Excerpts From Town Hall Forum With Gore, Bradley

Excerpts of Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential candidates’ forum with Vice President Al Gore and former Sen. Bill Bradley:

Gore, on public cynicism:

I understand the disappointment and anger that you feel toward President Clinton, and I felt it myself. I also feel that the American people want to move on and turn the page and focus on the future and not the past. He’s my friend. I took an oath under the Constitution to serve my country through thick and thin, and I interpreted that oath to mean that I ought to try to provide some--as much continuity and stability during the time that you’re referring to as I possibly could.

Bradley, on his health care plan:

. . . I think that a politician doesn’t put out what something costs when he says I want this program or that program--he’s just, you know, politically posturing. Ours will cost between $50 billion and $65 billion a year. It will come either from the surplus--we have a $1-trillion surplus over the next 10 years, and that’s enough to take care of this program--or it will come through the enormous savings that we can get through the application of technology to the medical system. We spend $1.2 trillion; health care, $250 billion on administrative costs. By simply moving things from paper to Internet, you will be able to achieve significant savings.

Gore, on campaign reform:

Twenty years ago, I supported and proposed and co-sponsored in the Congress a bill to provide for public financing of elections. I support that today. Awful hard to get passed. It’s hard enough to try to get McCain-Feingold passed. . . . I think it’s very important to set a higher standard because what I want to do as president--if you elect me president, I promise you I will fight my heart out to get meaningful campaign finance reform and get the influence of big money out of our political system.

Bradley, on campaign reform:

One of the reasons I left the United States Senate was to build a grass-roots movement for fundamental campaign finance reform, something called Project Independence. We got over a million signatures across this country. That’s not a movement, but it’s a beginning. We need more of that, people’s involvement. Second, people in finance, in business, in religion and in academic life have to step forward and say the current system is not working: We demand a change because it’s not working for us. And third, you need a president that is going to make campaign finance reform one of the top three or four or five issues, because he recognizes how it is connected to our ability to insure more Americans, to our ability to reduce child poverty.

Gore, on same-sex partnerships:

It’s a mystery how Thomas Jefferson could write the words of our Declaration and own slaves. It’s a mystery how the founders in Philadelphia could write our Constitution and not allow women to vote. But we have taken the inner meaning and power of our founding documents and the spirit of America and breathed new life into them in each new generation. And the time has come for gays and lesbians to be recognized within the circle of human dignity.

Bradley, on the environment:

We have two challenges. One is to clean up that which has already been polluted: the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Superfund Cleanup Act. And then second, to protect those areas which have not been polluted from becoming polluted. There in the Senate I worked on things as diverse as Tongass National Forest in Alaska, the Sterling Forest in New Jersey and New York. I think that there’s a bit of an ethic here, and that is: Why is it so important that we preserve our natural world? And I think each of you living in New Hampshire could understand what I’m about to say, because it’s such a beautiful state. And that is you protect the natural world from pollution or you clean up that which has been polluted so that individuals may encounter something that is bigger than they are and lasts longer than they do.