This is part three of the presidential candidates' answers to a series of questions put to them by the National Association of Home Builders. Parts one and two ran yesterday and the day before; part four will run tomorrow.

BUSH: The next President must carry a simple and unequivocal message to foreign governments: We will no longer tolerate favoritism and unfair subsidies for your national industries. I am confident that American producers are without rival in their ability to compete. America's best is the best in the world. We want to compete, and compete on level ground. With 96% of the world's population living outside the U.S., I recognize that our nation's future prosperity depends in large part on the expansion of global markets. I will not stand for trade barriers, and I will use all the leverage at our disposal to open markets for American products - and American values.

To lead the world on trade and open markets for U.S. consumers and businesses, we must pass presidential trade negotiating authority so that we can negotiate new market-opening agreements: Every President since Gerald Ford has had this authority, which the Clinton-Gore Administration let expire in 1994. As yet, they have failed to get this important tool renewed.

The lack of this authority has not only hobbled this Administration's ability to pry open foreign markets, but has undermined America's fundamental ability to lead global market-opening efforts. As President, I will work with Congress to renew presidential trade negotiating authority.

When I am President, I will be committed to tearing down trade barriers abroad and keeping markets open at home because free trade is increasingly important to continued U.S. prosperity. At the same time, I will work to enforce fair trade rules, and I will vigorously enforce anti-dumping and countervailing duty laws and other American laws to combat unfair trade practices.

GORE: Al Gore knows that access to forest products, including softwood products, is important to many industries, including the home building industry. Al Gore would carefully review the existing softwood lumber agreement and assess the impact the agreement has had on trade, jobs and the environment. After conducting such a review, he would invite everyone who has a stake in any future agreement to come together to share information and perspectives on the potential impact of any proposed new agreement. In considering such proposals, Al Gore would be guided by expressed concerns regarding the potential impact that any changes to the existing agreement might have on consumers, home builders and the environment, both here and in Canada.

BUSH: I believe the challenges of urban growth are best handled by local and state governments. There are some federal policies, like the death tax, that encourage sprawl, often compelling land-rich but cash-poor families to sell farmland to developers to pay their taxes. I believe we should eliminate the death tax to allow farms, ranches and other small businesses to be passed, intact, from one generation to the next.

The challenges of sprawl also highlight the need to revitalize our inner cities, and the best way to spark renewal is to improve our public schools, encourage more brownfield cleanups and redevelopments to return abandoned and contaminated property into productive use, continue the reduction in urban crime rates and provide a strong, healthy economic climate that supports job creation.

As an avid outdoorsman, I know all our prosperity as a nation will mean little if we leave the future generations a world of polluted air, toxic waste and vanished wilderness and forests. The federal government and states, communities and private landowners must build conservation partnerships, and respect and work with one another to preserve our natural heritage. In my Administration, the federal government will provide the scientific and financial resources and incentives to help states, local communities and private landowners protect and conserve our outdoor heritage. I will urge reinvestment in America's natural resources by fully funding to $900 million the Land and Water Conservation Fund - one of the most successful conservation programs in America's history - and guaranteeing half the fund for state and local conservation efforts. This will provide desperately needed funds to states and local communities to preserve open space and recreational opportunities in cities and suburbs.

I will also provide matching grants to states to help private landowners enhance habitat for wildlife and rare species, while continuing to engage in traditional land management practices. In addition, I will establish a Private Stewardship Grant Program to provide financial resources on a competitive basis to individuals and local groups engaged in land and wildlife conservation.

Finally, I will seek a 50% capital gains tax cut for private landowners who willingly sell their land for conservation purposes, rather than for development. America has entered a new era of environmental and land-management policy that requires a new philosophy of public stewardship and personal and corporate responsibility. Government must inspire strong stewardship, and all Americans must be careful and respectful in using our natural resources. I am confident that economic prosperity and environmental protection can and must go hand-in-hand.

GORE: Al Gore recognizes that although ultimate decision-making authority as to urban-growth and land-use issues lies with state and local governments, the federal government has a role to play that involves the continuance of partnerships that provide the tools localities may use to address these issues. One type of partnership that requires the involvement of federal, state and local leadership is the Brownfields program, which promotes the redevelopment of urban and industrial communities.

Other such partnerships include transit-based initiatives that provide funding, tax incentives and other supports that are designed to revitalize bus and rail networks, rebuild aging neighborhoods and provide incentives to encourage the redevelopment of neighborhoods around transit stations.

BUSH: Regulatory reform can produce significant improvements in the economy, and more importantly, could save or improve thousands of lives. Under the current Administration, the number of federal regulations, the number of federal regulators, and the direct costs of regulation to the economy have all grown unchecked, imposing a huge hidden tax on American consumers, particularly small businesses and the people who depend on them. It is no accident that the fastest growing and most dynamic part of our economy - electronic commerce - is also the least regulated. Americans deserve a clean environment, safe products and competitive prices, but government regulation is often a poor substitute for efficient market regulation.

I'm results-oriented and believe that regulations should be flexible, allowing businesses to choose the best way to meet and achieve a goal. We should move from a failed strategy that emphasizes command-and-control to one based upon flexibility and innovation. I also favor rigorous analysis of the costs, benefits and risks of regulations before implementing them, so we ensure better use of taxpayer dollars. We must also improve regulatory decision-making and establish regulatory accountability. Above all, we must be innovative and encourage companies to go beyond mere compliance and seek solutions that will produce greater results than are often possible under rigid rules mandated from afar by a distant bureaucracy.

GORE: Al Gore believes that a wide range of parties should be consulted and social and economic factors considered during the development of federal environmental laws and mandates. He recognizes that in America today, housing affordability and availability are major concerns, and that the federal government must take care to ensure that its policies are designed to address this concern while effectively protecting the environmental values we hold dear.

The Clinton-Gore Administration incorporated this principle into its regulatory review practices under Executive Order 12866, which provides for appropriate consideration of the costs and benefits of major regulation. Under this order, the process of developing every major regulation should include assessment of the costs of different approaches, comparison of costs and benefits of each option, and identification of alternatives that might achieve public health and environmental protection more cost-effectively. Similarly, the proposals for Safe Drinking Water Act reforms proposed by the Administration and enacted by the Congress in 1996 explicitly elevated the role of cost-benefit analysis in regulatory decision-making.

Al Gore also believes that both the economic and social costs of new requirements can be minimized, and the benefits maximized, through expanded use of market mechanisms in lieu of, or in addition to, the more traditional approach of standard-setting through regulation. The Clinton-Gore Administration's wetlands reforms, for example, promote mitigation banking as a market-based approach to meeting the requirements of Sec. 404 of the Clean Water Act. NAHB and its members have been critical leaders in demonstrating the efficacy of this approach to both the development and environmental communities.

Similarly, the Administration's climate change technology initiative, and Al Gore's proposal for a national energy security and environmental trust fund, would establish a wide range of market incentives to address the threat of global climate change and other environmental challenges we will face in the coming century.

Click Here for Part Four.

Published: October 26, 2000

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