by Julia Torres Barden, special correspondent

Democrat Governor Mark Warner was at the DuPont Company, Spruance Site in Chesterfield County on Tuesday, Sept. 30. He also delivered a speech to a rally held for employees.

The (s) indicates comments delivered in his rally speech, (i) indicates remarks he made during a one-on-one interview, Visit Warner’s Web site at http://www.markwarner2008.com for his perspective on the issues of today.

“I would love to go to the U.S. Senate and see if I could put together a coalition of 8, 10, 12 senators - bi-partisan - that could be known as the ‘Radical Centrists.’ I say that because I think too much of our politics these days is dominated by the loudest voices on either end of the political extreme and I don’t think that’s where we’re going to get the people’s business done. I’m a Democrat and I’m proud to be a Democrat but neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, on patriotism or on truth. It is time to put the country first. It is time for us to stop being ‘Ds and Rs,’ and be Americans.” (s)

Bailout/Financial Crisis:
“If there was ever a more vivid example of why we need this (bi-partisan) approach it’s what happened (recently) in the markets. Rather than trying to get a fix, you’ve got the United States Congress standing up there trying to see who can assess blame, when we have what I believe could be one of the most serious financial crisis in this country since the Depression. If there was ever a time, again, when we need to put the country’s interests first and not politics, it’s working through this financial crisis. As we go forward, we’ve got to make sure the taxpayer is protected. We have to have some fiscal discipline in Washington.” (s)

Transportation:
“We’ve got to have a 30-year plan to reinvest in this nation’s infrastructure. We basically haven’t invested in the last 20 years. It means roads, it means rail. It makes me madder than heck that the fastest rail system in the world is in Shanghai, not in America.” (s)

Energy Independence:
“America right now annually spends $700 billion dollars buying oil from countries that don’t like us. We may be the first nation in modern history that literally is funding both sides of a war. At the same time that we have this challenge, there’s also an opportunity. I would argue that in the next 25 years there will be more jobs, and more wealth created, in the energy sector than any other sector of our economy.” (s)

Education:
[In order to be competitive globally]We’ve got to have the best educated workforce in the world. We’re not going to compete on cheap labor. We’ve got to be well educated. That doesn’t mean everybody has to go to a four-year college, but it does mean everybody’s got to have skills that go beyond high school.” (s)

Illegal Immigration:
“You’ve got to enforce your immigration laws but you also have to hold employers responsible. I think you have to have a system where you actually have an easily identifiable, identity validation system, where you can easily check someone’s legal status. I think for the people who are here undocumented, there has to be a willingness to pay a penalty, learn English, go to the back of the line, but we’re not going to deport twelve million people.” (i)

Iraq War:
“I think it is time – as our troops have performed magnificently – I do think it is time to go to the Iraqi government and say ‘You’re sitting on $80 billion dollars of oil profits..’  - its time to start bringing our troops home. We’ve got to do it in a responsible way, I don’t think with any kind of arbitrary timeline, but we cannot continue to plan to be referees for the foreseeable future in Iraq. Their people have to take responsibility for their own country. I also think we have to put some more troops into Afghanistan and finish the job against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden. (s)

Healthcare
“We’ve got to have the political will to take on health-care reform. Not just because we have 47 million Americans without health-care coverage, but [because] unless we can lower our health-care costs - if American business continues to pay two or three thousand dollars more per employee than any of our other competitors because our health-care costs are that much higher - those jobs are going offshore. Not because of the productivity of the American workforce but because of health-care costs. One, it’s crazy that in 2008 we haven’t brought the power of information technology to the heath-care system and what I mean by that is why don’t we have standard electronic medical records, better patient transparency? Two, basically at this point, Americans pay for the research and development for drugs for the whole world because everybody else has got some kind of cap on prices on drugs and basically in America, the drugs cost five, six, seven times more. Three, we’ve got to think differently about how we finance long term care. Fourth, we do have to find ways so that small businesses and individuals without health-care insurance can pool together into large groups so that you can actually purchase affordable health-care insurance. And fifth, we have to be more aggressive on prevention.” (s)

Favorite places in Midlothian
“Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse!” (i)

Favorite movie
“My favorite movie of all time is “A Man For All Seasons.” (i)

How do you spend time with your three daughters:
“They like to shop but I’m not too keen on that so we compromise on a movie sometimes.” (i)

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