association in one thousand nineteen its president carrie chapman katz said raise up a league of women voters arise women voters in this your first union together let the nation hear you play it off to a curse crusade that shall not until the electorate of the republic is intelligent that the new newly and franchised women voters in order to know what they're voting about has always had a strong educational mission and then the women voters is a nonpartisan political organization that encourages the informed and active participation of citizens in government and influences public policy through education and advocacy the league is a grassroots volunteer organization that does not support or oppose any political party or candidate but we believe that every citizen should be protected in the right to vote now this evening we have a special guest that i'd like to introduce and that is elizabeth mcnamara who is our national president who is in town visiting those of us in minnesota  thank you thank you very much and welcome to this to this candidates debate this candidates debates are one of the premier voter education projects of the league of women of the league of women voters this is something that we can do for our communities to bring communities together and allow constituents and candidates to interact directly we are very very pleased to see such a wonderful turnout here and thank the candidates for appearing in answering questions this is a very such a valuable way that we can learn about the about the folks that are running for office so that we can each of us make up our own minds on election day as to who will best represent us in the congress so thank you all for being here thank you all for supporting your community thank you for supporting the league we are in fact a membership organization and so we invite all of you to join us in our to make sure that democracy works not just here in minnesota but all over the country so i hope you enjoy this wonderful event this evening and get lots and lots of wonderful interview information because i know they're going to be some great questions thank you all very much  this event has been co sponsored by the leagues of women voters of the various suburbs no brighton roseville maplewood falcon height weight bear woodbury and st croix valley we are also partnering with the group called mature voices which advocates for senior issues on the national level know i'd like to introduce the moderator for this evening jacqueline schroeder she is not a constituent in district four she lives in  very best moderators jacqueline thank you very much and as sig mentioned my name is jacqueline schroeder and i live and vote in burnsville minnesota and will not be participating in this election i'd like to thank all of you and especially our congressional district for candidates to this evening's forum and i have met with the candidates prior to the forum and they have all agreed to our format this evening i will ask our audience there are so many exciting and passionate topics that we're going to be addressing with our candidates this evening all of the questions will be generated from our audience they are coming from you i will ask each of you that as you observe and listen this evening to please keep in mind that the views expressed in this forum are those of your candidates and not those of the league of women voters it is our purpose in sponsoring meetings such as this to provide you with an opportunity to hear your candidates discuss the issues face to face that are important to you sadly there is never enough time to cover all  issues in a setting such as this and if your questions were not addressed in the forum please contact your candidates directly and find out from them what their answers are to your questions i also ask that in consideration of our limited time this evening please hold your applause and yes of course also your cheers and jeers we do know that you're passionate about the issues but we ask to be very respectful of the time the limited time so that we can get to the media questions that you've provided to us i would also ask that you make sure that you set a good example for the future voters that are in the room we do have quite a few representatives here this evening from north high school thank you very much  you are welcome as attendees as guests here this evening you're welcome to submit as many written questions for the candidates as you'd like to hold up the cards the index cards that were provided and a league of women voters member will collect those from you throughout our forum  we will consolidate cards and questions that fall in the same general category any questions that are unclear hostile or of a personal nature will simply not be asked and the questions will become the property of the league of women voters after the event as i mentioned  candidates have agreed to our format this evening which does involve two minute opening statements each candidate will have one minute to answer your questions that i have gathered and then they will also be allowed a one minute rebuttal to address  what they are each saying about the questions that you have posed and then there will be two minute closing statements at the end of our evening i would like to take this time now to introduce our candidates your candidates for congressional district for  the order that they drew will be for opening and closing statements all of the questions will actually be answered in random order your candidates for this evening or for this election are betty mccollum tony hernandez and steve social sciences civics and stand most of you don't have first hour but those of you who have first hour biology all the best you this is an area in which in the fourth district in which i grew up where i felt very supported by a community that is sure i had access to a good public school which was up to me to take advantage of the education community in which people came together to make sure that we had good public services police fire and when i had the opportunity to run for office and serve on the city council here it was an amazing experience of learning how to work with with schools and businesses and  all kinds of partnerships that really make a community run i i it was a wonderful wonderful learning experience for me this election we has it's about a choice it's about a choice about america moving forward america moving backwards do we move forward with making our economy stronger investing in infrastructure investing in education investing in people in communities or do we  backwards to the same failed policies of the bush tax cuts which led us into deep deep debt and near depression thank you tony hernandez your opening statements please well thank you to the league of women voters or moderate moderator jacqueline represented mccollum steve thank all of you for being here it means a lot thank you to the north st paul students my name is tony hernandez numb running for the united states house of representatives because i want to serve you the people and the families of the fourth congressional district and i want to go to congress to work with others to solve the great problems of our day when representative mccollum was sworn in the congress in two thousand and one the unemployment rate was four point one percent and the national that was five point seven trillion now i'm not going to sit here and blame represent mccollum for our economic woes but i will say this that she has not offered any solutions in terms of how to solve our problems first before i get into this i want to start by complimenting the congresswoman in two thousand and three represented mccollum stood against the powers that be she stood against her own party and she voted against the authorization of force in iraq it was the right thing to do and i would have voted the same way and i applaud you for that now i'm going to make the argument though that twelve years in washington d c and this will happen to anybody but it's changed some of the values of representative mccollum and you're going to see some of those changes tonight you're going to hear the export incumbent explain how she joined forces with president bush in two thousand and eight the bailout the wall street banks too big to fail you'll hear the incumbent explain why we need to stay in afghanistan just a little bit longer and you'll also hear explain why we need to extend the bush tax cuts for who knows how long now my fellow citizens i'm asking you to send me to congress so that we can move forward from the last twelve years of endless wars skyrocketing debt and dismal economy in congress i'll be a lion for liberty and i'll be a true representative the people and as i say in my low budget t v commercials my name is tony hernandez i'd be honored to earn your vote and i approve this message thank you steve carlson you have t please ok good evening first of all i'd like to thank the league and i want to say that when i was a student leader at the university of minnesota back in about seventy's and eighty's i always like the mission of the league of women voters and a lot of the other activities which many of you are involved in i think it's very important to our country i want to help educate by having this discussion with jacqueline and and and all of the  candidates and we really need this this year now i'm steve carlson of course i'm t independence party nominee and the tea party candidate for for this or in this race for the fourth congressional district i bring experience in government in leadership in community and economic development in politics well of course in business and law journalism and sensitivity for the arts i've posted a song that i've written for this year on my website i won't repeat it for you now but you can go there now i'm fired up i'm ready to go i'm ready to get with the congress and focus on the hard work that we have ahead of us i also have fresh ideas my ideas by the way have been supported by mitt romney so i want to make this very clear what this idea is mitt romney has said that he will first of all not go forward with obamacare because it cost one hundred billion dollars a year and the other reasons we need to go forward and  actually save lives and not just money he's going to move federal programs back to the states and because of that the think will only increase at the cost of inflation and not at the cost of  of interest and compound ing and multiplying that he's going to cut back the size of government and i would go further and stop thank you thank you very much and i do appreciate our candidates working with the lighting to be able to see our time keeper this evening they have an extra challenge tonight but they've all given their giving it their best shot pardon me our first question this evening is appropriate since we are hosting this evening's forum in a high school and carlson if you would be the first to answer this question please i ask do you think twenty two is ranked third in the nation where there's a large gap between students of color and white students why do you think that is why is this happening all over minnesota and how would you try to improve on this please also answer the question if the solution is to be found in increasing or decreasing funding for education you have one minute is that a trick question  no actually i when i was at the university of minnesota and i mentioned this i actually wrote with a chicano student leader the nation's first cultural pluralism requirement and that requires that in order to get out of the college of liberal arts you need to take two quarters of either studies american indian studies african american studies or east asian studies and also women's studies so any of those five would support that no unfortunately that was kind of rolled back after i left and so i think the reason that we're failing is because our schools need to be much smarter our schools do not they're based there steeped in the western tradition and we need to recognize that there's knowledge from all of these that i just mentioned that we need to know about if we don't know that we're ignorant and so what we need to do is it is really learn all of this and really teach all of this together and i think that would really go a long way i don't think would require more funding thank you betty mccollum if you would please answer the same question the hugest this is a really important question to ask because students are our future and we can't afford to leave anyone behind if we're going to grow as a country with our economy and if we're going to be a vibrant democracy leave no child behind president bush's policy didn't achieve its goals but his goal was a noble one if you just listen to the title leave no one behind what do we need to do well we need to make smart investments we're investing in our students we need to make sure that students have access to early childhood and when they come to it when they come to high school particularly that there's a way that we intervene to help someone with now their science or  second language and make sure that every child has a chance to succeed but the federal government can do is share by fully funding in special education i d e a so that we don't have a levy referendums that go towards a federal obligation and instead go to our students thank you tony hernandez same question place as your congressman i believe it's vital to have the strongest relationship possible between the federal government and local units of government the school districts the parent teacher association as the teachers they're really the ones at the bottom they need to make the the choices because they understand what's happening in the neighborhoods in the communities so why is there in achievement gap amongst students of color i believe it's because parents here in minnesota don't have enough choices i believe that if we had a rigorous and healthy competition between public schools private schools charter schools special ed alternative education and really giving parents more choice that's vital representative mccollum brought up no child left behind i believe we need to repeal no child left behind i do agree with initiative race to the top i think it's heading in the right direction given more power and control the pictures parents and school boards thank you i will offer an opportunity for rebuttals steve carlson you have one rebuttal well that having been said that we need to learn about other cultures and other great civilizations we also have to do other things one of the things that i think we need to do i agree with tony that we need choice i think also as part of what i mentioned before of rolling back some of these major programs why are we sending all of this money out of the department of education to get involved in banking and who knows what and also to come back and tell us what to teach why are we doing this when we could keep bad money and that power here and we could do a better job here in minnesota and i think if we you know like you talked about a neighborhood we would know the people in a neighborhood and they would know us in so we need to deal with each other is brothers and sisters and people of all colors and races together and educate each other together and so we need local we need minnesota to do all these are just some ideas that minnesota could do so i would say send it back to the states minnesota can do thank you are there other rebuttal requests from our candidates yes betty mccollum we have one minute please i've been a supporter of charter schools but it's time that we hold charge schools a just as the conical as we are public schools many people have a false sense that charter schools the outcomes are better for students of color we're finding out charter schools are having some of the same failures at meeting the needs of those young adults public schools are so we need to understand what individual students need we need to understand and learn from charter schools and learn from public schools an excellent teachers how to make that that click how to make that lightbulb how to make that connection go off in your head but the other thing we need to do is we need to have counselors in the school who are working with businesses to bring the businesses since you know about the career opportunities the skill set you're going to need and do better mentorship thank you tony hernandez one minute rebuttal i just want to use this one minute again to talk about no child left behind because this is a great example of how the federal government is stepping in and trying to mandate choices at the local level and is destroying things at the local level at the same time i question there's almost a uniform consensus amongst minnesota teachers members of congress that no child left behind is not working my question is why aren't we repealing no child left behind is there in shows the basic problem with modern politics modern government we have ambitious legislators that come up with a catchy title for a bill that warms your heart makes you feel fuzzy and they let it go it turns out to be a failure but then nobody repeals it i think it's time that we have people in congress that are focused on repealing some of these failed policies of the past so that we can all move forward together thank you  offering no softballs this evening our candidates next question is going to be a nice meaty one and steve carlson if you would be the first to address this question please what do you propose the federal government do to address increasing budget deficits at the federal level in coming in twenty thirteen and beyond and you have one minute ok well i've already mentioned that what we need to do is exactly what ron we say we need to stop obamacare but that doesn't mean we're not going to stop saving lives but we're not going to put his big expensive bureaucracy to stop job creation and to spend one hundred billion dollars a year so that's going to save us some money  secondly i mentioned that all of these programs like education for instance he's mentioned medicaid the fannie mae and freddie mac all of these things should be reexamined to not only save us money but we need to protect yourself from risk because interested in what betty thanks about what i've been saying whether or not she would take that up before congress even ends and try to save us from the fiscal cliff or go with the b c s thank you tony hernandez if you would be the second person to answer the question please sure in order to reduce the deficit and this is a huge problem we haven't had a budget in over four years i think the projected deficit is one point one trillion dollars i believe that we need a balanced approach we need to find ways to responsibly reduce spending and we also need to look at ways to increase revenues i believe the best way to do that is to get more minnesotans working initiate tax reform flatten the curve and expand the number of people that are paying taxes in terms of spending reductions as your congressman the very first area that i'll look for spending reductions is money that we're spending overseas i believe that we need to bring our troops home now from afghanistan it's now the longest war in our american history we accomplished the goal a long time ago and we need to honor our troops our brave troops by bringing them home now with honor and with courage finally for reducing spending one of the biggest areas of spending is in title meant spending and maybe we can get into more about some ideas that i have to reform and entitlement spending you know the responsible way thank you and betty mccollum if you would address the same question please i'll address the same question but i want to say to for the record i led the opposition for the state of minnesota for the delegation to vote against leave no child behind so you'd probably be pretty proud of that we need to put all options on the table we need to look at something similar to simpson bowles and simpson bowles said we need to have we need to raise some revenues and we have to make some cuts and simpson bowles is something that was very interesting when we met with them several times and as members of the budget committee and they said you know a lot of the tax cuts that are out there they're the same as spending when you do tax perks the you what we see exxon oil and the big oil companies than they're getting so we need to put all options on the table we need to look at making smart cuts we need to and at the upper level tax cuts which sixty you know billions and billions of dollars from millionaires all borrowed money from china the middle class gets stuck with the bills so we should start there but i really do believe that we should work together to end the gridlock so we can solve why tax cuts can produce growth and generate revenue and of course romney has said he's going to have a deficit neutral tax cut is going to be twenty percent in the marginal rates across the board and that's going to leave  people with more money to spend now when you get to a business you have to realize that taxes are a cost and i heard rick nolan the other day say he's an expert because he's a small business owner and that people just look at the mand never care about taxes is just a gimme for them and you tax money they get well that's ridiculous what you look at is if i invest this much money how much am i going to get back and when you say i'm going to have to pay this much in taxes guess what there's a cost it's it's cutting into  earnings and it's going to do is going to stop people from creating jobs here in united states to going to move those jobs across overseas and we're not coming back thank you tony hernandez i just want to point out that represent mccollum oftentimes fails to bring any solutions in terms of how to reduce the deficit i would agree that increasing the tax rates on the rich is one way to increase revenues to the federal government i would disagree though to say that by rate reducing taxes on the rich is is borrowing money from china it's their money that's how the private sector operates finally going back to more ideas and how to responsibly reduce spending because we must get ahold of the deficit we must get a hold of it that it's going to bring the safety net down for the poor and vulnerable in our seniors so we need responsible attention to this right now sixty five percent of spending i believe is in title meant spending there's ways that we can responsibly reduce this without hurting the poor still maintaining our commitments to our seniors means testing is a great example of this it allows for rich seniors to still get their benefits but it gives up or seniors more benefits more families with with security for planning their future and it would have put more money in the economy for people to go to the diner buy extra school supplies take care their family so we need to pass the president's bill he has something out there and that's what i support but the money for the upper one percent is an extra tax cut and it is borrowed money from china we are borrowing money to pay for that for the finance financial problems we have in this country right now and i support the middle tax class cuts for the middle class but an extra an extra tax cut a more borrowed money that the middle class has to pay the interest on these students will have to pay the interest on that's where i draw the line thank you i appreciate all of our candidates candor and the good news is our audience wants to know a little bit more we're going to go a little bit farther on a similar topic we've talked about the annual deficit i would loud like to address a question from our audience regarding the national debt we've talked about annual budgeting i'm sorry this question tony hernandez if you would be the first to answer this question  talked about annual budgeting does that go far enough to address the existing national debt what else could be proposed can you repeat the question we've talked about our annual budgeting process does that go far enough to address the existing national debt and what do you propose no i don't think it goes far enough the annual budgeting process is essentially nonexistent in my view point since president o a was sworn into the presidency congress has not passed an operating budget so there is no budget and that begs the question well what do we need to do in order to tackle this situation everybody is going to have to pay their fair share there's no doubt about that are some people maybe going to have to pay an extra extra bit to the debt in line absolutely or some people going to have to work a little harder absolutely my wife we all know and i were proud  middle class and we don't have very much money right now in my car just broke down last week were down the one car we have to share a car everywhere that we go i think that's the kind of mentality that americans are going to need moving forward so that we can afford the programs that we need for the poor but at the same time allow families to live independently thank you but in a column same question the bottom line is we have to work together and we're not doing that we have to put everything on the table we need to have honest discussions about how we move forward we have to stop the finger pointing you have to stop assigning the blame and we have to open up our minds that other people might have a when people sign pledges and come in with their minds already made up so you have my commitment to work hard to work across the aisle and to work with everyone thank you steve carlson same question i guess we don't think that in twelve years that i've seen working with everybody you're blaming the republicans for blocking everything and for all of the problems that we have in especially on the debt the debt ceiling is i think something  that the fiscal cliff and and you supported the budget control and then but i think you know that nobody really wants to make all those cuts do you actually want to make all those cuts and i don't i'm sorry that was a question i don't think that should do that  don't believe that she or anybody else really wants to make all of these cuts so what we need to talk about is economics no it if you look back at my original statement i'm talking about permanently changing the direction of the  annual budgeting process which means that yes the debt is going to go down and when businesses see that they're going to bring their money back in then they're going to reinvest and they're going to say oh this nightmare is over of the area logical tax the rich for the solution to all of the the piece of legislation that you're talking about i didn't vote for it i don't know which of you said i voted for this sequester the budget control act i didn't vote for it so i and i do have a record of of working across a i'll let me tell you it's hard to cut spending we found a program in the pentagon where we were spain racecar drivers to recruit military people we recruited no one no one and i worked with a conservative republican from georgia nascar had to hire a lobbyist and we almost did it it's very hard to cut but i'm willing to work with anyone and everyone to do what's right to make smart cuts and to make smart investments because we have to move this country forward tony hernandez i'd agree with representative mccollum that we need members of congress republicans democrats independents to work together i also agree with steve and the last twelve years we have not seen that from the congresswoman she sits on the house budget in appropriations committee you didn't vote for the ryan budget you haven't produced the budget we're waiting for a budget and i think we deserve a budget because there's one thing that i hear campaigning door to door talking to business men and women the number one thing that business people are talking about minnesota is not taxes it's uncertainty and the uncertainty starts in washington d c the see the extreme divisiveness the blame game it's bush's fault obama's fault this needs then and to me the only way we can do that is to elect new representatives and also some structural changes a budget amendment i think would be a good thing to the us constitution you voted against that i don't necessarily think it has to be a balanced budget amendment i just think we need a mandate or requirement for congress to pass an operating budget every single year us and do what i have to do it business up thank these powers and resources back to the state in very intelligent responsible ways nobody i think i think you're saying you didn't vote for the budget control act because i believe that's from the senate and what you didn't vote for was the ryan budget however i heard you in our last debate and i was kind surprised i thought you said that that's a budget that i know that amy closure from the delegation says there's a budget she's proud of those cuts she says anything that the president signs is a budget so what we what we need to understand is we need actual budgeting you set a budget is just a piece of paper because it's totally nonbinding but we need to look at what we need to spend the money for now as far as this race card what is this antipathy towards people who want to watch our me car in nascar that they sacrifice their lives they think the u s is great technology like to see a winning races i think is great thank you we're going to have to move on to our next question and betty mccollum if you would be the first to answer this question please if elected how do you feel about medicaid medicare is future and will our benefits remain the same please address relevant issues of the relevant provisions of the affordable care act also known as  did some great things in the affordable care act we lowered prescription drug costs we took away co pays for seniors and we made it better for seniors to access health care with preventive health care checks i am very proud of that and seniors need to know i'm going to work to even make it better but when i hear repeal people are talking about taking away those benefits making the donahoe blow open again minnesota seniors receive millions of dollars and premium support for that and i'm going to keep thank you tony hernandez if you'd be the next answer the question you have one minute during this campaign season especially as of recently i've had the honor of visiting i think in the last two weeks i've been to round twelve senior homes and congressional district for coffee but we haven't had one happy hour with beer and wine it's been a great time getting to know our seniors i want to just act what represent mccollum if you will act me i will fight tooth and nail to protect medicare and social security for our seniors and for future generations i do not believe we need to make any major structural changes  medicare benefits are currently being delivered as i stated earlier i do think that one area to make sure that medicare is strong for our seniors is means testing this idea is very simple it gives more benefits to our poor seniors and less benefits to the more well to do seniors but everybody still gets their benefits that will put us on a longer path to solvency in regards to the affordable care act if you i'm running out of time i'll talk about in my next what's more sacred about that and all of the other commitments which congress has made right so we have to look deeper and i think what we're looking for is aging with dignity and this is something which is a hallmark of american life we have so many seniors  twenty four we need to make structural changes furthermore obama's already made a structural change i can show you on an a b c news on my web site you can hear him saying he's going to fund one third of obamacare by cutting medicare he says that over and over and he democrats did not cut medicare we looked at medicare we worked with an independent advisory board we found where there was waste fraud abuse insurance over payments and we said you know that's not a good use of taxpayers dollars we captured those dollars and we put them back into the affordable care act we put them back into medicare to make medicare solvent to twenty twenty four that's a good thing paul ryan has said on the budget committee with him he looked at the same savings and he said hey i've got an idea i'm going to take those savings i'm not going to put it into medicare instead i'm going to use it to help offset the tax cuts i want for the upper one percent i'm going to work to make medicare stronger for seniors and good for taxpayers thank you tony hernandez one minute please democrats have not saved medicare either it's on a path to insolvency in ten years or so we need to responsibly deal with the situation so that we can honor our commitments to our seniors  future generations and terms of the affordable care act which was the original question i disagree with some of my republican colleagues i do agree that the idea that an insurance company cannot kick off kick somebody off their insurance or prevent somebody from coverage because they have a preexisting condition i think that's a good thing i think that's a compassionate thing my wife leona she's a pediatric arced i c u nurse a registered nurse she comes home from work and reminds me every single day about the dignity of life and reminds me that health care is unlike selling shoes or a movie theater or a restaurant it's intercut lee tied to one's liberty and it's something that is worth fighting for in congress thank you steve carlson one minute thank you well you say democrats did not cut medicare the democrats held the house of the presidency in the senate until two thousand and ten and what did they do they used that capital political capital to pass obamacare because he thought it would be this landmark thing and by the way i think it's just a placeholder to move on to a single payer system and that's been pretty openly stated by many democrats in fact many people who might not vote for betty mccollum might do so because she didn't pass a single payer system but they if they didn't cut it i don't know who did now you say waste fraud and abuse and i work at american cancer society one of my jobs that i did was to locate resources when people get cancer that certain port many of them need wheelchairs they need walkers that we filed in some of these small towns around minnesota it's very expensive to get a walker a wheelchair and so some people thought that the cost for that was fraud because it wasn't the same cost that you had in new york or let's say some  lower cost market but a lot of demanded a lot of wheelchairs so they call that fraud is not fraud thank you we're going to switch gears one more time again our audience is very interested in some very big topics thrilled to have the kind of participation we have here this evening and i think these questions hopefully are going to get some of the answers that you want to hear from your candidates tonight the final the final question for this evening betty mccollum if you would be the first to answer this question please how do how would you propose we address immigration reform please include in your response issues of family reunification and pathways to citizenship you have one minute immigration reform we have an opportunity to do something about it president bush came his last two years serving and came and spoke to our conference and our caucus said that we would work with the president work with the senate work with senator mccain and come forward and bring up a piece of legislation to put on his desk to sign we said we wanted an equal number of democrats and republicans we wanted to  bipartisan and president bush went back to the republican leadership and they said now what a missed opportunity i support represent a representative luis thank you steve carlson if you'd be the next to answer this question ok well first of all i'd like to know why didn't she just use the same bipartisanship that she used to pass the obamacare where you get one  one republican senator to let it get out of committee and then get out on the floor and get it passed why do you need an equal number of republicans i think that's questionable to me now nothing happened during the first two years or four years and i guess this is one reason why they didn't  get an equal number of republicans ok what we need is a good neighbor relations with mexico and we need by lateral as well as bipartisan security arrangements  develop a border zone there get irrigation develop factories develop jobs not just on the south side the makita doors like we did before but bring a lot of these factories back from china get desalinization get the water infrastructure we better learn how to deal with drugs because we have them all over the country so let's start dealing with water and develop that area and this could be and we also should have bilingual and bicultural thank you tony hernandez same question for immigrant immigration reform and one  minute my grandfather he immigrated from mexico in with his family and he was a migrant worker on my mother's side our family came from ireland this country has a proud and rich tradition of immigrants to a certain degree everyone in here minus native americans were the legacy of our immigrant tradition two thousand and ten was the lowest population growth in american recent history if not all time essentially we have stayed a population growth we have an aging senior demographic i believe that we need more illegal immigration in america in a responsible and legal way i also believe that we need to secure our borders now it's shocking to me that we have military bases across the entire world we're able to secure the border between iran and iraq and in a heartbeat and we can't secure the border between mexico and the united states i think that's a tragedy thank you but in a column one minute rebuttal well we need to we need to do this and we need to get it right and it is important that we work on it together it is important that we start passing legislation together that's how we pass clean air and clean water that's how we tackled a lot of the big problems with getting moving forward the space race and making shoes students have an opportunity for higher education in college we did that working together and i don't think that there's anything wrong with asking people to come together and work on something so that after it passes we we can move forward on it and i wish we would republican support on the affordable care act really wish we could but i you know i keep thinking when mitch mcconnell shortly you know just about two years ago went down on the senate floor when our economy was in crisis and didn't say let's come together to work on our economy his senate floor speech was i am going to make sure that president obama is a one term president steve carlson one minute  first of all i want to point out i think that the reason that we're bashing immigrants is because you come every time the economy goes to politicians of all stripes they get out there and it's a who's to blame the low income earners the minimum wage the people who won't retire and the immigrants so i think that we should realize that these people help us they take these low wage jobs there's people right no apples that are being picked in washington right now this week because we have things like this going on and we import people with things like to preserve his program and send him back to mexico and we have mexican americans here who don't get those jobs as well cesar chavez started to the union we're going to secure the borders but how are we going to do that i'm saying we're not going to just put fences up and i think that's one reason we couldn't get quite enough bipartisan support we're going to do you find the area if people have jobs there and they come there to have a good life they're going to be secure they're going to want to keep the place secure as long as they're just selling drugs no security is going to help thank you tony hernandez one minute quickly the democrats had a super majority in two thousand and eight two thousand and ten the presidency the senate and the majority in the house they failed to pass immigration reform net immigration from mexico to the united states has slowed to zero i believe in part due to represent mccollum's and president obama's dismal economy they're essentially making the jobs economy so caustic that the mexicans are going back to mexico for jobs we need to change that and i forgot what my last point was so thank you i would like to now ask  candidates to offer their closing statements they have all agreed that a two minute closing statement would be appropriate for this forum and we will offer closing statements in reverse order of our opening statements and steve carlson if you would be the first to offer your closing statement obamacare is bigger than a national debt is bigger than all of the decisions that we need to make on foreign policy to remain a leader in the world to deal with the national security it's a big deal we've got to change the direction of this country i believe sixty seven sixty or seventy percent think we're headed in the wrong direction and they are right now betty has still not responded as to whether she is going to vote to determine to send some of these programs back to minnesota to cut the deficit and and to avoid a fiscal cliff and i would really like to hear from her i believe that romney has it right now as far as the ryan budget we all hear about  not running for president i think the romney made a very good decision picking him in part because he was a chair of the budget committee and he can control him now and he has already indicated that ryan's already changed he said the voters should be voluntary now we've got real serious problems with entitle mintz we could sit here and talk all night about entitlements probably you could say a lot about it that we would want to listen to the fact is that is the real thing and we are getting to that age this is running out we've got to get this under control on the other hand i don't think that's where we should turn the economy around because these are and i agree with rick nolan that he they work for i've worked for this i paid into this i expect is this is part of the american dream this is not the point we dismantle that this is one of the things i truly i just saw this coming and i said i am going to do everything i can it was years ago to make sure they don't do this to us now we don't want to intergenerational thing we want to make it all work together thank you tony hernandez your closing statements place thank you to the league of women voters jacqueline you've been a great moderator my ponens represent mccollum that's the thank you for your time i really had fun at this debate thank you to you all for coming out it's really important it means a lot for to have you guys here in gage this is a very important and critical time in american history little bit of history right now in one nine hundred forty six that was the last time a republican was able to win congressional district four so i was that sixty six years ago now so imagine that my question to you is another not a die hard republican and i voted democrat in the past i consider myself pretty balanced i think that the democrats have good ideas as do republicans i believe we need change in washington d c i'm pretty sure that everybody here can agree with that it's not the fault of representing mccollum it's not the fault of any individuals it's a collective problem that's out there right now and in my viewpoint the only way that we are going to be able to solve this problem of extreme partisanship is to elect a whole new generation of leaders that are willing to throw their partisanship and ideology aside and work together with others to solve the great problems that america is facing right now this is the time for us to stand up i'm asking to earn your vote i want to be the problem solver that you send to the united states congress now just quickly generally speaking what do i see myself doing on the first day congress why we go to every single member and ask them are you willing to work together to solve these problems the national debt i believe is our number one security threat if we don't get a handle on our federal finances our safety net is going to disseminate and we're not going to have it for the poor we're not going to have it for the seniors we're not going to have it for the rich i'm thirty three years old i was recently married and really the number one reason that i'm running is to rebuild the american dream so i thank you for your time may god bless you may god bless america thank you betty mccollum you have two minutes please well this is a selection and when people go into vote they're going to make a choice do we move forward to we stay it on a path that we're starting to see success with in the last thirty months six point four point six million private sector jobs the unemployment rate is starting to drop we're starting to see housing prices stable and there's so much more work this left to be done and that's going to have to be done with people working across the aisle and i'm ready to do that the other choice is to return just back to the same failed policies of the bush administration that's in the ryan budget that's the other choice that is the other choice i want to move america forward seniors need to know that i will work hard to protect their guarantee medicare social security students need to know that i feel passionate about making sure that we invest in you we need to invest in our infrastructure put america back to work we need to do something about climate change by having an energy policy and fossil fuels going to be part of our energy mix for a long time but here in minnesota we can do so much better than that with solar in wind with manufacturers right here in minnesota and we can do things to reduce the amount of energy we use we've got companies like andersen windows and others right around her district energy that are finding ways in which we reduce energy but the other thing that's really important about the choice in the selection is how we treat one another this election's about civil rights it's about human rights it's about women's rights it's about workers rights and it's about voters r encourage everyone to get out and vote i think the league for hosting this i think my opponents for being here and don't forget you're both counts thank you i want to offer a special thank you to  candidates are absolutely spectacular audience this evening with great questions and wonderful rapt attention and those of you viewing this forum and st paul neighborhood network at c n n for your participation in this evening or on this forum is broadcast on n i also want to thank our host here at north central high school gold color thank you very much and drive safely