20040418 3rd District Debate

Final transcript. There was a lot said and it took a long time so I hope you find it worthwhile.
Cannon in Jeans, Matt in suit and badge and Greg in suit
Intros until 1504, prayer and pledge.
(Estimated 202 delegates present at the end)

Greg Hawkins (GH)
Matt Throckmorton (MT)
Chris Cannon (CC)

Opening (2 min):
GH) I am 46 years old and I live in the South part of Salt Lake Valley. Many of our children are grown and married. It’s difficult when there is an incumbent that we don’t believe is serving our interests well. We have brought together today to discuss those issues that are most relevant to you and we think will help you see more fully the differences in us. You have come out to find out what we think. I have no animus against the others, we just disagree on issues. I hope that we have a cordial and vigorous debate.
MT) It’s great to have you here. Campaigns are not an easy thing. As Republicans we need to close ranks and take care of the democratic candidate. It is not really an issue. The Dan Jones poll says that any one of us is going to win in the end against Bo. It is not an easy thing to run against an incumbent, it’s just not. We have to decide here in convention who will go to office. When I first ran for an office, it was against a good man, and they were looking for someone who was willing to lose and take a good beating running against him. We knew that whoever ran was going to lose. I was willing to take the beating. I went and talked to all the delegates individually and explained that the people needed to look at his voting record. I won the vote because of it. I am going to ask you to do the same thing here. Put away all the niceties. All that I would encourage you to do is to look at the voting record and make a choice.
CC) Thanks for coming. I love our system in Utah with delegates. We elect people that get involved and they find out who to vote for. “Respublica” the original of ‘republic’ has public in it. So what we do here is very important. Every couple of years I get to explain what I have done and why I have done it. All the others who run get to do so at low cost and my record comes under scrutiny. I want you to know that years ago Bill Orton ran and said he was conservative. When you reviewed that conservative statement against what he did, you could not understand his vote. I have voted in a way that is consistent with where I am going and what I am doing. I want to go back to Washington and would you’re your support in doing that. I have started some things that I would like to finish. I am a Chair of a committee which means we can ask the questions and focus science in the right area, like what are you doing with your science. I would appreciate your support so that I can go back.

Q. Liablity or tort reform. (1 min)
GH) I am a trial lawyer and I protect children. How many of you know what DCFS is? (raise of hands). I work every day in the court against DCFS and the assistant AGs. I also bring children in to the country through adoption and things. I have support from some trial lawyers here in Utah. We have serious problems, but we have a bill of rights that protects our ability to get resolution. We have an example here recently with mandatory arbitration. How many here are in favor of mandatory arbitration? (raise of hands [almost none]) Oh, I guess I don’t have to say anymore, there’s the answer.
MT) I am very much in support of tort reform. Greg brought up the DCFS issue. Several years ago I ran some legislation that allowed DCFS workers to tried civilly when they behave illegally. There is a need for this. If you took all the liabilities paid out by the insurance companies, your share of it is $721.00/year/person in the US. For a family of four, your cost for what is happening is around $2800.00/year. It’s not just about DCFS, it is about motions of discovery, evidentiary rules. This is a significant difference between the 2 candidates. Thank you.
CC) I am a Chairman of the tort reform in committee. I have helped in working the gun manufacturer lawsuit and eliminated those. We just finished getting the fat boy cheese burger bill that disallows lawsuits of people who eat at McDonalds. DCFS is not a tort. In America we have a system that does a lot of good. The fact that you can get an attorney to help you is important and shouldn’t be taken for granted. It is not something that is enjoyed in all parts of the world. I support our legal system, but there are exceptions in the case of asbestos where 90% goes to lawyers. That’s wrong and we need to change that. Thank you.

Q. What is your position on seniors and others obtaining prescription drugs at the lowest possible prices?
MT) I support them. The question we have to ask is: what measures are we going to take. There was an initial proposal that passed in Washington. The first est. was $400,000,000 but then the number grew to 2.6 trillion. It is a cost that our children and grandchildren will have to pay for. I do support that, but what we have to do is exercise free markets. I spoke with many pharmaceutical companies about this because they would be hit by this. We need to have a private card. I do not support what has been passed on this issue.
CC) I voted for the bill with a great deal of reservations. It will cost a great deal of money. We need to recognize that many of Americans are living better because of great medication. That medication comes because of a system that is private. 85% of the reference patents are owned in America. On the other hand, when I came in to office 65% of people had health care from their employers, 45% of people wanted socialized medicine. When we passed the medicare bill, which was an abomination in many ways, it had with it the best Health Savings Account that ever happened. And now 65% of Americans want socialized medicine and only 45% of people have health care from their employers.
We need to bring those Republican principles back in to health care. The only way to break the back of the Medicare system is to have Health Savings Accounts where people can have choice in the market.
GH) He did vote for medicare bill and voted against the bill that would lower our pharmaceutical costs and compete with places like Canada. That’s a huge problem. The refrain is that if we start buying drugs out of Canada we will not have the same quality of drugs. There are ways of safe guarding drugs through bar codes and safety caps and the like. We need to have our drug costs come down. Pharmaceutical companies have an enormous strangle hold on Congress itself with just the sheer money. To come up with a medicare bill to appease some political cause and yet not control costs on drugs is just outrageous. To vote against the costs was not good. We cost 3x to 20x the amount to buy pharmaceuticals here than in Canada. That has to change, it can’t change instantly.

Q. What role if any should the Federal government have in education and how would you implement the concept of No Child Left Behind.
CC) I voted for it. If you look at the bill it is based on good republican principles that can’t be enforced from the Federal government on down. When I ran for Congress I said that we ought to get rid of the Dept. of Education. I hope that every teacher in Utah, I hope the UEA knows that we do not get any benefit back from the Dept. of Education. I suggest the only way that you can deal with from the Federal is by eliminating the money, the oversight and federal regulatory constraints, and let teachers teach instead of imposing upon them layers and layers of bureaucracy.
0:33
And just as a response since we don’t have a rebuttal round, I don’t think it is appropriate to import Canada’s socialized medical system which forces companies to either sell their drugs at a price that the state mandates, or they give a license to a generic manufacturer to manufacture those drugs in Canada despite the ownership and rights that go with it, that is why I voted against the bill for drug importation. We have a great system, we don’t need to mess it up by making it socialized riding on the backs of another country.
1:08
[Rebuttal time period discussion brought up by GH (actual time over for CC was 8sec (+/- 2))]
1:20

GH) No Child Left Behind, it was not a good idea 4 years ago and even worse now. It was clearly not a good idea and we knew it was not a good idea. It makes teachers scapegoats for things that are more due to the dissolution of the family and intervention by the Federal government. Ronald Reagan wanted to get rid of the Dept of Education and he hasn’t gotten rid of it. It is still there. And this is where I don’t want to get mean or anything, but to vote for the legislation and then write a letter to the Secretary of the DOE saying, “Oh please don’t enforce it,” is absolutely outrageous. Don’t pass the bill in the first place, get off our backs and let us handle our own education. That’s the first answer.
0:42
When it comes to drugs it has to do with patent law. And it is not the poor socialized medicine of Canada that brings the prices down, it is the companies putting money in the pockets of the legislators, Federal legislators, that makes the prices go higher. They are low in Europe, they are low in Canada, they can be low here. It has nothing to do with socialized medicine to bring the price of drugs down. They are inflated here. The prices should come down to the market level and the market level is the Canadian price.
1:09

MT) Two quick points on the medical issue; I actually agree with CC on the Canada issue. There is a short term gain to bring medicines in from Canada, but it is a socialist system and we will pay for it down the road. I disagree with him on the HSA. You have to ask yourself, is HSA worth $2.6 trillion?
As far as NCLB, when this bill was created I was chairing a committee on education. We had the task of restoring local control and as we were reviewing mandates and other mandates trying to turn the teachers loose and other loose, we saw this monstrosity of a bill being passed. Two years ago I told you that you would rue the day that this bill was passed. It will be known as the single worst education legislation passed in the history of this country. Now 2 years later most agree. It is exactly the wrong thing. I am the only one who has said that I am absolutely 100% unequivocating that NCLB should be repealed. It must go. I am opposed to Federal mandates in public education at all and we need to get rid of it.

[The candidates have more to say on either one of the issues. Another Extension] Extension: 1 min. each per topic

CC) It is a matter of fact that the way the Canadians get low priced drugs is by driving the companies to license their patents to generic drug companies. It is part of the socialized medicine. I know many of the very, very conservative people in this audience who think that somehow the American government should step in and control prices. It is utterly wrong and it would be terrifically negative for us to override the free market system, which over time produces better prices and products for more people with more wealth and more happiness. The suggestion that somehow we will be better off by using the perfidy of the Canadian system is wrong.
MT) Chris and I exchange barbs, but let me just say that on Canadian importation CC is absolutely, 100% right on this issue. The very first question that was raised was tort reform. Back in the 70’s you have 20-30 companies, but then we got in to some Federal laws that changed it allowing for now more class action lawsuits, motions of discovery, and lowered evidentiary rules that has made it easier for Trial attorneys to get in to lawsuits. Ironically it has been completely abused by the trial attorneys. And what we have found is that, CC may have the exact number, but it is 4 or 5 drug companies that have survived this. We absolutely need tort reform if we are ever to get a hold of any of these medical issues; whether actual procedures or pharmaceuticals.
GH) International patent law states that Canada can go immediately in to generic drug companies and produce the drugs for less money. Generic drugs will bring the price down. In no way are we talking about accessing socialized medicine or holding the US drug companies hostage. We just want to have a fair opportunity to compete with the other companies and bring the price of drugs down to the market level. A gentleman went over to Germany and bought 350.00 worth of drugs. When he came home he had to spend over 1000.00 for those same drugs. Some say we are inhibiting research, but the reality is that the NIH produced 92% of the cancer drugs from 1952 to the mid 1990’s and then handed it off to private companies. Most of the research and development is not done by the private … well .. [time was up]

[1 min for NCLB]:
MT) Just as some examples of NCLB as given by some who have actually read it, most have not yet read it. On NCLB, if you created an entire high school of nothing but valedictorians with 4.0 grads, I guarantee you that within 3 years that school will being a failing school. The requirements of NCLB are not good. They may work well in the Houston Unified School District, but it does not fit Utah; where we would have the Federal government controlling testing and teaching standards. Now what you need to understand is that we have had many people in Washington, for decades, talking about a European model of education. That is exactly the road we are headed down. If we continue down this path the Country will be controlling curriculum, tests, and the works. We take it back now or we lose it forever. I am committed to taking it back.
CC) We are in a slightly different position on NCLB, I voted for it because it is a bill that re-authorized a 60’s bill, but it is done with Republican principles. You can not bandage on Republican principles on a system that is Federal when we agree that it should be a local issue. So we agree to a very large degree that this should be removed from the Federal government entirely to the local level.
I return to the drug issue. There is an Intellectual Property law agreed to by a number of nations. You don’t see Germany, France and England buying drugs from others because they have a different legal structure and they don’t steal the patents or IP like Canada does.
GH) Matt just said a few moments ago that he is the only one against NCLB, but I am, for the record, against NCLB and any federal act that interferes mandates educational issues. Utah is not like MS, CA is not like NY. We are ahead of the curve here, not because we spend more, but we have families that care and some of the best teachers. To make the teachers a scapegoat for education is unfounded and unfair. WE have got good teachers and if we want a test we should choose that here or a debate, we should decide that here. If we want to create criteria that allow certain kinds of punishment at school, then we determine that here. If we want to change things in education, we should do it here. The Federal government should stay away, Period.

Q. Describe your proposal for immigration.
GH) Immigration has been in the papers as a hot issue recently. Months ago, it was rated as 14 out of 17 as an issue of less importance. However, we are a country at war we should not have a porous border right now. It is not just porous, it is overflowing. You take the INS and they say there are 2700 people coming across the border every single day, unidentified. You add that to the 8-12 million people who are already here now, the people that made the World Trade happen, they were here illegally. It is outrageous that so many people who are still here illegally. INS is showing us that all immigrants are coming from southern border. They are coming from all over the world. There is no door there at all. It has to be stopped immediately. We have the technology with lasers from the side and satellites from above. We have the money because we are sending to all the other countries around the world. We need to keep our money locally to address this. Then deal with those who are here now, whomever they may be. Then we have to struggle with the economic impact of recognizing how much money is being exported from this country. They don’t just take our money in the unskilled labor, they quickly move in to skilled labor. They cash their checks and send the cash back; over 28 billion every year. That’s money out of our pocket. We are spending money on health care and education and other resources. Now that’s okay if we had unlimited money, but we have to be careful. We have 5.5 million people waiting at our borders, wanting to come here legally.
MT) Track record is what we are going to talk about. On this issue it is extremely important. I’ve been involved in this immigration reform for the past 2 years and have received very negative response like death threats on what we are doing now. It is an awful environment and what we need is someone who get involved and consistently stand up on this issue. Identifying the problem is easy, but we need solutions and if you want details you can stay and talk to me. In the 90’s we had decades of welfare problems. The system encouraged people to not do anything. Our reform changed from incentivizing inactivity, to encouraging people getting aid by doing some things sooner. The change has been so good that the Democrats now take credit for the balanced approach that we, the Republicans created. We have a system that with H2B and drivers licenses in the state of Utah that 100% encourages people to continue to come illegally, absolutely and without a doubt. And the bills that we have before us like the student adjustment act continue us down that path. We need a new Republican agenda and mindset that will change the direction to encouraged and reward people to come here legally. We are going to get in to a fundamental difference between myself here.
CC) This is a significant issue. We all agree that illegal immigration is wrong and everyone here agrees with that. Illegal immigration brings with it lots of problems and we need to do something about that. I did not hear my opponents give solutions on how to control the border, what to do you do, put up a fence. Perhaps electrical so that we don’t have to deal with those who come over. Some of you may agree with that, I don’t. The incentive is not drivers license or educational, or event the best health care that you can get in the ER. We have the most incredible, robust economy in the world. We grew in one quarter of last year than Europe grew in the entire prior 2 years. So you have a huge incentive for people to come here illegally. You don’t want to disincentivize them from coming by hobbling US companies so that they can’t perform and stop people from coming and building our economy. If anything you want to release the regulatory gates of burden and control so that we can get their help. We can drill oil and gas. That is the fundamental issue. You need to reform so that it is an orderly streamlined process for those who want to come here and want jobs can get them.

[1 more minute]
GH) In 1983 we passed an amnesty law for undocumented workers. We weren’t at war at the time. Now we are offering an easier incentive; if you will identify yourself, we will let you be a guest worker for 3 years. It been done in Europe for a long time and has negative results. It will have negative results here too. If less than 10% took advantage of full amnesty, then another alternative won’t work. I don’t know why this was voted in. It’s not going to work. It was bad politics, meaning it was motivated by trying to create some other agenda issue, perhaps getting another 5% in the polls during an election year. I talked about borders because we have the technology, manpower and money.
MT) The fundamental difference between Chris and I is the welfare system example. As I look at the legislation it only deals with 12 million people who are illegal right now. There is a quote that says about the AgJobs bill, that Chris and Ted Kennedy are working together on, which makes me uncomfortable. The NY Times says that Ted’s response about Chris’s bill is that we are not going to handle all 12 million on this bill, but we will get them amnesty for agriculture, and keep adding on the other industries over time. Until we have a real long term game plan of not just amnesty we are never going to solve this problem. I we give amnesty for 12 million we are going to have to give amnesty for another 12 million after that.
CC) The clear fact is that we will not have to 12 million more, or the 12 million we have now. When you look at it, how many of you know somebody who goes down to Mexico because they can live better on a stipend? A lot of people. (I didn’t see any hands go up from the front section) The fact is that Mexico is a great place. They want to become like us, but we don’t want everyone there to come here. In the 50’s when we had a large influx of illegal aliens we had a freer flow of immigrants because people came and went. These people are Mexican and they like their home. It’s a great place and I hope it will be a wonderful place as they change their laws and make it a better system.
I am not working with Ted Kennedy. He is not my friend. He is in the Senate, and I have no association with him, but on this issue he is right.

[1 more minute]
GH) There have only been 2 proposals and one of us has not proposed anything at all. Chris has proposed something that Matt and I think is outrageous. We haven’t addressed the 12 million or 8 million whatever your estimate may be, and how we deal with them. ..which really don’t work.
1 out of 7 convicts in the California area is an illegal alien. For those who have a presence here unlawfully, they are more likely to continue in unlawful activity. We have 140,000 legal Hispanic immigrants here in Utah right now and every time we have a problem they cringe because it is always the illegals that are giving them a bad name. We need to do something about this and I don’t believe that there is a concrete proposal besides Chris’s and I think Chris is wrong. It is bad policy right now.
MT) CC is a cosponsor and is working on this with Ted. Kennedy was at the kickoff conference with Senator Hatch and Congressman Berrman. They may not be working together or not, but when you have 4 people standing together at a press conference, it makes for interesting conversation.
Let me tell you that we need to close down the borders. We may not stop everything but we can take a look at it then. We need to create a migrant worker visa, and have them apply locally in their country of origin. We cannot allow them to come here to apply because it tells them, “Don’t bother with the paper work at the border, come in to the country and you will be just fine.” If we do that we will never get a hold of this issue. I spoke to an INS agent and he told me that 90% of the individuals that come here go home in under 12 months, but we do not have anything to encourage them to do that. We need something so that we can take this issue in the right direction.
CC) In the first place on Ted Kennedy, I have not worked with Ted Kennedy on this issue. Howard Bermann came of age during the Vietnam war and is not a radical democrat. He is a moderate, conservative democrat, whom I have worked with. We have 400 groups that support this bill including all the agriculture groups. What we have done is had a right/left coalition to discuss this bill and anybody that wants to look at this bill comes up with the conclusion, except one little group of people that profits from H2A visa program that only has 5% of agriculture work in America, every other agricultural group and foreign group has come up with this. It has had a lot of dialog. It is a great bill. Look at it before condemning it. It does one piece, and we see how it works. Then we can do a larger piece, because as both of them have pointed out, we have a problem.

[More time anarchy from the audience; moving on]
Q. Tax bills originate in the House, what reforms would you propose? How about the Internet tax?
CC) Internet access tax has come out of my committee. I believe we should not have the tax on the Internet. It didn’t pass the Senate. How many of you look at your bills. A couple of years ago I looked at my phone bill, then called up Qwest who said they were forced to, by law, provide me with the best deal. If you haven’t done that, call Qwest and get your bill straightened out. Last month I paid $50.00 for telephone service and $25.00 for government fees. You all do the same because your bill is about one-third tax. Now, these companies know that this legacy wire that is coming to my home will soon be replaced by new systems. That can’t happen soon enough for to move to VOIP. That way I can get rid of that tax and the government can become more efficient in some of those areas.
I want to make the tax cuts permanent. There are 52 Republicans, but we got stopped by Republicans. You need to get involved in campaigns throughout the country and I can tell you who voted against making the tax cut permanent. I will let you know how to make a contribution to the right campaigns if you see me afterwards. Thank you.
MT) CC has done a great job on the Internet tax. I do support the permanent tax cuts. We need to control spending. It is a big issue. We are running a huge deficit so we have to find a balance. When it comes to actual tax reform, a number of years ago I had a resolution to repeal the 16th amendment. I did that because Steve Forbes when he ran for president did a tremendous job of bringing up the need for tax reform. As soon as he lost, the big boys in DC decided that the flat tax went with him and the discussion ended. It was to cause a discussion on the issue because we haven’t been talking about it creatively enough for the last many years. I don’t like the flat tax, but I believe we need a national sales tax. We could do it so that it is not regressive. In the meantime we need to reduce our corporate taxes that actually penalize companies from making money. That is one of the big issues when it comes to outsourcing. So we need to create a better environment for taxes and create a serious reform, serious discussion about changing the code and in 10 years getting to a national sales tax.
GH) This is where we depart company. Please don’t misunderstand me. When President Bush passed his first tax cut, I got a check, it was pretty small. My tax refund check is still sitting in my briefcase and I don’t plan on using it. One of these days I will put that check in a plaque. Don’t get me wrong, I support President Bush. I would rather have Pres. Bush than Senator Gore any day of the week and I would rather have Pres. Bush than John Kerry any day of the week. I am grateful for the way he has protected our country. But in this Republican party we should be big enough to disagree on certain issues. Starting in 1992 we talked about national tax reform. Even to the point of talking about abolishing the IRS and having a national sales tax. However, we have had a dearth of years where that has not been talked about anymore. We can’t make tax cut and give out little money to appease people. SO I still have that check in there and I will label it “Bush’s Folly”, not because I don’t like Bush, but because we are not moving forward in the direction we should. We need a new tax code. We need to make a large change like we talked about in 1992 with Sen. Bennett. We should never stop talking about this. We should make this issue a popular issue. We need a better system now and it can be passed in Congress. We need a better system, not tax cuts.

Q. What should be done about growing trend to outsource?
MT) We can do one or two things. We can go the Kerry route which would scare all of us. Or can apply the Republican principles. The Economist magazine came out and it had a ranking. I don’t remember it precisely, but it stated in essence that the United States had one of the most corporate unfriendly environments in the World. We sometimes have lots of fun taking our shots at Corporate America. We have a tax structure that penalizes companies for keeping jobs here in America, as well as a regulatory environment that penalizes them. When we see jobs going overseas, cheap labor is an issue, but if we are going to change outsourcing we have got to start by changing our corporate environment through tort reform and taxes. We need to get a handle on this issue or we will continue to outsource jobs.
GH) Chris appeared at the community college and effectively stated that we had not lost one job to China or Mexico. The studies by Heritage Foundation and Forrester, suggest that we will have lost around 3.5 million jobs which is less that 1.5% and that result is going to be a positive boost to the economy and we will work through this little crisis. The fact is that starting with the garment industry and now moving on to other manufacturing factories, as we move our companies overseas, we are beginning to not be able to bring in more people from out of the country. We only have 260 million people here who want jobs. They have 1 billion people that are wiling to work. We need to come up with a compromise.
CC) Greg touched on an important point. We can’t create jobs for all the rest of the world. But we can help other countries get the idea of America and they will create them for themselves. I didn’t say that we hadn’t lost any jobs, but that recently we haven’t lost jobs to China in manufacturing. What’s happening is that manufacturing jobs here have been replaced by automation. A quick story, a friend of mine came to me and told that he would have to lay some people off in their manufacturing company. “We won’t lay off any of the people in your state, but we lost 20% of our people in the recession due to attrition and we will have let 20% more our people go.” I asked how many they would rehire as they ramp up again. He assured me an additional 5%. This means that the productivity of the company is now running on a total of 65% of what they had grown to.

Q. Final questions. Would you repeal Patriot Act sunset provisions?
GH) There are certain portions of the act that bring down the barriers between the agencies and that is great. But there are certain types of searches that are allowed are disturbing. You have a seen a lot of this in the papers about the hearing that they are holding. The 4th amendment right is to be free from unreasonable search and seizure. This has been destroyed because they don’t have to come before a court, its only administrative tribunal. All they have to say is that this is to prevent a terrorist act and they will get approval. It’s wrong. It’s un-American and a violation of our 4th amendment right.
CC) The remarkable thing about this is that all the things that are sold on TV as being scary were already in the law prior to this act. The Patriot Act didn’t really change anything, except a couple of things that are part of the sunset provisions. I can guarantee you that we will not eliminate the sunset provisions. You’ve got to look at the act and the justice system and see that its right. We believe that the CIA and FBI were set up separately for a purpose. I was concerned about taking the barriers down because we didn’t want all the information in one place. We protect privacy on my committee which is very important to us. We should renew the provisions. Thank you.
MT) Very quickly, we need to sunset those provisions. DCFS was brought up earlier. As a legislature I spent a lot of time on Education and Family. If you have ever heard horror stories about DCFS, like there was 1 phone call and next thing you know they have removed your child. There was a state senator who had a friend that had a child removed. He said, “not a problem, we can go handle this.” $150,000 and 6 months later even a legislator was still not able to get the child back to the home. The system was noticed to be broken. The Patriot Act is a international DCFS act of 2001. Instead of going before a judge where you have protections and everything else, it goes to an administrative tribunal which is like the fox watching the hen house. It is bad policy, bad policy, bad policy.

Closing:

CC) This has been a remarkable debate. As you look around there are a hug number of delegates in this room. This is what it is all about. This is a great way to reach people. It is remarkable because you see a huge difference. I have known my opponents for a long time and this is the first time that we have been able to have a debate between the 3 of us and it is really remarkable what we have heard come out of this. If you think about the telephone calls that you have had in the past and put that together with the relatively warm conversations that we have had here. A few really crazy things have been said about me and I hope that you would call my campaign office or my cell phone. You should all have my cell number though.
I would like your vote. I did what I promised I would do; I have been consistently conservative. You can look at all my votes and you will see that I was consistent. I spent hours and hours with Bob Marr and others to get some of these bills passed. Finally, I have a whole bunch of things that I want to do when I go back. In the first place I want to make our western lands available for the production of energy. The cost of gas has gone up significantly. It has gone up 3 times and it will go up another 3 times if we don’t do something about how we produce oil and gas in this country. It’s all on our public lands and I want to make America powerful by accessing that so that we can keep being the great economic power that America is.

MT) I really appreciate this debate. I held a press conference which mentioned that we need a debate and I am very grateful for this. We have a standing offer and he wants Lou Dobbs wants us to come and I would like to be there. It is still an open to my friend Chris. This is the best possible process. Chris and I have said things in the newspaper, but that does not convey a message. You need to keep grabbing. We need to have more of these events. I will make this a very easy decision and simplify the issue before you. When you walk away from here, if you are serious about having a member of Congress who acts on your opinions, this is going to make it easy for you. If you support NCLB, illegal immigrants with licenses, instate college tuition and welfare support then you had better stick with our Congressman. It is a fundamental difference between us. Greg and I strongly disagree on Tort reform. There is also an issue of experience. I was talking to someone about debate issues and they were giving me a hard time. I asked him a question, when you last had a debate with somebody what happened after that debate. And he said that he went home and nothing came of it. I said, what would you have done if they had chased with 100 phone calls or have 20 people had out flyers all over your neighbor. Or 2000 emails or tell you that they would spend $10,000.00 to see that you never held office again. And he said, well, “No.” I asked him, do you know what you would when that happens. He said “No.” We need someone with experience who has had pressure and continued to hold his ground. The pressure is going to come and you’d better know how they are going to handle it.

GH) I can’t tell you how grateful I am that you came here because this is where it happens. This doesn’t happen often with this many delegates here. It’s probably not going to happen again until the state convention. We will send out over 2 hours of audio tape. We have given you over 65 pages of a detailed analysis of what has gone on, what should be going on, and what we can do. We have done that because we believe that you actually care to weigh all the issues. We can disagree on some things, but we need a different representation. We need a representation where there is total and complete access. We need representation with more transparency telling you what’s going on, why it’s going on, and where it’s going. We need someone that you can talk with disagree on things and still come together. The House is very different from the Senate. I have sent you information on the American way. We live in a very hostile world right now. You look at Korea, China or anywhere else in the world is ready to explode. Please read my stuff carefully. Weigh as I know you will.
In conclusion I would like to recognize Ivan Keller. Ivan put this debate together and it was miraculous. Let’s give him a hand!!