BRUNO: Let's not -- we're not horse trading. We're having a debate. Let's go on. Let's talk about the cities. Because that's where a majority of Americans live, in urban areas, and they're facing a financial and social crisis. They've lost sources of tax revenue. The aid that once came from the federal and state governments has been drastically cut. There's an epidemic of drugs, crime and violence. Their streets, the schools are like war zones. It's becoming increasingly difficult to pay for public education, for transportation, for police and fire protection, the basic services that local government must provide.

Now, everybody says, talks about enterprise zones, that may be part of the solution, but what else are your administrations really going to be willing to do to help the cities?

Vice President Quayle, it's your turn to go first.

QUAYLE: Well, Hal, enterprise zones are important and it's an idea that the president has been pushing, and there's been very strong reluctance on, with the Democratic Congress. We'll continue to push it.

We also want, Hal, to have home ownership. I was at a housing sub -- a housing project in San Francisco several months ago and met with people that were trying to reclaim their neighborhood.

They wanted home ownership. They didn't want handouts. And I was with the Democrat mayor of San Francisco who was there supporting our idea. But when you look at the cities and you see the problems we have with crime, drugs, lack of jobs, I also want to point out one of the fundamental problems that we have in American cities and throughout America today, and that is the breakdown of the American family.

I know some people laugh about it when I talk about the breakdown of the family, but it's true. 6ty % of the kids that are born in our major cities today are born out of wedlock. We have too many divorces. We have too many fathers that aren't assuming their responsibility. The breakdown of the family is a contributing factor to the problems that we have in urban America.

BRUNO: Admiral Stockdale.

STOCKDALE: I think enterprise zones are good, but I think the problem is deeper than that. I think we are -- you know, when I was -- I ran a civilization for several years, a civilization of 3 to 4 hundred wonderful men. We had our own laws. We had our own, practically our own constitution. And I put up -- I was the -- I was the sovereign for a good bit of that. And I tried to analyze human predicaments in that microcosm of life in the -- in the world. And I found out that when I really got down to putting out do's and don'ts, and lots of these included take torture for this and that, and this and that, and never take any amnesty, for reasons they all understood and went along with. But one of the -- we had an acronym, BACKUS, and each one of those B-a-c-k was something for which you -- you had to make them hurt you before you did it. Bowing in public, making, making -- getting on the radio and so forth. But at the end it was U.S., BACKUS. You got the double meaning there.

But the U.S. could be called the U.S., but it was Unity Over Self, Loners Make Out. Somehow we're going to have to get some love in this country between races, and between rich and poor. You have got to have leaders -- and they're out there -- who can do this with their bare hands, with -- working with, with people on the scene.

BRUNO: Senator Gore, please.

GORE: George Bush's urban policy has been a tale of 2 cities: the best of times for the very wealthy; the worst of times for everyone else. We have seen a decline in urban America under the Bush-Quayle administration. Bill Clinton and I want to change that, by creating good jobs, investing in infrastructure, new programs in job training and apprenticeship, welfare reform -- to say to a mother with young children that if she gets a good job, her children are not going to lose their Medicaid benefits; incentives for investment in the inner city area, and, yes, enterprise zones. Vice President Quayle said they're important, but George Bush eliminated them from his urban plan, and then --

QUAYLE: Well, that's not true.

GORE: And then, when they were included in a plan that the Congress passed, --

QUAYLE: We have been for enterprise zones --

GORE: -- George Bush vetoed the enterprise zone law, the law that included them, for one reason: because that same bill raised taxes on those making more than $200,000 a year.

Let's face up to it, Dan: your top priority really, isn't it, to make sure that the very wealthy don't have to pay any more taxes. We want to cut taxes on middle-income families and raise them on those making more than $200,000 a year.

QUAYLE: What plan is that?

GORE: And if we can take our approach, the cities will be much better off.

BRUNO: Let's start the discussion period right here. Go ahead.

QUAYLE: What plan is that that's just going to raise taxes on those making over $200,000 a year? You may call that your plan, but everyone knows that you simply can't get $150 billion in new taxes by raising the marginal tax rate to a top rate of 36 % and only tax those making $200,000 a year. It's absolutely ridiculous. The top 2 % which you refer to, that gets you down to $64,000; then you have about a $40-billion shortfall -- that gets you down to $36,000 a year. Everybody making more than $36,000 a year will have their taxes increased if Bill Clinton is president of the U.S.

And I don't know how you're going to go to urban America and say that raising taxes is good for you. I don't know how you're going to go to urban America and say, well, the best thing that we can offer is simply to raise taxes again. This is nothing more than a tax-and-spend platform. We've seen it before. It doesn't work.

Let me tell you about a story.

GORE: Can I respond to some of that?

QUAYLE: I've got a very good example --

GORE: Can I respond to some of that?

QUAYLE: -- when we talk about families here, because I was meeting with some former gang members in Phoenix and Los Angeles and Albuquerque, New Mexico. And when I talked to those former gang members, here's what they told why they joined the gang. They said, well, joining a gang is like joining a family. I said, joining a family? Yes, because the gang offered support, it offered leadership, it offered comfort, it was a way to get ahead.

Where have we come if joining a gang is like being a member of the family?

BRUNO: Senator Gore, you wanted to respond?

QUAYLE: And that's why I think that families have to be strengthened, and you don't strengthen the American family by raising taxes.

GORE: I do want to respond to that.

BRUNO: Go ahead, Senator, Admiral.

GORE: George Bush and Dan Quayle want to protect the very wealthy. That is the group that has gotten all of the tax cuts under the Bush-Quayle administration. Nobody here who is middle income has gotten a tax cut because middle-income families have had tax increases under Bush and Quayle in order to finance the cuts for the very wealthy. That's what trickle-down economics is all about. And they want to continue it.

We're proposing to also require foreign corporations to pay the same taxes that American corporations do when they do business here in the U.S. of America. George Bush has not been willing to enforce the laws and collect those taxes. We want to close that loophole and raise more money in that way.

BRUNO: Senator, can we stick to the cities, sir?

GORE: Excuse me?

BRUNO: Stick to the cities.

GORE: All right. Well, he, he talked about ways to raise money to help the cities. What we're proposing is to invest in the infrastructure in cities and have targeted tax incentives for investment right in inner city areas. The enterprise zones represent a part of our proposal also, and strengthening the family through welfare reform. And you know the Bush administration has cut out -- has vetoed family leave, they have cut childhood immunization and college aid.

If you don't support parents and you don't support children, how -- how can you say you support families?

QUAYLE: How about supporting parents and the right to choose where their kids go to school, Al?

(Applause.)

Do you support that?

GORE: We --

QUAYLE: Let the parents -- let the parents --

GORE: Do you want me to answer?

QUAYLE: -- public or private schools?

GORE: Want me to answer?

BRUNO: Go ahead.

GORE: We support the public school choice to go to any public school of your choice. What we don't support -- and listen to what they're proposing -- to take U.S. taxpayer dollars and subsidize private schools. Now I'm all for private schools, but to use taxpayer dollars, when the people who get these little vouchers often won't be able to afford the private school anyway, and the private school is not --

QUAYLE: Al, I think, I think it's important --

GORE: -- under any obligation to admit them, that is a ripoff of the U.S. taxpayer.

QUAYLE: That's important. This is a very- -this is a very important issue. Choice in education is a very important issue.

BRUNO: Let him respond.

QUAYLE: And he said that he was not for choosing -- giving the parents the right to choose to send their children to public schools. But it's okay for the wealthy to choose to send their kids to private schools, but it's not okay for the middle class and the working poor to choose where they want to send their kids to school.

I think that it's time that all parents in America have a right to choose where they send their kids to school to get an education.

(Applause.)

BRUNO: Admiral Stockdale, would you like to have the last word in this period?

STOCKDALE: I -- I come down on the side of freedom of school choice. The -- and there's a lot of misunderstandings that I've heard here tonight, that I may have the answer to. The -- starting at, you know, for the last, almost a decade, we've worried about our schools officially through Washington, and the president had a meeting of all the governors, and then they tried the conventional fixes for schools, that is, to increase the certification of -- requirements for the teachers, to lengthen the school day, to lengthen the school year and nothing -- this is a very brief overview of the thing -- but nothing happened. And it's time to change the school's structure. In schools, bureaucracy is bad and autonomy is good. The only good schools --

(Applause.)

-- we have are those run by talented principals and devoted teachers, and they're running their own show. How many times have I thrived? You know, the best thing I had when I ran that civilization, it succeeded, and it's a landmark. The best thing I had going for me was I had no contact with Washington for all those years.

(Applause.)

GORE: Could I respond?

BRUNO: We have to go on. What I'm about to say doesn't apply to the debate tonight; it applies to the campaign that's been going on outside this auditorium. With 3 weeks to go, this campaign has at times been very ugly, with the tone being set by personal negative attacks.

As candidates, how does it look from your viewpoint? And are these tactics really necessary? Admiral Stockdale -- it's your turn to go first.

STOCKDALE: You know, I didn't have my hearing aid turned on. Tell me again.

(Laughter)

BRUNO: I'm sorry, sir. I was saying that at times this campaign has been very ugly with personal negative attacks. As a candidate, how does it look from where you are and are these tactics really necessary?

STOCKDALE: Nasty attacks -- well, I think there is a case to be made for putting emphasis on character over these issues that we've been batting back and forth and have a life of their own. Sure, you have to know where you're going with your government, but character is the big variable in the success. Character of the leads is the big variable in the success -- long term success -- of an administration.

I went to a friend of mine in New York some years ago and he was a president of a major TV network and he said, you know, I think we have messed up this whole -- this election process -- it was an election year -- by stressing that -- putting out the dogma that issues are the thing to talk about, not character.

He said, I felt so strongly about this, I went back and read the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Read those debates. How do they come down? Douglas is all character. He knows all of the little stinky numbers these guys do. Abraham Lincoln had character. Thank God we got the right president in the Civil War.

But that is a question that is a valid one, and you know, I would like to brag about the character of my boss.

BRUNO: Okay, Senator Gore.

GORE: This election is about the future of our country, not about personal attacks against one candidate or another. Our nation is in trouble and it is appalling to me that with 10 million Americans out work, with the rest working harder for less money than they did 4 years ago, with the loss of 1.4 million manufacturing jobs in our nation, with the health care crisis, a crisis of crime and drugs and AIDS, substandard education, that George Bush would constantly try to level personal attacks at his opponent.

Now, this, of course, just reached a new low last week when he resorted to a classic McCarthyite technique of trying to smear Bill Clinton over a trip that he took as a student along with lots of other Rhodes Scholars who were invited to go to Russia. It's a classic McCarthyite smear technique. I think the president of the U.S. ought to apologize. I think that he insulted the intelligence of the American people and I'm awful proud that the American people rejected that tactic so overwhelmingly that he decided he had made a mistake. Do you think it was a mistake, too, Dan?

BRUNO: Okay. Vice President Quayle.

QUAYLE: Let me answer the question.

BRUNO: Go ahead.

QUAYLE: Hal, you said -- and I wrote it down here -- "personal negative attacks." (Laughs) Has anyone been reading my press clippings for the last 4 years?

(Applause)

But I happen to -- I agree with one thing on -- with Senator Gore, and that is that we ought to look to the future, and the future is, who's going to be the next president of the U.S. And is it a negative attack and a personal attack to point out that Bill Clinton has trouble telling the truth? He said that he didn't even demonstrate -- he told the people in Arkansas in 1978. Then we find out he organized demonstrations. You know, I don't care whether he demonstrated or didn't demonstrate. The fact -- the question is, tell the truth. Just tell us the truth. Today, Bill Clinton -- excuse me -- yesterday in Philadelphia on a radio show, yesterday on a radio show, he attacked -- Admiral, he attacks Ross Perot saying the media is giving Ross Perot a free ride. The press asked him when the klieg lights are on, said what do you mean by Ross Perot getting a free ride? He says I didn't say that at all.

I mean, you can't have it both ways. No, I don't think that is a personal attack. What I find troubling with Bill Clinton is he can't tell the truth. You cannot lead this great country of ours by misleading the people.

(Applause)

BRUNO: All right, gentlemen, the control room advises me that in order to have time for your closing statements, which we certainly want, there simply is not going to be time for a discussion period on this particular topic.

So let's go to the closing statements. You have 2 minutes each. And we'll start with Admiral Stockdale.

STOCKDALE: I think the best justification for getting Ross Perot in the race again to say is that we're seeing this kind of chit-chat back and forth about issues that don't concentrate on where our grandchildren -- the living standards of our children and grandchildren. He is, as I have read in more than one article, a revolutionary; he's got plans out there that are going to double the speed at which this budget problem is being cared for. It was asked how, if we would squeeze down so fast that we would strangle the economy in the process. That is an art, to follow all those variables and know when to let up and to nurse this economy back together with pulls and pushes.

And there's no better man in the world to do that than that old artist, Ross Perot. And so I think that my closing statement is that I think I'm in a room with people that aren't the life of reality. The U.S. is in deep trouble. We've got to have somebody that can get up there and bring out the firehoses and get it stopped, and that's what we're about in the Perot campaign.

BRUNO: Thank you.

(Applause.)

Senator Gore, your closing statement, sir.

GORE: Three weeks from today, our nation will make a fateful decision. We can continue traveling the road we have been on, which has led to higher unemployment and worse economic times, or we can reach out for change. If we choose change, it will require us to reach down inside ourselves to find the courage to take a new direction.

Sometimes it seems deceptively easy to continue with old habits even when they're no longer good for us. Trickle-down economics simply does not work. We have had an increase in all of the things that should be decreasing. Everything that should have been increasing has been going down. We have got to change direction.

Bill Clinton offers a new approach. He has been named by the other 49 governors, Republicans and Democrats alike, as the best and most effective governor in the entire U.S. of America.

He's moved 17,000 people off the welfare rolls and on to payrolls. He has introduced innovations in health care and education, and again, he has led the nation for the last 2 years in a row in the creation of jobs in the private sector.

Isn't it time for a new approach, a new generation of ideas and leadership, to put our nation's people first and to get our economy moving again?

We simply cannot stand to continue with this failed approach that is no good for us. Ultimately, it is a choice between hope and fear, a choice between the future and the past. It is time to reach out for a better nation. We are bigger than George Bush has told us we are, as a nation, and we have a much brighter future.

Give us a chance. With your help, we'll change this country and we can't wait to get started.

(Applause.)

BRUNO: Vice President Quayle.

QUAYLE: Thank you, Hal. I'd like to use this closing statement to talk to you about a few people that I have met in these last 4 years. I think of a woman in Chicago when I was talking to parents about education where she stood up and said I'm sick and tired of these schools in this city being nothing but a factory for failure. And that's why we support choice in education.

I was in Beaumont, Texas, and met with small business people, and they wanted to reform the civil justice system because they think our legal system costs too much and there's too much of a delay in getting an answer.

I was in Middletown, Ohio, talking to a welfare woman, where she said I want to go back to work and I had a job offered to me but I'm not going to take it because I have 2 children at home and the job that is offered to me doesn't have health insurance. Under President Bush's health care reform package that woman won't have to make a choice about going back to work or health care for her children, because she'll have both.

I was in Vilnius, Lithuania, Independence Square, speaking to 10,000 people in the middle of winter. Hundreds of people came up to me and said: God bless America.

Yes, in the next 4 years, as I said, somewhere, some time, there's going to be a crisis, and you need to have a president that is qualified, has the experience, and has been tested. Not one time during this evening, during 90 minutes, did Al Gore tell us why Bill Clinton is qualified to be president. He never answered my charges that Bill Clinton has trouble telling the truth.

The choice is yours. The American people should demand that their president tell the truth. Do you really believe -- do you really believe Bill Clinton will tell the truth? And do you, do you trust Bill Clinton to be your president?

(Applause)

BRUNO: That concludes this vice presidential debate. I'd like to thank Vice President Quayle, Senator Gore, Admiral Stockdale for being participants.

The next presidential debate is scheduled for this Thursday at 9:00 PM Eastern Time at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. To all of our viewers and listeners, thank you and good night.