Tim Kaine talks jobs in Daytona Beach, full speech transcript

August 3 in Daytona Beach, Vice Presidential nominee Senator Tim Kaine toured a jobs training kitchen at Daytona State College and held a rally where he touted his and Hillary Clinton’s “100-Day Jobs Plan,” to build an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top and includes the largest investment in good-paying jobs since World War II. Senator Kaine contrasted their economic agenda with Donald Trump’s plan, highlighting that an economic analysis done by former economic advisor to Senator John McCain said that under Trump’s plan, the economy would lose 3.4 million jobs.

In addition, with more cases of Zika confirmed in Florida, Senator Kaine called on Congress to return to Washington and pass the necessary funding to manage the Zika health crisis. He said, “Congress should not be in recess when Zika is advancing.  We ought to go back in an emergency session and demand that the House pass the bipartisan bill that we have on the table, so we can start making these investments to keep Floridians and keep Americans safe.”

Senator Kaine’s remarks, as transcribed, are below:

photo/ donkeyhotey

“Give Martiza another round of applause. Martiza, don’t run against me for office.  Or at least give me fair warning if you’re thinking about it.  She is fantastic.  And what a great crowd.  I’m so glad to be back in Florida for the second time in 10 days.  Second time in 10 days. We kicked off the campaign – I was rolled out as running mate by Hillary Clinton in Miami, and here we are in Volusia County, Daytona.  So good to be at Daytona State.  I think you can see to the Clinton team that Florida is really, really important to us.  You guys are important to us.

Let me just do a couple of acknowledgments, and I want to get right down to the topic. Martiza introduced me and talked about jobs and talked about the economy, and this is what Secretary Clinton and I are out on the field this week doing, right after the convention.  Hey, wasn’t the convention great? It was just so upbeat and positive and patriotic, and not sugarcoating or whitewashing any of the challenges we have, but a sense of optimism that any challenge we have, we can tackle it because we’ve got great people.  And compare that to the Cleveland convention.  I mean, it was like – it was like a Gotham City vibe or something.  I mean, I was saying it was kind of dark and pessimistic, and some people said, wow, that’s a dark picture of the United States.  And I said, no, that wasn’t a picture of the United States; that was a self-guided tour through the mind of Donald J. Trump.  That’s a scary place to be.

I want to thank Dr. Tom Lobasso, who I met.  He’s been here for 15 years – president.  I […] for about the last 18 months.  Give him and everybody at Daytona State another round of applause.  I was able to get a tour and meet some great students in the culinary program here.  I met Chef Costa.  Everybody calls him Chef Costa.  And what an energetic and exciting guy.  Chef, thank you. And to everybody at Daytona State, I wanted to do the event here and the team really did because programs like this are very, very special to me.

I grew up in a house where my dad ran a welding and ironworking shop, and the ironworkers that I worked with, my brothers and I and my mom, these were trained – superbly trained technical artists: welders and ironworkers.  And I learned about the power of a career in technical education through watching them work.  And it was about a partnership.  My dad was management; he owned the business.  But he taught my brothers and me, ‘It’s going to be the artistry of these welders that will put you kids through school, and it will be my business acumen that will put my ironworkers’ kids through school.’  It’s about a partnership.  It was about shared prosperity, and that’s a key thing for Hillary Clinton.

I went to college and law school, and in the middle of law decided to take a year off and go work with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras.  And I did stuff that was pretty interesting. They asked me, ‘So you’re at Harvard Law School?  Well, that doesn’t give you any useful skill in the real world.’  ‘But didn’t your dad – wasn’t he a welder or something?’  I said yeah, so they put me in charge of El Instituto Técnico Loyola, una escuela vocacional para jóvenes en Honduras, y yo era un maestro de carpintería y soldadura con jóvenes de 14 años, y aprendí un poquito de español, pero yo hablo como un niño de 14 años – I speak like a 14-year-old. But that also taught me.  Here we are at Daytona State, I’ve been taking the tour of the culinary lab and learning about other technical and career programs here, allied health and nursing programs.  I learned about the power of it again in Honduras.  I came back again as a governor and now in the Senate.  We do an awful lot in the career area, career and technical education.  And my wife, until last week, was secretary of education in Virginia, working with our colleges, working with our community colleges, and working […]