The federal deficit
This country faces a large structural deficit that will endure even after economic recovery comes. Only cutting future spending could mean sizable reductions in Medicare, Medicaid, and other domestic programs. Raising revenue will mean that some taxpayers will have to pay more. Please outline your favored approach on long-term deficit reduction.
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
"Raising revenue" should be the primary methodology for deficit reduction; more specifically, tax rates must be returned to their Clinton-Gingrich levels.
"Cutting future spending", however, should also play a significant role; more specifically, a few of the many ways this could happen are as follows:
1. Eligibility for Social Security disability should be tightened, but regular retirement and survivor benefit levels must not be touched.
2. Excessive Medicare provider payments, including government funding of supplemental benefits, should be trimmed, but current basic procedure coverages must not be altered.
3. Cold War troop deployments could be reworked.
4. The Simpson-Boles recommendations could be revisited.
Health care and contraception
As part of the Affordable Care Act, church-affiliated universities, hospitals, and charities do not have to provide or pay for contraception as part of the preventive health services mandate of the law. Instead, coverage could be offered to women directly by their employers’ insurance companies, “with no role for religious employers who oppose contraception.” Do you agree with this provision? Why or why not?
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
Yes. The government must never force a church or its believers to engage in conduct they believe to be inappropriate.
The Affordable Care Act
Which other specific provisions of the Affordable Care Act would you vote to retain and which would you vote to eliminate?
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
Health care should have three primary elements:
1. Traditional Medicare for those age 65 or older
2. Optionally-electable Medicare for anyone under age 65 (and just wait for the self-employed, local government, and employer stampede)
3. Medicaid for all ages as a low-income supplement.
Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) should be amended to provide the foregoing.
Illegal immigration
The Obama administration has stopped deporting young illegal immigrants who entered the US as children if they meet certain requirements. Do you agree with this policy? What is your specific plan for dealing with illegal immigration to the US as well as illegal immigrants who are already here?
Democrat
This candidate hasn't responded yet; please check back later.
Republican
Republican
Yes. But those responsible for the disposition of these children (usually birth parents) should be heavily fined.
My "specific plan" would include the following:
1. Tighter border security; there's too much unguarded frontage
2. Strict e-verify enforcement
3. Tamper-proof IDs to be carried by all non-citizens
4. A non-citizen registry
5. Deportations, with family unity exceptions, for short-term illegals
6. A "Path to Citizenship" that would include significant ability-to-pay fines for long-term illegals
Gun violence
The latest gun tragedy, in Aurora, Colorado, has reminded us yet again that this nation suffers periodic episodes where multiple innocent people are killed by mentally unstable gunmen who have managed to get their hands on an array of guns and ammunition. Can you describe what, if anything, you would favor in an attempt to reduce gun-related violence?
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
As a Marine Corps veteran, I am very familiar with all types of weaponery, and I believe gun control, with one exception, should remain primarily a matter of state regulation - the exception being that the federal government should ban the carrying of automatic weapons or semi-automatics with large clips/magazines/jackets.
Climate change
Do you believe, as most climatologists do, that the climate is changing and the weather therefore becoming more extreme, largely as the result of human carbon pollution? If yes, what measures would you support to address it?
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
The presence of 7 billion-plus humans has affected the Earth's plant-life/animal-life carbon dioxide interchange and is responsible for the long-term gradual growth in the planet's atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
This growth does affect our weather, but the extent of same is difficult to quantify.
In the short-term, there must be a worldwide turn to alternative fuel sources, and in the long-term (which may get here quickly), mankind must regulate its population levels (and if we don't, Mother Nature will do it for us).
Syria
Under what circumstances, if any, would you favor having the U.S. intervene militarily in the situation in Syria?
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
As a last resort and only for humanitarian reasons and then with a "Soft Footprint" rather than a "Boots on the Ground" strategy (we should follow the Lybia model).
Diplomacy must be given every chance to work and other Mideast countries should lead the way.
The Israeli-Palestinian dispute
Do you believe Israel’s construction of settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War (specifically, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights) is legal or illegal? Do you believe that Israel should have political and administrative control over the entire city of Jerusalem, or should the Arab sections be given to the proposed Palestinian state?
Democrat
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Republican
Republican
The noted construction, with one exception, is appropriate in all three areas - the exception being the forced removal of already resident Palestinians.