Corker speaks out on key issues
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Tennessee’s incoming senator expressed his approval for a change of course in Iraq, although he offered no specific suggestions, saying that he wanted to see what the bipartisan Iraq study group headed by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and Democratic Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana would recommend.
However he did make a case for not withdrawing troops immediately.
“I can’t imagine leaving the country without them being able to secure themselves and to have a government that is accountable to the people there,” he said. “And I think all of us really, as I mentioned, want to see what’s going to happen this with report. That could mean everything from actually adding more troops in the short term to make sure that Baghdad can be secured and we can start doing some things with the militias that make sense there in the country.”
He differed with President Bush on some issues, saying the U.S. should engage in talks with Iran and Syria, and opposing the administration’s immigration plan, saying it would grant amnesty to illegal immigrants.
An alternative plan that would require illegal immigrants to return to their home countries and then apply to come back to the U.S. would be “a much more appropriate way of dealing with the issue,” he said.
On many other top issues, his stance was more in line with the president’s.
Corker said he opposes embryonic stem cell research and supports an extension of the president’s tax cuts, at a cost of $200 billion a year.
Asked how he would pay for them, Corker responded, “Revenues are growing very rapidly. But we need to constrain spending. … The earmarking process obviously is very inappropriate. And taxpayers know that. We need to work together to clean that up.”
Corker would support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.
“You end up having a situation where there is so much mobility in our country, where people from Massachusetts move to Tennessee and vice versa,” he said. “For that reason and just with the activism in the federal court system if that amendment is proposed, it is something I would support.”
But he also expressed some limited support for civil unions, as long as they are not the equivalent of marriage. Allowing hospital visitations for gay couples might be appropriate, he said.
He supports an increase in the minimum wage, although he said he was not sure what the appropriate increase would be. But, he added, “I do think, to balance that, though, we ought to look at ways of causing it to be easier to be a small businessman in America.”
Corker was vague on whether the government should negotiate Medicare drug prices, saying, “I think we’ve got to figure out a way that Americans are not paying one penny more for prescriptions than Canadians. I think that’s absolutely wrong. And I think we’ve got to figure out a way of doing it.
“But I do like keeping competition in the mix. And I don’t know whether it’s through trade agreements or other ways. But there’s no reason that Americans are paying almost 100 percent of all the research and development that’s taking place in pharmaceuticals.”