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CNN Live Today

President Calls for New Commitment to Ethics

Aired July 09, 2002 - 13:01   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: President Bush has announced his plan to help restore trust in American business and the financial markets. In his speech in New York, the president called for a new commitment to ethics on the part of corporate leaders, and harsher penalties for those who stray. The president's speech, delivered this morning on Wall Street.

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GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: At this moment, America's greatest economic need is higher ethical standards, standards enforced by strict laws and upheld by responsible business leaders. The lure of heady profits of the late 1990s spawned abuses and excesses. With strict enforcement and higher ethical standards, we must usher in a new era of integrity in corporate America.

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PHILLIPS: From the White House to Wall Street, our CNN congressional -- or White House correspondent, rather, John King has been following the president. He tells a little bit more about the outcome of his speech -- John.

JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kyra, good afternoon. Mr. Bush now on his way back to Washington from Wall Street. It is back in Washington, where he will fight the increasingly bruising political war over what should be done about corporate corruption, what the government needs to do to improve corporate responsibility.

Democrats, obviously some disagreements with the president. They have aired those in recent hours, even as the president was delivering his message here on Wall Street. Mr. Bush on the one hand saying corporate America must do much of this work on its own. Mr. Bush saying most corporate CEOs are good actors, but that they must have a new corporate responsibility, a sense of ethics, to correct the misdeeds of the bad actors. Mr. Bush proposing tougher jail sentences for any CEOs convicted of fraud, tougher penalties for mail fraud or shredding documents in any investigations of alleged fraud.

Mr. Bush wants millions of dollars, 20 million immediately, 100 million more next year, to beef up the Securities and Exchange Commission. He came to office as a free-market deregulation Republican, but Mr. Bush saying in his speech here today on Wall Street that because of the Enron accounting scandal, the WorldCom accounting scandal and others like it, that corporate America, Wall Street has left the government no choice but to step in and take dramatic steps and take them now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUSH: Government cannot remove risk from investment -- I know that -- or chance from the market. But government can do more to promote transparency and ensure that risks are honest. And government can ensure that those who breech the trust of the American people are punished.

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KING: This is a policy debate, but also very much a political debate. Mr. Bush saying in that speech that the problems long in the making only coming now to light, that an effort by the president to make the case that Enron and WorldCom might be coming into the newspapers, onto the business pages during his administration, but that the accounting problems and the deceit date back well before he become president.

That part of the president's effort, even as he lays out his new proposals to position himself for the very difficult high-stakes political debate now in Washington. Remember, it is a congressional election year. The president says he wants to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis. The Democrats who run the Senate say much the same. But there will be some bruising political battles in the days and weeks ahead -- Kyra.

PHILLIPS: John, the president said "no wealth without character." What does he mean by that?

KING: What he means is -- remember, this is man who ran for president in the backdrop of the final days of the Clinton administration, saying he wanted to restore integrity, decency, responsibility to Washington. Mr. Bush telling corporate leaders around the country that, yes, they should be able to make millions of dollars, they should be able to enrich themselves, so long as they are honest in how they run their companies. Mr. Bush saying it is wrong for a CEO to get rich, if in the end his company is going to be end up in bankruptcy, and everybody else, including the workers and the investors, end up broke or at least severely damaged economically.

So a bit of a cultural, ethical lecture, if you will, from the president here on Wall Street.

PHILLIPS: All right. Our John King, thank you so much.

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