Oct. 9 Republican debate transcript

Bartiromo: Senator Brownback, the same question. Where do you draw the line? Do you support drilling/exploration off the coasts of Florida?

Brownback: I think you go in every place that you can to find resources. I put forward a proposal for us to be energy-secure -- not independent, energy-secure -- in 15 years. I don't think it's realistic for us to say we can be independent of every country around the world on oil supplies or on energy supplies in the near future, given our dependence and given the nature of what the global economy is like.

But I think one of the key answers is right here in Detroit. We've got to get more electricity involved in our car fleet. There's a Chevy Malibu parked out front here that's a hybrid flex-fuel -- they've got hybrid cars. They have flex-fuel cars. I think that's a big part of the answer. I'd like to see us move forward with getting the first 20 to 30 miles off of electricity that you plug into at night. That's technology. We're putting forward tax credits and incentives to try to move that forward. That's something Detroit here needs to grab on and is. And that can move us forward as an industry and as a country.

Bartiromo: But on the issue of exploration, you said yes to the coast of Florida, and you say yes to ANWR?

Brownback: I voted yes for ANWR, and I would support those in other places, environmentally sound.

We have to do it in environmentally sound fashion.

Bartiromo: Congressman Tancredo.

Tancredo: You bet. I would agree to exploration off the coasts. I mean, it's -- how fair is it today that Louisiana is producing all the oil that California and other countries (sic) are consuming, and they refuse to allow the exploration of oil of their coasts? I'd say if you don't -- if you won't allow it, you can't use it -- the stuff that we're getting from Louisiana. (Laughter.)

Now, the other thing is this -- when we talk about deficits, our trade deficits, it's -- by the way, it's not importing, you know, toys from China that causes it. The biggest chunk of our trade deficit is due to one thing and one thing only -- it's oil. That's where all the dollars flow. And where do they flow? To countries that want to kill us. So, yeah, you better drill every place you can here, and you better figure out every way to reduce your dependency on foreign oil.

Bartiromo: John Harwood.

Harwood: Senator McCain, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips this past year earned a combined $72 billion in profits. Is that too much? Should the oil industry pay higher taxes, or should it be required to use some of those profits to help solve our energy problems?

McCain: I would hope that they would use those profits to further the cause of alternate energy, nuclear power, a lot of other ways that we have to employ in order to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.

By the way, I wouldn't drill off the coast of Florida unless the people of Florida wanted to. And I wouldn't drill off the coast of California unless the people of California wanted to, and I wouldn't drill in the Grand Canyon unless the people in Arizona wanted to.

Harwood: But you wouldn't require the oil industry to do those things --

McCain: I -- what's that?

Harwood: You would not require the oil industry to use its profits to help pursue alternative energy?

McCain: I would not require them to. But I think that public pressure and a lot of other things, including a national security requirement that we reduce and eliminate our dependence on foreign oil -- and we stop the contamination of our atmosphere, which is -- and climate change, which is real and is taking place.

And we have now a confluence of two national security requirements. One is to address the issue of climate change, and nuclear power is a very big part of that. And it's also a requirement to not allow Chavez in Venezuela, Putin in Russia and the president of Iran to dictate world events, bully their neighbors and use oil as a weapon which would probably further terrorism and endanger this nation's national security. (Applause.)

Harwood: Governor Huckabee, the federal government has spent years and billions of dollars promoting ethanol, but the result has been a glut of ethanol and gas prices that are still at record level. Wouldn't it be better to just let the free market determine whether ethanol makes economic sense or not?

Huckabee: I think ethanol and all biofuels are going to be an important part of the future energy needs of the country, but the accelerated pace at which we get there is critical for national security as well as for our own economic interest. The fact is, we keep talking about 15-, 20-, 30-year plans -- that's nonsense. If we don't start saying we'll do this within a decade, we're never going to -- ever going to get there, and we need to approach it the same way that a car does at the NASCAR pit stop: You rush in, you get it done because you have to. We're in a race; we're in a race for our lives against people who want to kill us. And a lot of the reasons that we are entangled in the Middle East is because our money buys their oil, that money ends up coming back to us in the way of Islamofascism terrorists.

We've got to come to the place where everything is on the table -- nuclear, biofuels, ethanol, wind, solar -- any and every thing this country can produce. We once had a president who said, "Let's go to the moon in 10 years," and we were there in eight. And we did that when we started with a technology of bottle rockets when we got the thing launched. And we all saw that we can do it.

But we can't do it when we create this sense of we'll wait until another generation. We can't wait till another generation. Instead of running it like NASCAR, we've been running it like taking the family station wagon in for letting Goobar and Gomer take a look at it when they get time under the shade tree. (Laughter.) So it's critical that for our own interest economically and from a point of national security, that we become energy independent and commit to doing it within a decade.