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Article published: May 17, 2009 Clyburn addresses economy, Afghanistan
Following his keynote address during Morris College’s May 8 commencement at the Sumter County Exhibition Center, Sumter native and House Majority Whip James Clyburn sat down for a brief but wide-ranging interview that touched on a variety of topics.
Regarding the way forward for success in Afghanistan, Clyburn said he could not speak for the generals making decisions on the ground and did not want to second guess them.
“I’ve been to Afghanistan, but even though I’ve visited there, I don’t believe any more that I know what ought to be done there,” he said. “I do know this — that we’re in the shape that we’re in because we took our eyes off Afghanistan.”
The Bush administration, he said, knowing Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were encamped in Afghanistan, went into Iraq, diverting resources.
“I think that’s where we made the big mistake, so no question the emphasis has to be on Afghanistan,” he said.
Clyburn said he’s been to Pakistan, which is “dangerous,” and needs to be stabilized, especially as it has a nuclear arsenal.
“We’ve got to do it,” he said, noting that President Obama is right to not just discuss Afghanistan in military terms, as civilians need to be brought in to rebuild the infrastructure.
“The big problem in Afghanistan right now is the poppy,” he said, offering his view that President Hamid Karzai’s brothers are complicit in the drug trade.
“Supposed to be top dog,” he said, referring to Karzai, whom he thinks has no influence beyond where he lives.
Whether American troops will ever go into Pakistan — commonly referred to as “boots on the ground” — is not something about which he wished to hazard a guess.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know. Once again, I’m not a general. And I never studied military science and tactics — well, maybe the two years I was in the ROTC.”
Touching on the budget — and the deficit — Clyburn said President Obama inherited a $1.6 billion deficit from the Bush administration.
“What we’re trying to do over the next five years is cut that down to $533 billion. So this budget that (Rep.) John Spratt (D-5th District) so masterfully put together is a deficit reduction budget, and I would hope people would begin to focus on the fact that’s what this is,” he explained. “He didn’t give us this deficit, he found it when he got to the White House, and I’m pleased to be a part of getting it done.”
Whether the economy has stabilized or reached a bottom is an unknown, Clyburn said.
“I have no idea. Nobody knows. I think people have got a better mood,” he said. “People feel better about their country now — the polls indicate that. Traveling around the country, I see, hear, and feel that.”
A crucial factor in “getting ourselves out of the hole we’re in,” is for people’s attitudes to be positive, he offered.
“When consumer confidence is down, that’s bad for the economy and you see that people won’t spend, people won’t lend; credit tightens,” he said. “I think more than 50 percent of American people are now saying the country is moving in the right direction. More than 60 percent of the American people — around 66 percent — are saying they are comfortable with President Obama and what he’s doing with the country,” which indicates, he thinks, “we’re well on our way to getting out of this predicament.”
Clyburn addressed how the state — and people of Sumter — are reeling from growing unemployment.
“I think that our governor has demonstrated to us in recent days, irrespective of what we may do in (Washington) D.C., there’s a lot that’s got to be done here in South Carolina. This recovery package (the stimulus package) is designed to stop the hemorrhaging,” he said. “Yet we’ve got a governor who says he’d rather see the hemorrhaging continue. Every expert says the way to continue this hemorrhaging is to take money out of the economy and put it into debt reduction.
“So I would say to the people of Sumter and the people of South Carolina, it’s time for us to get real. This governor we’ve got is absolutely one of the worst things to happen to this state. He’s a disaster. He’s standing in the door. It’s tantamount to what (former Alabama governor) George Wallace did when we tried to integrate schools — standing in the schoolhouse door.”
President Obama, he said, has to be given an “A” for his first 100 days in office, as he has high approval ratings, and people are more positive than they’ve been in years. In traveling abroad in recent years, many Americans stopped telling foreigners they were Americans, he said, because of other’s attitudes toward our country.
“What we’re seeing now on the international front, people are much more positive about the United States of America, and that has a lot to do with whether or not we can organize and analyze when we are trying to fight this war on terror,” he said. “You cannot successfully fight this war alone. You’ve got to have your allies with you, and the reason we got bogged down in Iraq the way we did is because we didn’t have the allies with us, as Bush I (President George H.W. Bush) was able to do when we went off to Desert Shield, and that’s because people didn’t like us. People are now beginning to like us again, so the guy gets an A.”
Highest on Clyburn’s list of priorities when he returns to the nation’s capital, he said, are working on the energy bill and healthcare bill.
“Overarching all of this, almost every day, is getting the budget done. We finished the budget in the house — we’ll be in conference with that. But energy and health care, I think, are the two biggest things on the domestic front,” he said. “If we solve the energy problem, get this thing going, that’s a big, big lick on the economy,” adding that escalating healthcare costs severely hurt the unions, which in turn hurt the automobile industry.
As for allowing General Motors and other large companies to go bankrupt instead of bailing them out, Clyburn said they need to scale back and focus on economic and efficient cars that are more affordable.
“I don’t think we need all these automobiles we’ve got ... I think we just probably need to cut back,” he said.
As far as blame placed on unions for hurting the automobile industry, Clyburn said the blame is misplaced.
“Unions aren’t taking all the money out of the system. How many unions are on Wall Street? Unions got robbed with everybody else,” he said, referring to pension funds that invested in the stock market. “Those people that stole all this money? Were they union reps?
“No ... It’s greed — corporate greed got us to where we are.”
Contact Staff Writer Joe Perry at jperry@theitem.com or (803) 774-1272.