SIMPSON: Thank you. We have a question here.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Yes. I would like to get a response from all three gentlemen. And the question is, what are your plans to improve the physical infrastructure of this nation, which includes the water system, the sewer system, our transportation systems, etcetera. Thank you.

SIMPSON: The cities. Who's going to fix the cities and how?

BUSH: I'll be glad to take a shot at it.

SIMPSON: Please.

BUSH: I'm not sure that -- and I can understand if you haven't seen this, because there's been a lot of hue and cry. We passed the most furthest looking transportation bill in the history of this country since Eisenhower started the interstate highways -- $150 billion for improving the infrastructure. That happened when I was president. And so I'm very proud of the way that came about and I think it's a very, very good beginning.

Like Mr. Perot, I am concerned about the deficits and $150 billion is a lot of money, but it's awful hard to say we're going to go out and spend more money when we're trying to get the deficit down. But I would cite that as a major accomplishment. We hear all the negatives. When you're president you expect this. Everybody's running against the incumbent. They can do better. Everyone knows that.

But here's something that we can take great pride in because it really does get to what you're talking about. Our home initiative -- our home ownership initiative -- HOPE -- that passed the Congress is a good start for having people own their own homes instead of living in these deadly tenements.

Our enterprise zones, that we hear a lot of lip service about in Congress, would bring jobs into the inner city. There's a good program. And I need the help of everybody across this country to get it passed in a substantial way by the Congress.

When we went out to south central in Los Angeles -- some of you may remember the riots there. I went out there. I went to a boys' club. And everyone of them -- the boys' club leaders, the ministers -- all of them were saying pass enterprise zones. We go back to Washington and very difficult to get it through the Congress. But there's going to be a new Congress. No one likes gridlock. There's going to be a new Congress because the old one -- I don't want to get this man made at me -- but there was a post office scandal and a bank scandal. You're going to have a lot of new members of Congress. And then you can sit down and say, help me do what we should for the cities. Help me pass these programs.

SIMPSON: Mr. President, aren't you threatening to veto the bill -- the urban aid bill -- that included enterprise zones?

BUSH: Sure, but the problem is, you get so many things included in a great big bill that you have to look at the overall good. That's the problem with our system. If you had a line item veto you could knock out the pork. You could knock out the tax increases and you could do what the people want, and that's create enterprise zones.

SIMPSON: Governor Clinton, you're chomping at the bit.

CLINTON: That bill pays for these urban enterprise zones by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more. And that's why he wants to veto it, just like he vetoed an earlier bill this year. This is not mud slinging. This is fact slinging -- a bill earlier this year. This is facts -- that would have given investment tax credits and other incentives to reinvest in our cities, in our country. But it asked the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more. Mr. Perot wants to do the same thing. I agree with him. I mean, we agree with that.

But let me tell you specifically what my plan does. My plan would dedicate $20 billion a year in each of the next 4 years for investments in new transportation, communications, environmental clean-ups and new technologies for the 21st century. And we would target it especially in areas that have been either depressed or which have lost a lot of defense related jobs. There are 200,000 people in California, for example, who have lost their defense related jobs. They ought to be engaged in making high speed rail. They ought to be engaged in breaking ground in other technologies, doing waste recycling, clean water technology and things of that kind.

We can create millions of jobs in these new technologies- -more than we're going to lost in defense -- if we target it. But we're investing a much smaller percentage of our income in the things you just asked about than all of our major competitors, and our wealth growth is going down as a result of it. It's making the country poorer, which is why I answered the gentleman the way I did before. We have to both bring down the deficit and get our economy through these kinds of investments in order to get the kind of wealth and jobs and incomes we need in America.

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot, what about your plans for the cities? You want to tackle the economy and the deficit first.

PEROT: First you've got to have money to pay for these things. So you've got to create jobs. There are all kinds of ways to create jobs in the inner city. I'm not a politician, but I think I could go to Washington in a week and get everybody holding hands and get this bill signed because I talk to the Democratic leaders and they want it. I talk to the Republican leaders and they want it. But since they're bred from childhood to fight with one another rather than get results, you know, I would be glad to drop out and spend a little time and see if we couldn't build some bridges.

Now, results is what counts. The president can't order Congress around. Congress can't order the president around. That's not bad for a guy that's never been there, right? But you have to work together.

Now, I have talked to the chairmen of the committees that want this. They're Democrats. The president wants it, but we can't get it because we sit here in gridlock because it's a campaign year. We didn't fund a lot of other things this year, like the savings and loan mess. That's another story that we're going to pay a big price for right after the election.

The facts are though -- the facts are -- the American people are hurting. These people are hurting in the inner cities. We're shipping the quote, "low paying jobs" overseas. What are low paying jobs? Textiles, shoes, things like that that we say are yesterday's industries. They're tomorrow's industries in the inner cities.

Let me say in my case, if I'm out of work, I'll cut grass tomorrow to take care of my family; I'll be happy to make shoes, I'll be happy to make clothing, I'll make sausage. You just give me a job. Put those jobs in the inner cities instead of doing diplomatic deals and shipping them to China where prison labor does the work.

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot, everybody thought you won the first debate because you were plain-speaking and you made it sound, oh, so simple. Well, just do it. What makes you think that you're going to be able to get the Democrats and Republicans together any better than these guys?

PEROT: If you ask me if I could fly a fighter plane or be an astronaut, I can't. I've spent my life creating jobs. That's something I know how to do. And, very simply, in the inner city, they're starved -- you see, small business is the way to jump start the inner city, not --

SIMPSON: Are you answering my question?

PEROT: You want jobs in the inner city? Do you want jobs in the inner city? Is that your question?

SIMPSON: No, I want you to tell me how you're going to be able to get the Republicans and Democrats in Congress to work together better than these two gentlemen.

PEROT: Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I've listened to both sides, and if they would talk to one another instead of throwing rocks, I think we could get a lot done. And, among other things, I would say, okay, over here in this Senate committee to the chairman who is anxious to get this bill passed, the president who is anxious, I'd say rather than just yelling at one another, why don't we find out where we're apart, try to get together, get the bill passed and give the people the benefits and not play party politics right now. And I think the press would follow that so closely that probably they would get it done.

That's the way I would do it. I doubt if they'll give me the chance, but I will drop everything and go work on it.

SIMPSON: Okay, I have a question here.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: My question was originally for Governor Clinton, but I think I would welcome a response from all three candidates. As you are aware, crime is rampant in our cities. And in the Richmond area -- and I'm sure it's happened elsewhere -- 12-year-olds are carrying guns to school. And I'm sure when our Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution they did not mean for the right to bear arms to apply to 12-year-olds. So I'm asking: Where do you stand on gun control, and what do you plan to do about it?

SIMPSON: Governor Clinton?

CLINTON: I support the right to keep and bear arms. I live in a state where over half the adults have hunting or fishing licenses, or both. But I believe we have to have some way of checking hand guns before they're sold, to check the criminal history, the mental health history, and the age of people who are buying them. Therefore I support the Brady bill which would impose a national waiting period unless and until a state did what only Virginia has done now, which is to automate its records. Once you automate your records, then you don't have to have a waiting period, but at least you can check.

I also think we should have frankly restrictions on assault weapons whose only purpose is to kill. We need to give the police a fighting chance in our urban areas where the gangs are building up.

The third thing I would say -- it doesn't bear directly on gun control, but it's very important -- we need more police on the street. There is a crime bill which would put more police on the street, which was killed for this session by a filibuster in the Senate, mostly be Republican senators, and I think it's a shame it didn't pass, I think it should be made the law -- but it had the Brady bill in it, the waiting period.

I also believe that we should offer college scholarships to people who will agree to work them off as police officers, and I think, as we reduce our military forces, we should let people earn military retirement by coming out and working as police officers. Thirty years ago there were three police officers on the street for every crime; today there are three crimes for every police officer.

In the communities which have had real success putting police officers near schools where kids carry weapons, to get the weapons out of the schools, are on the same blocks, you've seen crime go down. In Houston there's been a 15- percent drop in the crime rate in the last year because of the work the mayor did there in increasing the police force. So I know it can work; I've seen it happen.

SIMPSON: Thank you. President Bush?

BUSH: I think you put your finger on a major problem. I talk about strengthening the American family and it's very hard to strengthen the family if people are scared to walk down to the corner store and, you know, send their kid down to get a loaf of bread. It's very hard.

I have been fighting for very strong anti-crime legislation -- habeas corpus reform, so you don't have these endless appeals, so when somebody gets sentenced, hey, this is for real. I've been fighting for changes in the exclusionary rule so if an honest cop stops somebody and makes a technical mistake, the criminal doesn't go away.

I'll probably get into a fight in this room with some but I happen to think that we need stronger death penalties for those that kill police officers.

Virginia's in the lead in this, as Governor Clinton properly said, on this identification system for firearms. I am not for national registration of firearms. Some of the states that have the toughest anti-gun laws have the highest levels of crime. I am for the right, as the governor says- -I'm a sportsman and I don't think you ought to eliminate all kinds of weapons. But I was not for the bill that he was talking about because it was not tough enough on the criminal.

I'm very pleased that the Fraternal Order of Police in Little Rock, Arkansas endorsed me because I think they see I'm trying to strengthen the anti-crime legislation. We've got more money going out for local police than any previous administration.

So we've got to get it under control and there's one last point I'd make. Drugs. We have got to win our national strategy against drugs, the fight against drugs. And we're making some progress, doing a little better on interdiction. We're not doing as well amongst the people that get to be habitual drug-users.

The good news is, and I think it's true in Richmond, teenage use is down of cocaine, substantially, 60% in the last couple of years. So we're making progress but until we get that one done, we're not going to solve the neighborhood crime problem.

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot, there are young black males in America dying at unprecedented rates --

PEROT: I didn't get to make a comment on this.

SIMPSON: Yes, I'm getting to that.

PEROT: Oh, you're going to let me. Excuse me.

SIMPSON: The fact that homicide is the leading cause of death among young black males 15 to 24 years old. What are you going to do to get the guns off the street?

PEROT: On any program, and this includes crime, you'll find we have all kinds of great plans lying around that never get enacted into law and implemented. I don't care what it is -- competitiveness, health care, crime, you name it. Brady Bill, I agree that it's a timid step in the right direction but it won't fix it. So why pass a law that won't fix it? Now, what it really boils down to is can you live -- we become so preoccupied with the rights of the criminal that we've forgotten the rights of the innocent. And in our country we have evolved to a point where we've put millions of innocent people in jail because you go to the poor neighborhoods and they've put bars on their windows and bars on their doors and put themselves in jail to protect the things that they acquired legitimately. That's where we are.

We have got to become more concerned about people who play by the rules and get the balance we require. This is going to take first, building a consensus at grassroots America. Right from the bottom up, the American people have got to say they want it. And at that point, we can pick from a variety of plans and develop new plans. And the way you get things done is bury yourselves in the room with one another, put together the best program, take it to the American people, use the electronic town hall, the kind of thing you're doing here tonight, build a consensus and then do it and then go on to the next one. But don't just sit here slow dancing for 4 years doing nothing.

SIMPSON: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Perot.

We have a question up here.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Please state your position on term limits, and, if you are in favor of them, how will you get them enacted?

BUSH: Any order? I'll be glad to respond.

SIMPSON: Thank you.

BUSH: I strongly support term limits for members of the U.S. Congress. I believe it would return the government closer to the people, the way that Ross Perot is talking about. The president's terms are limited to 2, a total of 8 years. What's wrong with limiting the terms of members of Congress to 12? Congress has gotten kind of institutionalized. For 38 years one party has controlled the House of Representatives, and the result, a sorry little post office that can't do anything right and a bank that has more overdrafts than all the Chase Bank and Citibank put together. We've got to do something about it.

And I think you get a certain arrogance, bureaucratic arrogance, if people stay there too long. And so I favor, strongly favor, term limits.

And how to get them passed? Send us some people that will pass the idea. And I think you will. I think the American people want it now. Every place I go I talk about it, and I think they want it done. Actually, you'd have to have some amendments to the Constitution because of the way the Constitution reads.

SIMPSON: Thank you. Governor Clinton.

CLINTON: I know they're popular, but I'm against them. I'll tell you why. I believe, number one, it would pose a real problem for a lot of smaller states in the Congress who have enough trouble now making sure their interests are heard. Number 2, I think it would increase the influence of unelected staff members in the Congress who have too much influence already. I want to cut the size of the congressional staffs, but I think you're going to have too much influence there with people who were never elected, who have lots of expertise.

Number 3, if the people really have a mind to change, they can. You're going to have 120 to 150 new members of Congress.

Now, let me tell you what I favor instead. I favor strict controls on how much you can spend running for Congress, strict limits on political action committees, requirements that people running for Congress appear in open public debates like we're doing now. If you did that you could take away the incumbents' advantage because challengers like me would have a chance to run against incumbents like him for House races and Senate races, and then the voters could make up their own mind without being subject to an unfair fight.

So that's how I feel about it, and I think if we had the right kind of campaign reform, we'd get the changes you want.

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot, would you like to address term limitations?

PEROT: Yes. Let me do first on a personal level. If the American people send me up to do this job, I intend to be there one term. I do not intend to spend one minute of one day thinking about re-election. And as a matter of principle -- and my situation is unique, and I understand it -- I would take absolutely no compensation; I go as their servant.

Now, I have set as strong an example as I can, then at that point when we sit down over at Capitol Hill -- tomorrow night I'm going to be talking about government reform -- it's a long subject, you wouldn't let me finish tonight. If you want to hear it, you get it tomorrow night -- you'll hear it tomorrow night.

But we have got to reform government. If you put term limits in and don't reform government, you won't get the benefits you thought. It takes both. So we need to do the reforms and the term limits. And after we reform it, it won't be a lifetime career opportunity; good people will go serve and then go back to their homes and not become foreign lobbyists and cash in at 30,000 bucks a month and then take time off to run some president's campaign.

They're all nice people, they're just in a bad system. I don't think there are any villains, but, boy, is the system rotten.

SIMPSON: Thank you very much. We have a question over here.

AUDIENCE QUESTION: I'd like to ask Governor Clinton, do you attribute the rising costs of health care to the medical profession itself, or do you think the problem lies elsewhere? And what specific proposals do you have to tackle this problem?

CLINTON: I've had more people talk to me about their health care problems I guess than anything else, all across America -- you know, people who've lost their jobs, lost their businesses, had to give up their jobs because of sick children. So let me try to answer you in this way. Let's start with a premise. We spend 30% more of our income than any nation on earth on health care, and yet we insure fewer people. We have 35 million people without any insurance at all -- and I see them all the time. A hundred thousand Americans a month have lost their health insurance just in the last 4 years.

So if you analyze where we're out of line with other countries, you come up with the following conclusions. Number one, we spend at least $60 billion a year on insurance, administrative cost, bureaucracy, and government regulation that wouldn't be spent in any other nation. So we have to have, in my judgment, a drastic simplification of the basic health insurance policies of this country, be very comprehensive for everybody.

Employers would cover their employees, government would cover the unemployed.

Number 2, I think you have to take on specifically the insurance companies and require them to make some significant change in the way they rate people in the big community pools. I think you have to tell the pharmaceutical companies they can't keep raising drug prices at three times the rate of inflation. I think you have to take on medical fraud. I think you have to help doctors stop practicing defensive medicine. I've recommended that our doctors be given a set of national practice guidelines and that if they follow those guidelines that raises the presumption that they didn't do anything wrong.

I think you have to have a system of primary and preventive clinics in our inner cities and our rural areas so people can have access to health care.

The key is to control the cost and maintain the quality. To do that you need a system of managed competition where all of us are covered in big groups and we can choose our doctors and our hospitals, a wide range, but there is an incentive to control costs. And I think there has to be -- I think Mr. Perot and I agree on this, there has to be a national commission of health care providers and health care consumers that set ceilings to keep health costs in line with inflation, plus population growth.

Now, let me say, some people say we can't do this but Hawaii does it. They cover 98% of their people and their insurance premiums are much cheaper than the rest of America, and so does Rochester, New York. They now have a plan to cover everybody and their premiums are two-thirds of the rest of the country.

This is very important. It's a big human problem and a devastating economic problem for America, and I'm going to send a plan to do this within the first 100 days of my presidency. It's terribly important.

SIMPSON: Thank you. Sorry to cut you short but President Bush, health care reform.

BUSH: I just have to say something. I don't want to stampede. Ross was very articulate across the country. I don't want anybody to stampede to cut the president's salary off altogether. Barbara's sitting over here and I -- but what I have proposed, 10% cut, downsize the government, and we can get that done.

She asked a question, I think, is whether the health care profession was to blame. No. One thing to blame is these malpractice lawsuits. They're breaking the system. It costs $20-25 billion a year, and I want to see those outrageous claims capped. Doctors don't dare to deliver babies sometimes because they're afraid that somebody's going to sue them. People don't dare -- medical practitioners, to help somebody along the highway that are hurt because they're afraid that some lawyer's going to come along and get a big lawsuit. So you can't blame the practitioners for the health problem.

And my program is this. Keep the government as far out of it as possible, make insurance available to the poorest of the poor, through vouchers, next range in the income bracket, through tax credits, and get on about the business of pooling insurance. A great big company can buy -- Ross has got a good-sized company, been very successful. He can buy insurance cheaper than Mom and Pop's store on the corner. But if those Mom and Pop stores all get together and pool, they too can bring the cost of insurance down.

So I want to keep the quality of health care. That means keep government out of it. I want to do -- I don't like this idea of these boards. It all sounds to me like you're going to have some government setting price. I want competition and I want to pool the insurance and take care of it that way and have -- oh, here's the other point.

I think medical care should go with the person. If you leave a business, I think your insurance should go with you to some other business. You shouldn't be worrying if you get a new job as to whether that's gonna -- and part of our plan is to make it what they call portable -- big word, but that means if you're working for the Jones Company and you go to the Smith Company, your insurance goes with you. I think it's a good program. I'm really excited about getting it done, too.

SIMPSON: Mr. Perot.

PEROT: We have the most expensive health care system in the world. Twelve percent of our gross national product goes to health care. Our industrial competitors, who are beating us in competition, spend less and have better health care. Japan spends a little over 6% of its gross national product. Germany spends 8%.

It's fascinating. You've bought a front row box seat and you're not happy with your health care and you're saying tonight we've got bad health care but very expensive health care. Folks, here's why. Go home and look in the mirror.

You own this country but you have no voice in it the way it's organized now, and if you want to have a high risk experience, comparable to bungee jumping, go into Congress some time when they're working on this kind of legislation, when the lobbyists are running up and down the halls. Wear your safety toe shoes when you go. And as a private citizen, believe me, you are looked on as a major nuisance.

The facts are you now have a government that comes at you. You're supposed to have a government that comes from you.

Now, there are all kinds of good ideas, brilliant ideas, terrific ideas on health care. None of them ever get implemented because -- let me give you an example. A senator runs every 6 years. He's got to raise 20,000 bucks a week to have enough money to run. Who's he gonna listen to -- us or the folks running up and down the aisles with money, the lobbyists, the PAC money? He listens to them. Who do they represent? Health care industry. Not us.

Now, you've got to have a government that comes from you again. You've got to reassert your ownership in this country and you've got to completely reform our government. And at that point they'll just be like apples falling out of a tree. The programs will be good because the elected officials will be listening to -- I said the other night I was all ears and I would listen to any good idea. I think we ought to do plastic surgery on a lot of these guys so that they're all ears, too, and listen to you. Then you get what you want, and shouldn't you? You paid for it. Why shouldn't you get what you want, as opposed to what some lobbyist cuts a deal, writes a little piece in the law and he goes through. That's the way the game's played now. Till you change it you're gonna be unhappy.

SIMPSON (continuing): You wanted one brief point in there.

CLINTON: One brief point. We have elections so people can make decisions about this. The point I want to make to you is, a bipartisan commission reviewed my plan and the Bush plan and there were as many Republicans as Democratic health care experts on it. They concluded that my plan would cover everybody and his would leave 27 million behind by the year 2000 and that my plan in the next 12 years would save $2.2 trillion in public and private money to reinvest in this economy and the average family would save $1200 a year under the plan that I offered without any erosion in the quality of health care

So I ask you to look at that. And you have to vote for somebody with a plan. That's what you have elections for. If people would say, well, he got elected to do this and then the Congress says, okay, I'm going to do it. That's what the election was about.