All-American Presidential Forums on PBS" Moderated by Tavis Smiley

FORUM RESPONSES

I want to say just at the outset, I apologize for the candidates that aren't here. I think this is a disgrace that they're not here.

I think it's a disgrace for our country, I think it's bad for our party, and I don't think it's good for our future.

You know, you grow political parties by expanding your base, by reaching out to people and getting more people. What they're doing is sending the message of narrowing the base, and that's not the right way to go. It's not good for the Republican Party, it's not good for the country. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry to you and I'm sorry to those watching that they're not here.

I've got a suggestion, though, for a way to fix it. A lot of people on the Republican side say: Well, OK, we can't get votes in the African American community. I say: Why don't you pick one of the early primary states, like a South Carolina or a Michigan, register Republican, and vote for one of the six of us?

And then let's see what takes place.

Lucille, it's a great question. It's one we should ponder and ponder seriously. There are several things that I would do. One is focusing in on rebuilding the family, and that's been at the core of my campaign – is rebuilding the family.

We pushed that in Washington D.C. where I chaired the committee and developed marriage – development accounts, and really urging that.

The second one is I think symbols are important, and I would hope I would be the president that would open the National African American Museum of History and Culture on the Mall in Washington, D.C.

I pushed for that. We've gotten the funding on it. And that symbolism would be important to do.

And the final thing that I think is critical that we do. I think we need to have – and we need to pass in the Congress, and the president sign it and say it, an official apology from the U.S. government for the institutions of slavery and segregation in this country. I think that needs to be done.

I think there's a couple of things – I think there's a couple of things that are at work here. One is, I think clearly, we still don't have a colorblind society. And we're seeing that. We continue to see it.

I think we've made some great progress. I've worked with Congressman John Lewis on a number of projects, worked with him on this museum that I just spoke about tonight. That museum is going to happen, and we worked together.

But there is still racism that does exist in America.

There is a second issue here that I think we need to address, and it's the growth of the economy, particularly where people are located.

I come from a rural state of Kansas. And I've got places in my state where there's economic growth taking place, and I have places where it's not.

And what you have to do to try to stimulate it is really have a tax policy, something I've talked about, about an optional flat tax, and maybe you put it in places where they need the economic growth to take place more than in other places. So you stimulate the growth of the economy where people are needing the most opportunities to grow.

And that's something I would do and work on. And I think it is part of the issue.

Thanks. Thanks, Ray, for the tough question.

The American people are for immigration. They don't support illegal immigration. That's what they want to see take place. They want a legal system. They're for legal immigration; they're not for illegal immigration.

We've been through this debate now for a couple of years. They want to see us secure the border, and that's something I will push and do and have voted for and will in the future.

They want to see us have enforcement at the worksite. And that's something that I will do and push and enforce as well, because that's the key attraction -- not the only one, but it's the key attraction -- at the worksite.

I will not support new paths to citizenship. I do think in the future we should look at different work-visa-type programs as a way to be able to deal with the problem that you're identifying, which is the realistic problem of where we are today.

I think I may be the only person up here on this stage that's spent a couple nights in jail, of my own volition, and I went in to look at the system. I spent a night in a prison in Kansas and I spent a night in a prison in Louisiana. I've stayed in homeless shelters to answer and to get a feel for what you're talking about.

And you hear about it very fast. And you get a feel for it about how people have become loners and went to crime, in some cases, and then caught and want to turn their lives around. So it spawned me to push the Second Chance Act.

It's something that we've gotten through the Committee on the Judiciary, and what it's primarily focused on is to help people if they have been caught and they are in prison, that they not go back again. Because right now in the United States of America, if you go to prison, the chances of you going back are two-thirds, 66 percent. That is a travesty that that number is that high.

This bill in five years we cut it in half. A lot of it is faith- based institutions. A lot of it is mentorship and work programs. So we can help people that are chains they can't break themselves.

Yes. It's a good question. It's a tough question. I have chaired the D.C. Subcommittee, both the authorizing and the Appropriations subcommittee. I support the residents of D.C. the right to vote. But there's a way to do it and there's a way not to do it. And the way to do it is to amend the Constitution, and the way not to do it is to pass something that's unconstitutional.

In the 23rd Amendment to the Constitution, it gave D.C. the right to vote for president.

But it didn't give them the right to vote for Congress. And what you have to do what we have to do. And what I support is amending the Constitution so they can have the right to vote. D.C. deserves that right. There's a way to do it, there's a way not to do it.

Ray, it's a serious question, it's an important one. I've been in my state and communities and in places experiencing what exactly what you're talking about. Not on a personal basis, but seen individuals that are having to go to a community health center at the last minute, after the disease has already really grown and pronounced itself and they hesitate because they don't have insurance coverage or they don't have the money to be able to do this.

This is a real problem. It's real people that are involved in this type of situation.

I think the question you have to ask is: Which is the best way to go, then?

Do you do it with more government or do you do it with more markets?

Because these are real people experiencing this. And I pick more markets and real markets with it. Because I have not seen, in this country, ever, when the government enters into something on a bigger basis, do we get higher quality service or more of it?

We don't. It doesn't work that way. So I really – and one thing that hasn't been talked about up here is health savings accounts. We need to expand that so people can save money, tax-exempt, from their work, the employers putting that in so they can have some money for their health care coverage.

One, I think it's clear what we need to do at this point in time, and I think we need to talk about at this point in time, where we are. We declared war. We voted in Congress to go to war, Republican and Democrats. People can say things weren't right, we shouldn't have done this, shouldn't have done that.

We are where we are today. The military, I believe, has done and is doing a superb job. We have had a terrible political answer on the ground in Iraq.

A terrible – yesterday, in the Congress, a bipartisan political solution passed. It was the Biden-Brownback bill – or, since I'm here, it was the Brownback-Biden bill.

It declares a three-state federalized solution to Iraq – a Kurdish north, a Sunni west, a Shia south, with Baghdad as a federal city; weak federated government; most of the policies devolve down to the local units of government. Because Iraq is less a country than it is three groups of people. We need to recognize that. And we can move forward with that political solution – and pull our guys back.

We are the greatest nation on the face of the Earth, and we are ones that can stand up. And we need to stand up in the face of second genocide when we had declared years ago in Rwanda: Never again.

And what is happening? It is happening again. And it's not just the first genocide that's taken place in Sudan, it's the second. And I've been there.

We need to do divestiture campaigns here. We need to support the African Union troops there. We shouldn't put our own troops. We don't need to put our own troops. We need to provide food and medicine as well.

We need a culture of life in the United States, a culture that recognizes every life at every stage. It's beautiful, it's unique, it's a child of a loving God, period.

I have difficulty with the death penalty. This is an individual, though, in that case, that has committed a heinous crime. I think we should limit the death penalty to cases only where we cannot protect the society from the individual, such as when Osama bin Laden is caught.

We need to be able to use it then.

But we should use this very limited and only in that circumstance, in order to talk and to teach a culture of life in America.

I live in the town of Topeka, Kansas. Brown v. Board of Education was decided in my hometown.

I believe we still need integration taking place in the schools, and I think it's an important thing. I think we need to do it on a voluntary and incentivized basis as much as we possibly can, but it is important for us to maintain it as a goal and objective of this country.