Jan. 24 Republican debate transcript

Russert: Senator McCain, Governor Romney invoked your name. Do you believe Governor Romney raising fees, a quarter of a billion dollars, is equivalent to raising taxes?

McCain: Well, I'm sure those people that had to pay it did, I would imagine. But, look, I voted -- I voted on the tax cuts because I knew that unless we had spending control, we were going to face a disaster.

We let spending get completely out of control. Of course, those tax cuts have to remain permanent.

Otherwise, people experience a tax increase. We let spending get out of control.

We Republicans lost an election. We lost an election because of the Bridge to Nowhere and the fact that we presided over the biggest increase in the size of government that -- a sense of great society, we let it get out of control.

And the fact is that if we had had the spending restraints that I proposed, we would be talking about more tax cuts today. We would be talking about more tax cuts, that trust and confidence in our base was eroded.

I will restore that trust and confidence because I will restrain spending, along with further tax cuts. And I'm very proud of my record.

And if you look at those organizations that grade people, such as the National Taxpayers Union, the Citizens Against Government Waste, Citizens for a Sound Economy, and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, my record is very, very high for a consistent record of being a fiscal conservative, a record that I'm very proud of.

Williams: All right. Time.

McCain: But I'm going to stop the pork barrel spending, and we're not going to have anymore bridges to nowhere.

Williams: Senator, our time is up.

Congressman Paul, you often have a different view of these issues, so I'll ask a vastly different question.

Does government -- should government, in your view, have any role at all in stimulating the economy like this?

Ron Paul: Well, sure, indirectly. They shouldn't stimulate it by interfering in the market rate of interest. That's where our basic problem comes from.

And when you do that, you get into these problems, and then everybody wants to solve the problem by printing more money and spending more money and asking the Federal Reserve to, you know, lower interest rates. And that just makes the problem that much worse.

The government does have a responsibility, but it's supposed to lower taxes, get rid of regulations, and devise a monetary policy that makes some -- makes some sense. But, to continue to say that we just appropriate more money, which is more deficit, then expect us either to borrow it or expect the Federal Reserve to monetize it, it makes our problems worse.

Just look at what's happening today. The dollar is crashing. And why -- and Tim there suggests that we think of the economy, but not in foreign policy.

You can't do that. They're one in the same. That's where all of the money is going.

We're spending nearly a trillion dollars a year overseas maintaining this empire. And then, there's never been a war fought without inflation and destruction and devaluation of a currency.

And this -- this is what we're doing today to ourselves, is we're literally spending ourselves into oblivion. But nobody here is willing to even suggest that we cut something overseas. But we have to.

We don't need to cut anything here at home. I would like to see things frozen. I'd like to see massive tax cuts, but we need deregulation.

I was one of three people that voted against Sarbanes-Oxley. I knew that would be a problem. And it is a problem to the financial markets.

So this is the kind of thing we need. We need the government out of the way, but it should have sound money, low taxes, less regulations, and a sensible policy where we're not wasting our money overseas.

Williams: Congressman, thank you.

Mayor Giuliani, the next question goes to you, a story right out of the news over the last several days.

Many big brand name banks in this country, Merrill Lynch, CitiGroup, to name two of them, have gone overseas. It's been said hat in hand, looking for these cash infusions, up to $20 billion, literally to stay afloat, looking for money from governments of Abu Dhabi, Japan, Korea -- Saudi Prince Alaweed, whose money you turned away in New York after 9/11.

The question is -- and I know you know a lot of these people at Wall Street firms, the big New York banks -- is there something, even though it's money to stay afloat, fundamentally un-American in what's going on?