Nov. 15 Democratic debate transcript

Blitzer: I want to go to John Roberts in a second, but I know Senator Dodd and Senator Obama want to weigh in on this. Senator Dodd, you first.

Dodd: Well first of all, look, I respect the fact that we are calling for time-outs. But, as pointed out earlier by John Edwards, we have had Senator Obama and Senator Clinton both come out in support of the Peruvian free trade agreement.

Now, you're switching our positions on these issues here for the convenience of a debate and discussion, and where polling data may be. We are in a global economy. It is critically important that we do everything we can to expand those markets so that our products and our services can be sold in foreign nations.

It was outrageous in a sense here. If a U.S. corporation produced contaminated toys or food, they would have been shut down in 20 minutes. I called upon the president to put a moratorium on trade coming out of China. When those products were announced to be contaminated, it should have stopped right then and there.

Blitzer: All right. Quickly, Senator Obama was NAFTA a mistake?

Obama: Well, first of all, I hope Chris is clear. I haven't changed positions on Peru.

I am intending to... I am for it, and I plan to vote for it, because it is a small country. This is a trade agreement that has the labor agreements and the environmental agreements that we've been fighting for in it. And I think it's the right thing to do.

I am opposed to CAFTA. I've been opposed to South Korea.

But going back to the issue of China, you know what Japan does with Chinese, when it comes to, for example, food importation. They send their own inspectors over to China, and they set up their own safety system, and they say, "If you don't abide by our rules, you can't send food into Japan."

Now, the question is, why doesn't the United States impose these same rules and regulations as Japan has?

This is the biggest market -- this is the biggest market in the world. China has to sell here.

But this goes back to how we did most favored nation trading status with China. The problem was, we had one lever. When we allowed them in, we should have said, "We will review this every single year, so if you are not behaving properly, if you are not safeguarding our consumers and find that you are not looking out for American workers, or the administration is not, we will have that subject to review."

Blitzer: Thank you.

Biden: Wolf?

Obama: That was the failure on that China vote.

Biden: Thirty seconds, Wolf, 30 seconds.

Blitzer: All right, 30 seconds. I got to let Senator Biden...

Biden: Look, it's not the agreement; it's the man. Under the WTO, we can shut this down. What are they all talking about here? It's about a president who won't enforce the law.

When they contaminated chicken, what happened? They cut off all chicken going in from Delaware, a $3 billion industry, into China -- they cut it off.

We have power under this agreement. I don't know what anybody is talking about here. Enforce the agreement. Shut it down.

Blitzer: Thank you, Senator.

Go ahead, John.

Roberts: I want to explore the energy issue for a moment here, because it's of particular importance to this state.

Senator Obama, the price of oil is flirting with $100-a-barrel- mark right now, making all the more urgent the need for alternate fuel sources.

You support nuclear energy as a part of the plan for the future, but there is an issue of what to do with the waste. You are opposed to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository about 90 miles from here. Your state uses about -- gets about 48 percent of its power from nuclear compared to 20 percent for most other states, yet you are opposed to bringing nuclear waste from other states and keeping it in Illinois.

The question is, if not in your backyard, who's?

Obama: Well, as I've said, I don't think it's fair to send it to Nevada... because we're producing it.

So what have to do is we've got to develop the storage capacity based on sound science. Now, laboratories like Argonne in my own home state are trying to develop ways to safely store nuclear waste without having to ship it across the country and put it in somebody else's backward.

But keep in mind that I don't think nuclear power is necessarily our best option.

It has to be part of our energy mix. We have a genuine crisis that has to be addressed. And as president, I intend to address it. And here's what we have to do.

We have to, first of all, cap greenhouse gases, because climate change is real and it's going to impact Nevada, and it's impacting the entire planet. That means that we're going to have to tell polluters: We're going to charge you money when you send pollution into the air that's creating climate change.

That money we can then reinvest in solar, in wind, in biodiesel, in clean coal technology, and in superior nuclear technology.