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WALLACE: Let me bring the governors into this at this point, because one of the things that Mark Zandi mentioned, Governor Daniels, is the idea of more aid to states, and that is gaining a lot of currency here in Washington because, obviously, the states, which have to balance their budgets next year, if they don’t have that money, are going to have to lay off people.

But the question is why should a state like yours, of Indiana, which has been very responsible and, in fact, has a billion-dollar surplus — why should taxpayers in your state through their federal taxes bail out other states like, for instance, California, that have been less responsible?

DANIELS: What a great question! I completely agree with you. You know, we’ve been practicing economy — we had to out here. Our state, as it happens, was broke about four or five years ago. We dug out, paid all our bills, and put some money in the bank. And for the moment, we have a AAA credit rating and we’re solvent.

But you know, if this economy doesn’t recover some time over the next year or so, even our savings account will eventually be depleted. And in that context, really, it would be incredibly inequitable to arrange a — if the next bailout is to bail out California or other states who spent themselves into trouble even before the recession got here, I think almost anybody would find that unfair. We sure would.

WALLACE: Governor Granholm, how do you respond to that?

GRANHOLM: Well, I mean, we’ve been a donor state, Michigan has, for as long as anybody can remember. We’ve been giving money, our taxpayer dollars, our tax dollars at the pump, to other states, to pave roads in Alaska and elsewhere. We would like to see some of that back as well. But the bottom line is this stimulus itself can be — there can be a second look at this, but not as broadly, perhaps, as the first time around.

I mean, in other words, it would be good to see another targeted tax policy, which I think everyone, it sounds like, on this — in this panel would agree would be helpful. If you can target tax incentives to job creation and job growth, that might be one way to look at it.

But I do think that you cannot turn your back on the fact that you have to play defense and offense simultaneously. In other words, you have to protect people during this very difficult time while the employers get back on their feet.

And there’s one other thing I would say, is that in this nation we have really abandoned manufacturing in large measure, other than recent actions to try to shore up the auto industry.

Well, if we can make sure that in this stimulus that those manufacturers who, in large measure — I can tell you in Michigan anyway, the auto manufacturers and the suppliers have been turned away by banks, people who have worked for 30 years, have been good employers, have always made payroll and now find it very difficult to have access to capital because the industry itself has been semi- redlined.

If there could be additional access to capital for manufacturers, if that TARP money could be put into banks and encourage those manufacturers to have access to it so that they can make payroll and can diversify, I think that would be another good form of stimulus that’s targeted to job creation and saving jobs.

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WALLACE: Steve Wynn, where do you draw the line between the proper role of government in all of this and the proper role of the private sector?

WYNN: Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization’s history. For some reason, that simple truth has evaded everybody.

The only thing that creates an increased standard of living is giving someone a job, the demand for their labor, whether it’s you and I, Chris, or anybody else.

The people that are paying the price for this juggernaut of federal spending are the middle class and the working class of America. And soaring rhetoric and great speeches, with or without a Teleprompter, aren’t going to change the truth. And the truth is the biggest enemy, the biggest obstacle, that working middle class America has is government spending.

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WYNN: OK. That’s my point, Governor. I’m not making any other point. And believe me, ma’am, I’ve got 20,000 employees. I’ve had as many as 150,000 families that I’ve been self-insuring. There’s nothing simplistic about my approach to this problem.

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WYNN: Well, health care, something I know about, is a complicated technical issue for which practically everybody in this administration has absolutely zero experience. It was not a priority.

Job creation was the priority from the day that this president was inaugurated. It has been eclipsed by a technical, confusing conversation in which hardly anybody has read the small print on a thing called health care.

That’s a proper subject, along with infrastructure, for a healthy economy. But infrastructure and health care are things that come later. Right now our concentration should be on job creation, and I...

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GRANHOLM: Well, I do think it’s way early, and I completely agree with Governor Daniels. We’re all trying to make sure that people can put food on the table, that they can stay in their homes, and that they have the means of getting through this recession. That’s what everybody’s focused on right now.

But there is — I just want to jump back very quickly on the health care piece and on cap and trade, too, which is something that Governor Daniels raised. I think that especially in these times, but really on a long-term basis, for the economy to rebound we have to look at what our competitor countries are doing.

And just as an example, in Michigan, you know, we — you spend as a consumer $1,200 to $1,600 in every vehicle, if it’s a domestically made American vehicle, for health care. Now, that’s not what is being spent by other — for consumers of other products that are not — that are from other countries, because other countries provide some assistance. There is a partnership there. The full burden of health care is not on the backs of the private sector.

So in this country, we have an opportunity to have a shared responsibility so that our businesses can be, in fact, more competitive.

More cars were built in Ontario than they were in Michigan two years ago and last year because they were — they weren’t going to Canada because of taxes or regulation, but they were going there because health care got a greater assist than it does in the United States. So that’s an important public-private partnership opportunity to make us more competitive.

On cap and trade, very quickly, I think that we have the means, especially in the industrial Midwest, to go from rust belt to green belt, to make the products — because we know how to make things — to make the products that are associated with reducing global warming and increasing energy efficiency.

So I don’t think we should be afraid of this at all. We know that the globe is going to need those solutions. The technology and the expertise, the universities and the manufacturing capacity are here in the Midwest, so let’s embrace that and be the place where those products are made.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20091011/pl_cq_politics/politics3221236_1