Andrew Rice in 2008 OK Senate Debate

On Energy & Oil: Opposes a windfall-profits tax

Inhofe’s plan also includes making the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, relaxing limits on individual retirement account contributions and temporarily eliminating the capital gains tax.

On Principles & Values: I pride myself on doing right, even if politically unpopular

On Health Care: Pay doctors to proactively treat patients; end pay-per-test

A: I am concerned about the long range fiscal health of Medicare and I will fight for reform that ensures that seniors continue to have access to quality health care. Some change which I support include:

1. Requiring government negotiation of lower drug prices.
2. Paying doctors stipends to proactively treat patients, based on their age and medical conditions, instead of making payments for each test and treatment -- a change that could significantly improve care while reducing spending on unnecessary tests and equipment.
3. Improving management controls to reduce the $60 billion lost each year to Medicare fraud by physicians, therapists and other suppliers of medical services.

On Immigration: Opposes Mexico Totalization Agreement & benefits to illegals

A: Yes, I would oppose the President signing this agreement.

On Social Security: I support Social Security Notch reform

A: This arbitrary formula has deprived seniors born during this period of the full earned benefit. I support Social Security Notch reform.

On Social Security: I support CPI-E for COLA Fairness

A: Yes, I support CPI-E.

On Social Security: I do not support privatization in any form

A: I support a bipartisan, responsible and comprehensive adjustment to Social Security to ensure its long-term stability, but will not support privatization in any form.

On Government Reform: Most donations from individuals; most of Inhofe’s from PACs

A: The overwhelming majority is from individuals. The only type of group that could give us money is a Political Action Committee, and I think it’s accounted for less than 4%. Part of that is the nature of how these campaigns are. When you run against an incumbent, there’s a lot of political action committees that represent different industries, different interest groups that aren’t going to go against the incumbent because they don’t want to upset the incumbent. Therefore, they may have a bill that’s coming that affects, say, the manufactures, and they want to go see them, and you know. It’s too bad that works, but that’s the way that Washington works. And so, if you look at his [Inhofe’s] reports, he’s got a tremendous amount of money in PAC money. Probably about half of his money comes from PAC money, compared to a real small minority of mine.

On Homeland Security: Divest from terrorist states like we divested for apartheid

A: Well, on the war, there’s really no direct vote on the state level. Although somewhat related to it; I had a bill this year that the Republicans blocked. The bill would have had our state retirement pension plans, the judge retirements, the teacher retirements, all of our big state retirement plans that are invested in mutual funds, that would have forced us to divest our retirements out of mutual funds that invest in countries that are state sponsors of terrorism. Syria, North Korea, Iran. Our idea is that if they are national security threats, we shouldn’t be economically investing with their governments. And there have been a lot of states that have done these divestment plans. This is what we did in South Africa during Apartheid; we divested the money out of South Africa until they dealt with ending Apartheid. That bill was stopped. So that would have had somewhat of a direct effect on national security issues.

On Welfare & Poverty: Our churches have engaged society to try to improve society

A: Yeah, I have a master’s in theological studies. There are some areas that, as a Christian, with the work I’ve done I understand our theological history and scripture and traditions and the way that our religious communities and our churches have engaged society to try to improve society. There are some common areas there that I think with my past work I can find some common ground with voters.