Welcome Columbus and Clipper stay in at Huntington Stadium. Give me your number
one moment as a player and your number one moment as a fan. Pitching two
no-hitters in a row in little league. As a fan, it had to be the 2016 World Series
with Connie and my children and my daughters. When Rajai Davis hit a two-run
homer and then the rain delay came and the world went to hell. The Indians lost
to next earnings and Hillary lost the election but of the same week. Oh well.
Several of your colleagues in states that President Trump won comfortably
are in trouble this election year. You're in one of those states but you're not in
trouble. Explain that.
I don't look at voters as Trump voters or Clinton voters.
I don't look at workers or white, black, white workers or black workers.
I talk about workers and I think in the end, it's
whose side are you on? And I urge my colleagues always, and I hope if there's
there are Democratic majorities whenever there are next year or beyond, that we
really do focus on the dignity of work. And that is that it's making sure that
people who work get up every day, work hard, play by the rules, have a decent
standard of living. That their that their wages go up, that their health care
benefits are adequate, that they have some retirement, and that we have to at
the same time make sure we keep healthcare costs down. And we're not
there's there's no interest in doing that in Washington. Now their interest is
more tax cuts for the rich. More cuts in Medicare. That's morally reprehensible
and it's bad economics and they all should be ashamed of themselves for that.
Now one thing that distinguishes you from your Democratic colleagues is that
you have affirmatively worked with Trump on a major policy issue. I'm talking
about trade. Every recent president in both parties and every economist that I
talked to have said that for example, tariff policies make no sense
economically. That they cost more jobs then they save. Why are you with him on that issue?
Well respectfully you need to talk to a wider swath of economists. I think
you got a you got a spool back and economists don't do this. Because
economists have often have a pretty cloistered existence in their lives. If you
drive through the industrial Midwest and in you know Central Valley of California
too, you will see example after example of how a company shut down production in
Mansfield, my hometown. Or, or Toledo. Or Dayton. Moved overseas, build a plant
there and collected a tax break to do it because our tax and trade policy has
played into that for decades. And no president was willing to address it.
Tariffs are a temporary enforcement tool. They're not a long-term trade policy.
I would've done it differently from the president. I would not have called it a
trade war. I would have explained to the American public what in fact he was
doing for the end outcome to deal with Chinese cheating basically. I would have
aimed our tariffs not at our allies, Canada in Western Europe. Isn't the
lesson of the modern world that is continuously in one direction
that is toward the freer movement of people and capital and aren't you
basically trying to make water flow uphill? The laws of economics haven't
worked for much of this country in terms of industrial jobs, in terms of working
class people, regardless of race. It's easy for a professor to preach that. It's,
it's, it's maybe even a little fun for the media to echo that. But the fact is that
Bill Clinton and Barack Obama share your values. They were wrong. They were, They've share my
values. I share their values. They were wrong on trade. When you have presidents
of both parties, one party that's more fundamentally close to business the
other close to labor, it tells me that when those Democratic presidents get in
and have responsibility for the nation, they see that for the nation as a whole
expanded trade is good. Well if both presidents of each party
are in the same place, does that justify the Vietnam War? I mean I don't think
because presidents in both parties were in the same place that makes a good policy.
You think trade has nothing to do
with the fact that the one-percent are getting richer, and richer, and richer?
In this country you're seeing, you're seeing profits go up. You're seeing executive
compensation can go up sharply. You're seeing productivity go up and wages are flat.
A big part of the reason wages are flat is
because we have not done globalization well. We've, we've not taken care of
people who have lost their jobs. We have not fought for labor rights and
environmental rights. In this country, we... I wear this pen. It's a depiction of
canary in a birdcage. It was given to me to workers Memorial Day. It symbolizes
the mine worker and the canary. But it symbolizes the role of government to
help middle-class people and to build and to create and build a middle-class.
White House just put out a report the other day attacking socialism
and linking Democrats and Democratic proposals to socialism.
Is it a dirty word? It's a political calculation that's poll tested
by Karl Rove and whoever is the new Karl Rove in the Republican Party. It's
pretty meaningless in terms of the way we do our jobs. I mean I want government
on the side of the public. I want, I want to government to respect the
dignity of work and advocate for workers. I don't really care about labels. I,
I never look left to right. You're not scare of that world?
No, I'm not. I don't, I don't think voters think about that stuff.
You stand for workers. You stand. It's who's back do you have. It's
who whom do you fight for and what you fight against. Is a medicare-for-all socialism?
No. I mean Medicare. I think the better
the better way to do health care is to allow, and I've worked on this for years,
to allow Medicare buy-in at 55. Look who's most hurt by and who is most
vulnerable health car. It's a 58 or a 61 year old man or woman in Dayton, who has
lost her job because her plant closed. She's 58. She can't find insurance and
it's a point in her life when her health is getting bad, especially she worked
construction, or in a factory, or worked in a diner, or worked in a hair salon and
was on her feet all day. And you, um, that's when they need Medicare. Is that
still what you're for
Absolutely.
is buying a 55? Absolutely.
Not Medicare for all? I have not all
co-sponsor I don't oppose Medicare for all. I, but, I don't think we get there now.
I think what we do is we do Medicare at 55. Allow, it's voluntary. It's a buy-in. You
can do it fiscally responsible and give that 58 year old laid off woman in
Zanesville, Ohio a chance to buy into Medicare at a reasonable price at that age.
One of the things, reasons I asked the question about socialism is, there
does seem to have been a shift in the democratic debate. When Obama was
president one of his aides told me one time, we weren't allowed to use the word redistribution.
Even though things like Obamacare did redistribute money from
people who pay taxes for it to people who got benefits. You, Senator Harris, and
others have proposed major redistribution of money to people
through the Earned Income Tax Credit or other vehicles. Is that something
that you see is now politically salable? and why is that? I always have. I, I mean the,
the real masters of redistribution are Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, who
redistribute income up. That's their mean.That's the what they do. They have they have taken a tax system.
Understood but it's proven easier to do that by cutting
someone's taxes than by writing having government write a check to someone.
That's just been the political reality. That's, that's, their political reality.
I'm surprised you buy into it, John. Well no, no. That, what I'm saying is, that has
proven politically, more politically achievable. Well, it's politically
achievable because of the people, that, I mean because Washington is rigged in the
sense that you can always give a tax. Washington can always pass a tax cut for
rich people because who are most members of Congress? Many, many, many of them are
millionaires. Who are most who are most lobbyists? That, who, were, where is the
lobbying. As, as you may know John, there aren't a lot of people
walking around the halls of Congress that are advocating for workers in the local
diner in Garfield Heights. They're advocating for the big cub, the big power
companies, and the big, to the big drug companies and in Wall Street
But do you think the table is set politically for Democrats to embrace in a
full-throated way that kind of my distribution? My, I, don't think of it in
terms of you used the word redistribution. To me, it's, it's fairness you know people,
people that work in a diner, people that cut hair, or people that work
construction, they work every bit as hard as you doing I do and they get so little
to show for it. And they have a government that's not on their side so
often. And I don't call that redistribution. I call it justice. I call
it fairness. It's what our government should be. Senator Warren has a proposal
to do that more indirectly requiring as a condition of corporate
charter, worker representation on corporate boards. Which would not require
government outlays. What do you think of that idea. That's fine. I, I, I support
anything that gets us there. I, I, also have a bill, that I didn't present to the
president, called the Freeloader Fee Act and that says when a
company—that's got not a not a diner, with 50, with 30 or 40 employees, but a
big company of over X number of people— have when they pay so little that their
workers are eligible for Medicaid, food stamps, housing vouchers and earned
income tax credit, that they should pay a freeloader fee.
They should reimburse taxpayers for their low wages. A company that, that is making a lot of money their
executives are making six, eight, ten million dollars a year, their workers are
paid so little that government subsidizes their workers. Those companies
should have to pay a penalty for that.
Your elections in a little over a week.
Immediately, there's going to be a lot of talk and action toward the 2020 race.
Senator Warren says she's can take a hard look at it after election. Seems clear
she's gonna run. What is your thinking on that issue?
I'm thinking that Senator Warren is probably going to run. Was that your question?
Are you thinking the Senator Brown's going to run? I don't really, I don't, I don't
like the idea of running for president. I don't. I don't really have any real
interest in that. You said to one of your home state newspapers you think about it
from time to time, and you get people talking to you about it. No news on this
story, sorry. I am, I'm gonna my wife and I are gonna, and my kids and grandkids, we
spent, we spent the evening with him last night. We're gonna spend more time with
them after the election. I, I, don't, I don't aspire to be President United
States. And I know my name's mentioned. It's mentioned because I win in a Trump
state. Here's what I hope comes out of this election. First of all, I hope to win.
Second, I hope that Rich Cordray, who would be a really good governor, I hope
he wins in the Democratic ticket. In third, I hope the message that
I win with—the dignity of work and whose side are you on and it's whom you fight
for and what your fight against—I'm hopeful that gets him in the national
debate. Because I plenty of my colleagues want to be President a lot more than I do.