GOP Presidential Debate

KEYES: Well, first I am thankful and grateful to be here, especially because it gives me an opportunity to share some good news with you. At the end of the last debate, I talked about the situation of Thomas and Jim Navarro (ph), folks who were looking for a way to get the FDA to stand aside so they could get the best treatment for Thomas, who is a four-year-old dying of an aggressive brain cancer, a brain tumor. And I'd like to report to you that—I told you I was preparing a letter for the FDA. Well, I'm pleased to say that all but one of my colleagues have signed on to that letter. We will hopefully get the other signature soon. We'll be sending it on to Donna Shalala.

But the real hero of all of this, I think, is Thomas and Jim Navarro (ph) and his wife. And Jim and Thomas are with us today and I just wanted you to have a chance to meet them. Stand up, Thomas.

This is the father who is fighting for the life of his son. I would appreciate your help and support in any way that you can to show that government should not stand in the way of responsible people who are trying to get the kind of medical care that will help to prolong life.

That is the human dimension of what we do here trying to make sure our people get back their liberties.

KEYES: I think it's critically important that we understand that if we want to be able to allocate our medical dollars to reflect the right kind of priorities, then we've got to take an approach that helps people to maximize the cost effectiveness of the medical care they receive. We shouldn't have government and other bureaucracies dictating to people who are trying to act responsibly.

But instead, we need to empower them, through programs that voucherize the government system, that give people medical savings accounts, that allow greater choice on the part of individuals and families, allow them to make the decisions that can help us to keep the costs down. And by making better use of our medical dollars, we will then be able to allocate those dollars with priority to the things that families really can't handle for themselves. And that means giving top priority to the kind of long-term care that can have a catastrophic effect on the family budget.

If we take the right approach, people will be armed to keep the costs down, and our medical dollars can be used more effectively to help people meet those needs, that they can't meet for themselves.

KEYES: I'm sort of sorry to hear Gary going down a road that suggests that we ought to turn all of this business over to the judges. They don't do a very good job anywhere else; I doubt they'll do it here. It just becomes an excuse for government domination.

What we really need to do is empower people, patients, to be in a position where they will be able to enforce their judgment if their not getting what they need. I'll not turn it over to trial lawyers so that they can go down the same wasteful road we have seen, raising the costs for all Americans and burdening our health care system with an unneeded weight of litigation. I think it's a big mistake to go down that road.

KEYES: Governor Bush, I was reading not long ago about a little town in Texas named El Cinitzo (ph), I believe, in which the city council has passed an ordinance saying that all the business of this Texas-American town, is to be conducted in the Spanish language.

A lot of us, millions of other Americans, like myself, look at that sort of thing as an assault on our linguistic unity that is dangerous to the future union of this country.

KEYES: You have done nothing to respond to this. What action do you plan to take to show the people that you stand for one nation, one language, rather than a nation linguistically divided?

KEYES: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)

KEYES: (SPEAKING IN SPANISH)

KEYES: Si.

KEYES: In the context of the South Carolina flag debate, we've got a Republican named Senator Ravenel, who has also, among other things, in the last couple of days, made extremely insulting and derogatory remarks about black Americans, saying, in effect, that we're all retarded and so forth and so on.

Would you join me in repudiating that kind of racial slur, and in asking this senator to stand up and not just apologize to black Americans, but to apologize to all Republicans for misrepresenting the decent heart of our party on racial matters?

KEYES: Yes, I would. I think it's important that we understand that as we are facing the future, we're going to have to try to take advantage of our energy reserves.

KEYES: We want to do it in a way that's responsible. But we know that our science now allows us to do this exploration in ways that will respect ecological and environmental requirements, at the same time that we can exploit God's precious resources for the good of our people.

I think it's also important because if we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil, it buys us time in order to make use of our ingenuity to develop those alternative energy resources that are going to be part of the mix as we move into the future, into the 21st century for America.

So, I would support that, and I think that it's as good way to go provided we do it in a way that is responsible and that harnesses our scientific know-how to make sure we respect environmental requirements.

KEYES: I would just want to add that I think that illustrates an approach that ought to be there in terms of all our trusteeship for the environment. Instead of letting it become an excuse for government totalitarianism, for interference in the kinds of things that can help to better develop life for our people, we need to approach it in a balanced fashioned, harnessing our ingenuity, so that we respect the environment and the requirements of our people, so that we can have a thriving economy and at the same time hand on our precious heritage from God to our future.

I think it can be done if we're willing to take that approach.

KEYES: I think two things are true. First of all, we need to look at the root of this problem. Steve nibbles around the edges a little bit when he talks about the Federal Reserve, but the truth of it is we've had government programs that were aimed at compensating for the fundamental reality that in the course of this century we've restructured our banking system in a way that was insensitive to the needs of the family and independent farmer.

I think we need to take a careful look at the way in which this whole centralized banking system is contrary to the interests of farmers and move in a direction that will restore an element to the banking system that works with and is sensitive to the needs, the capital needs, of farmers.

KEYES: All the talk, by the way, of opening up new markets can't be done in the context of this collectivist free trade approach that does not allow us to maximize the clout we gain from our enormous market.

And I want to get away from this collectivist bargaining approach and in a hard-hitting way, a businesslike approach, force other countries to accept our goods as the condition of their entry into American markets. We can't do that at the collectivist, so-called, free trade bargaining table. And that's why I think we ought to withdraw from the WTO.

KEYES: I read an article the other day in which the New York Times basically declared the death of the family farm and acted like it was a good thing. It's not.

The family farm has been the source of an important contribution to the moral culture of this country—the sense of individualism and community that we rely upon. That's why we need to give special priority to the family and independent farmers in the administration of all of our programs.

But we can't count on that. We need to get to the root of the problem.

KEYES: The family farm has been under the gun ever since we consolidated control of the banking system at the national level. We need to change that fundamental fact.

KEYES: I think we ought to stop kidding ourselves here. That wasn't Bill Clinton's problem, it was our problem. And our problem is that we have turned our back on the fundamental premise of this nation's life: that our rights come from God and must be exercised with respect for the authority of God.

Anybody who gets into that Oval Office and isn't willing, whatever the political cost, to confront us with the fact that we have made the wrong choice on abortion, that we are making the wrong choice in supporting the radical homosexual agenda, that we are making the wrong choice in believing that we can have sexual licentiousness and liberty at the same time, is not going to help this nation.

You want to know the truth? Bill Clinton's not the only one who needs to shape up. We all need to shape up, starting with getting back to our allegiance to the fundamental moral principles that are this nation's strength and that ought to shape its heart. I will challenge the nation to do that. And in doing so, we will set an example with our courage in our choices, to which our children will respond.

KEYES: I think it's absolutely critical that we put the control of our educational system back in the hands of our parents. In order to do that, though, we're going to have to overcome the arguments that those parents don't have the responsibility, don't have the concern, don't have the love, don't have the capacity to do the right thing. That's what Clinton and his liberal buddies are always saying. They play on our lack of moral confidence.

So, the first thing we have to do is restore our allegiance to those moral principles that restore that moral confidence on the basis of which we reclaim control of our schools. To symbolize that reclaimed control, my goal would be to abolish the Department of Education, and to make it clear that is primarily the leadership of the parents—not any level of government—that we have to rely on in this society.

KEYES: When you have parents like a Jim Navarro (ph) and his wife willing to give their all for their children, don't we recognize that that heart has no substitute in government or bureaucracy. And it's that parent's heart that we should rely on to guarantee the effectiveness and quality of education.

So, let the money follow the choice of the parents not the choice of educrats, bureaucrats and politicians. That's what we need in education today.

KEYES: I think that as you listen to all these folks, you need to get a little aggravated with the fact that they're all going to give you something. And if you stand back and realize what it is, you will realize that it's your own money.

And at some point—at some point you need to start asking yourself, I don't want them to give me this and give me that. Why won't they give you back control over your own money? Why won't they let us go back to the Constitution our founders wrote, which had a tax system based on tariffs, duties and excise taxes, sales taxes, that put the people themselves in charge of the incidents of taxation, so that you can decide that if you need a tax cut today, all you will need to do is change your habits of consumption.

KEYES: You will be back in control of your own destiny. That is the tax approach that I recommend, radically different from what they're all talking about. They want to remain of the gatekeepers of your money. I want to put you back in charge of that money.

It's the only basis on which we can hope to regain that freedom that we're supposed to have as a people.

Abolish the income tax, return to the original Constitution of our country, and put the people of this country back in control of their own destiny.

KEYES: If I made a deal with you that I was going to give you a preemptive claim to a certain percentage of my income, determined by you, how much of my money would you control?

KEYES: You're right. That's the principle of the income tax. Now, when I work, or you work, and somebody else controls 100 percent of the fruits of our labor, what do we call that? Slavery.

The simple logic of the income tax is that it's a slave tax. These gentlemen argue about whether the chains should be lighter, whether they should be heavier. I think it's time that as a tax- enslaved people, we rise up and make it clear, we want the chains off. Abolish the income tax and return to our original constitution of liberty.

KEYES: Well, frankly, the Ten Commandments are etched into the walls of the Supreme Court. I find it rather hard to believe that it could be inappropriate to fit them on the walls of our schools.

That illustrates the problem we have here: a phony doctrine that's being foisted on us, pretending that somehow or another the federal government, through the courts, has the right to dictate uniformity of religion or irreligion. It's not true.

Through the 14th Amendment, some of these lawyers tried to pretend that the judges can do what the amendment explicitly forbids the Congress from doing: dictating religious practices at the state and local level.

This whole approach is wrong. All of this should be left up to the choice of the people themselves, up to the choice of parents in their schools. It's part of the reason school choice is so important—so we not only have people in schools who pray, but schools in the hands of people who pray by their own choice and so without the need to fear or give into any form of government domination. That's the way we should go.

KEYES: I think we need tough law enforcement, particularly on point-source polluters and people like this who are disregarding environmental decency. But we not only need to be tougher, we need to be smarter. After all, take the preservation of species, for instance. Is there any shortage of chickens in the world? Why not?

I'll tell you why not, because we eat them—that's why. Because there is a use for them. Because somebody has a major interest in making sure they survive.

You can harness self-interest. You can harness the enlightened interests of our people in ways that will serve the environment—the way the people at the Competitive Enterprise tell us we can do.

KEYES: That smarter approach is what we need if we really care.

KEYES: You know, I know I'm supposed to address you vox populi, vox dei, as if you all are God. But I would like to ask you, instead, to join me in a very brief prayer to the creator whom our founders acknowledged to be our true God.

Dear Lord, our God, give us the wisdom and the sense of humility that we will return to those principles which will acknowledge your authority as the source of our rights and our liberties. And that guided by that sense of humility, we will go into the voting booth, not to do what is best for ourselves, but to do, Lord our God, what is best for our country.