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

FORUM RESPONSES

You know, when we have family reunions and some of the family members don't show up, we do talk about them.

But I'm not going to do that.

You know, tonight we have about 160,000 Americans in Iraq – in a war. We have over 20,000 of our uniform personnel in Afghanistan. And I'm going to talk, tonight, about how we leave Iraq in victory.

We have a border and we've got a big piece of this border, obviously, shown right behind us here. We have a border which is on fire with massive amounts of narcotics and people being smuggled across, illegally, as we stand here. I want to talk about that.

But you know, most importantly, I want to do what my little grandson did when he walked up to his first grade teacher about a month ago, stuck his hand out, said, "My name is Duncan Hunter."

We call him "D-3."

And he said, "My grandpa's going to be president."

And then this little 6-year-old looked his teacher right in the eye and he said, "Now, can I count on your vote?"

I'm coming here for your vote.

What a wonderful question. And, you know, I think that we also have to add, with Governor Huckabee's statement about Ike, that calm hand of Dwight Eisenhower that brought about desegregation – also, you know, in 1964, that Civil Rights Act was passed with a greater proportion of Republican votes in the United States Congress than Democrat votes, a fact that's been forgotten over the years. I want you to remember that.

But, you know, I can't talk about young Black Americans, the need for them to be shielded from pornography, which is certainly a need, without talking about the need for all Americans to be shielded from pornography.

And in the barrio where I practiced law before I ran for Congress and got this job, I remember Mr. Sanchez down the street with his family, working 18-hour days, a need to have less regulation, less taxation. That would help all Americans.

And I guess I would go with Jack Kemp's great statement: A rising tide lifts all boats. A Republican administration, my administration, would lift all boats.

You know, Republicans, when we had that great match up of a Republican majority in Congress in the '90s and President Bill Clinton, the Republicans initiated legislation three times to reform welfare.

The first two times, President Clinton vetoed it, and the third time he signed it and took credit for it. It's something I've done every now and then in my career.

When we did that, let me tell you what happened. The number of jobs of single moms, the employment rate went up. Families did much better. You had the average income go up in the communities where the welfare reform took place. You had, according to HHS, 32 percent increase in employment in those jobs and in those families which previously were on welfare. We did very, very well by breaking this cycle of welfare.

But lastly, there is one party that is very important to jobs, jobs in the community for everybody.

That's the small businessman. If we help the small businessman, and that's a Republican trademark, we'll do it.

Folks that are here illegally have to leave and let me tell you why. Today, if you're a dry wall contractor and you play by the rules and you pay $27 a loaded hour for each of your employees, you will be constantly under-cut by contractors who use people who are here illegally.

That's not fair to Americans who play by the rules. And we just talked jobs a few minutes ago. That's one reason you have, in certain areas, especially in the construction trades now, higher levels of unemployment.

You have to build a border fence and you've got to have a real border, not just for immigration issues, but also because of security issues.

And right now, I wrote the law that extends that border fence 854 miles across Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and California. We need to build the border fence. It's the law.

And when people come to this country, they've got to knock on the front door, because the back door's going to be closed.

I don't think there's any way you can be more fair then to have people in this country, under this wonderful Constitution that we put together, where people who are tried for criminal acts are tried by a jury of their peers.

Juries, obviously, are blemished in many ways and are not perfect, but a jury trial under the law is, I think, the best system of justice on the face of the Earth.

You know, I might be a little more open to statehood for D.C. if they would allow their citizens to be able to keep and bear arms in their houses to protect their safety.

And I offered that amendment a couple of years ago. It passed and when it passed, the Democrats brought down the entire crime bill rather than let D.C. residents have the right to keep and bear arms.

And on the issue of allowing – mandating some type of ID, you know the first 21 Black congressmen were Republicans who came out of the South, and they went into a series – they went into a series of poll taxes and all types of deals that the Democrats put in, road blocks the Democrats put in their place to keep them from being able to vote.

So I don't agree with those types of stumbling blocks. But I would say this: We have right now a real danger of people that are illegally in the country being rounded up, herded into the polls – we've seen that in California – voting illegally. That disenfranchises everybody in that community.

I think you have to have some IDs.

Well, Ray, the first thing I'd say is I can't – as a guy who practiced law in the barrio and took lots of cases that anybody who couldn't pay didn't have to pay, as people came into my office, down there in the barrio in the waterfront in San Diego, I didn't separate them out. So I'm not going to separate them out now. And I'm going to talk about how I think we can have affordable health care.

The first thing you've got to have is the ability to buy your health care insurance across state lines. And right now, nobody in the United States can do that.

And that means that the same policy that costs 70 bucks a month in Long Beach, California, costs $343 a month in New Jersey, but the New Jersey policyholder can't change policies and buy the policy in California. So we've got to change that.

Secondly, I think we bring back the family doctor. And I think one way you bring back the family doctor is by taking away massive malpractice burdens, these massive insurance premiums that we place on people.

And finally – finally, Ray, let's try a little freedom. How about if we said in the tax code that if a doc will be a family doc, in the barrio, in the community, and he will do office visits for 30 bucks or 40 bucks a visit, he doesn't have to pay taxes on that, he doesn't have to have three accountants, he doesn't have to do all those things?

Vernice, thank you for your two tours in Iraq. And I want to say I've got a son who's done two tours as a Marine in Iraq.

He's getting to see a new country in Afghanistan right now. And who knows? You may be there shortly.

Thanks for your service to our country.

Ladies and gentlemen, we can leave Iraq, and under my leadership, we will leave Iraq in victory. And let me tell you what I would propose.

The key to handing off the security apparatus in Iraq, now that we've stood up a free government -- and it is a free government. It's stumbling along, it's inept, but it's a free government. The key to a security handoff is to have a reliable Iraqi army.

Right now, we've got 131 battalions in the Iraqi army. We've trained them and we've equipped them, and we are moving them into the battle.

And my recommendation to the president, the Joint Chiefs and General Petraeus is to make sure that every one of those 131 battalions gets at least a three- or four-month combat tour in a contentious area. When they are battle-hardened, we can rotate them into the battle zone, rotate our America's heavy forces, Marines and Army, and bring them home.

That's the right way to leave Iraq, in victory.

The outside troops, U.N. and African Union, are not getting the job done because they're garrisoned far away from the villages that get hammered by the Janjaweed.

By the time the damage has been done, the troops always get there late.

What we probably need to do is get a humanitarian corridor driven up through that vast country, where we have armed convoys, U.N. convoys or African Union convoys to get food and medicine to those people that need it most.

And lastly, teach those villages self-defense, because the troops aren't getting there in time.

I think there is a need for the death penalty. And it's called deterrence. And that means that, when that Charles Manson is getting rid to pull the trigger on an innocent American, just maybe the idea passes through his mind that he, himself, is going to lose his life.

Now, that might only deter five percent, 10 percent, 15 percent, 20 percent. It does deter some people. And for that reason, the death penalty, dealing with some very rough, very ruthless people, is necessary.

I think the population of the school should depend on the community that you live in.

And it should be, in my mind, small schools, and they should be schools that are close enough to mom and dad that you can get them down to the school when the teacher needs them. It shouldn't be based on any forced mandate by government, and I think it will work out a lot better that way.