisis for the Hispanic community; this is a crisis for the entire country because increasingly the workforce is going to be black and brown, and if those young people are not trained, then this country will not be competitive. Closing the achievement gap involves making sure that children are prepared the day they come to school, and so working with at-risk parents & poor children to make sure that they’re getting their childhood education they need is absolutely critical. I’ve seen crumbling school buildings & children learning in trailers because of overcrowding. We’ve got to have a program of school construction all across the nation. After-school programs and summer school programs can make an enormous difference in preventing dropout rates because a lot of times young people after they get out of school have no place to do their homework. And that can make an enormous difference.
A: Some of the work that we've done over the last four years to make sure that the student loan interest rate stays low, expanding Pell grants for millions of students, including millions of Latino students, so that we are seeing the highest college enrollment rate among Latino students in history--all that is going to help to contribute to us being able to deal with the problem of secondary and high school educations by inspiring a whole lot of students to say, I can do that, too; I can achieve that dream. One of the things we know is going to make a big difference is early childhood education. So we've put enormous effort not only in providing additional funding for early childhood education, but also to improve the quality. 46 states have initiated reforms.
A: What happened in Chicago was of concern, and we're glad that it finally got resolved. But you're going to see school districts dealing with this issue because part of what has happened is a lot of teacher layoffs. Part of what the Recovery Act was all about--was to help states and local communities not lay off teachers. Unfortunately, though, we've still seen a lot of school districts lay off teachers. That has an impact on the students themselves because when you have larger classes, it's harder to provide the individualized attention on those kids, especially at the younger grades. And what we say to school districts all across the country is, we will provide you more help as long as you're being held accountable.
All these issues are ones that the region is going to wrestle with. The one thing we can't do is withdraw from the region, because the US continues to be the one indispensable nation. And even countries where the US is criticized, they still want our leadership. And so we're going to continue to work in these regions.
A: It shouldn’t be. And it’s wrong. You know, my mother died of ovarian cancer when she was 53 years old. And I remember in the last month of her life, she wasn’t thinking about how to get well, she wasn’t thinking about coming to terms with her own mortality, she was thinking about whether or not insurance was going to cover the medical bills and whether our family would be bankrupt as a consequence. That is morally wrong. It’s objectionable. That’s why I put forward a comprehensive legislation for universal health care so that all people could get coverage. My attitude is, that since you are paying my salary as taxpayers, you should have health care that is at least as good as mine. And the key to that is not only a good plan, but we’ve also got to overcome the drug & insurance company lobbies, that spent $1 billion over the last 10 years to block reform. As president, I am going to take them on.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the pharmaceutical and insurance industries spent $1.2 billion and $949 million, respectively, on all lobbying efforts since 1998. Moreover, the two industries combined shelled out about $193 million in political donations and expenditures backing Republicans, about twice as much as they spent supporting Democrats. So it is reasonable to conclude that the pharmaceutical and insurance industries have indeed spent at least $1 billion combating legislation that Obama favors.
A: Well, we're still doing an investigation. The natural protests that arose were used as an excuse by extremists to harm US interests. We have to remain vigilant. Look, when I came into office I said I would end the war in Iraq--and I did. I said that we would begin transitioning in Afghanistan. But what I also said was we're going to have to focus narrowly and forcefully on groups like al Qaeda. Those forces have not gone away. We've decimated al Qaeda's top leadership in the border regions around Pakistan, but in Yemen, in Libya--increasingly in places like Syria-- what you see is these elements that don't have the same capacity that a bin Laden or core al Qaeda had, but can still cause a lot of damage, and we've got to make sure that we remain vigilant and are focused on preventing them from doing us any harm.
OBAMA: I have been a consistent champion of comprehensive immigration reform. And keep in mind that my father came to this country from a small village in Africa because he was looking for opportunity. And so when I see people who are coming across these borders, whether legally or illegally, I know that the motivation is trying to create a better life for their children and their grandchildren. So I was one of the leaders, along with several other senators, in passing comprehensive immigration reform. It failed in the House. That is going to involve some elements of border security because we’ve got to make our borders more secure. We can’t just have hundreds of thousands of people coming into the country without knowing who they are.
Source: Obama-Romney interviews by Univision Noticias (Spanish News) Sep 19, 2012
A: There's the thinking that the President is somebody who is all powerful and can get everything done. In our system of government, I am the head of the executive branch. I'm not the head of the legislature; I'm not the head of the judiciary. We have to have cooperation from all these sources in order to get something done. And so I take responsibility for the fact that we didn't get it done, but I did not make a promise that I would get everything done, 100%, when I was elected. What is relevant is that I have never wavered in my support of comprehensive immigration reform. We did put forward a DREAM Act that was passed in the House, got the overwhelming majority of support from Democrats in the Senate, and was blocked by the Republican Party. We now are confronted with a choice between two candidates in which I am committed to the DREAM Act, and [Romney] said he would veto the DREAM Act.
A: We focus our enforcement on people who genuinely pose a threat to our communities, not to hardworking families who are minding their own business and oftentimes have members of their family who are US citizens. We don't have the capacity to enforce across the board. So more than half of our enforcement now is directed at people with criminal records. Of the remaining half, about 2/3 are people who are apprehended close to the border, so these are not people who have longstanding roots in our community. And what we've tried to do then is focus our attention on real threats, and make sure that families are not the targets.
A: Are there people who abuse the system? Yes, both at the bottom and at the top--because there are a whole bunch of millionaires who aren't paying taxes at all either. But when you look statistically, it turns out that even if people aren't paying income taxes, they're paying payroll taxes. They're paying gas taxes. They're paying sales taxes. They're paying state & local taxes. So the fact of the matter is that the few people who are not paying income taxes are either paying a lot of taxes because they're working every day but they just don't make enough money overall to pay income tax; or alternatively, they're senior citizens or they're students or they're disabled; or, in some cases, they're veterans or soldiers who are fighting for us right now overseas--they don't pay an income tax. Americans work hard, and if they're not working right now, they want to get to work. And that's what my economic plan is designed to do.
A: We mourn the loss of the Americans who were killed in Benghazi. But that's not representative of the attitudes of the Libyan people towards America, because they understand because of the incredible work that our diplomats did as well as our men and women in uniform, we liberated that country from a dictator who had terrorized them for 40 years. We've seen this in the past, where there is an offensive video or cartoon directed at the prophet Muhammad. And this is used as an excuse to carry out inexcusable violent acts. We told the [Libyan & other] leaders, that although we had nothing to do with the video, we find it offensive, it's not representative of America's views, but we will not tolerate violence, and we will bring those who carried out these events to justice.
A: I think it is absolutely critical that we step in and work with financial institutions that gave these loans, oftentimes under false pretenses. And part of the problem of the whole subprime lending market is that we did not have enough regulation of this market, we didn’t have adequate disclosure. I meet families that thought they were getting a low interest mortgage and did not realize that unless their home prices kept on going up they could end up losing their home, and that’s a failure of regulation. And that’s something that we have to work on prospectively. I’ve got legislation called the STOP FRAUD Act that basically requires the kinds of disclosure that should have been in there in the first place. But in the meantime, we’ve got to take a portion of the profits and make certain that people have a chance to refinance their home or least get bridge loans.
A: The day I was elected, I said 47% of the people didn't vote for me, but I've heard your voices and I'm going to work just as hard for you as I did for those who did vote for me. That's how you have to operate as a President. But I will say this. When you express an attitude that half the country considers itself victims, that somehow they want to be dependent on government, my thinking is maybe you haven't gotten around a lot. Their problem is not that they're not working hard enough, or they don't want to work, or they're being taxed too little, or they just want to loaf around and gather government checks. We've gone through a challenging time. People want a hand up, not a handout. Are there people who abuse the system? Yes, both at the bottom and at the top.
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The above quotations are from Media coverage of political races in Univision News.
Click here for other excerpts from Media coverage of political races in Univision News. Click here for other excerpts by Barack Obama. Click here for a profile of Barack Obama.
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