CARSON: No, that's false. I have outlined using health savings accounts, which eliminate the need for people to be dependent on government programs. The plan for funding the health savings accounts is using the same dollars that we use for traditional healthcare and then the government comes in with Medicaid for the indigent.
Q: How does the health savings account work if there's no government subsidy?
CARSON: With the indigent people, $5,000 goes to each man, woman and child. What could you buy with that? A concierge practice generally costs $2,000-$3,000 a year and if you're a regular person you already get some health benefits. So, instead of that money going into the inefficient system that it goes in now, it gets divided into your family's health savings account over which you now have control.
Q: Doesn't that mean there's government money going into my health savings account?
CARSON: But not new government money.
CARSON: I think that when conception occurs, life occurs. But I do believe in contraception. So let's say someone has been raped and they are administered that drug, it can prevent ovulation which allows that egg to come down, because a healthy sperm can live for up to five or six days, but if ovulation doesn't occur, then you're not going to have conception.
CARSON: All you have to do is go to Israel and talk to average people. And I couldn't find a single person there who didn't feel that this administration had turned their backs on Israel. And I think the position of president of the United States should be one where you begin to draw people together behind a vision. Not one where you castigate those who believe differently from you.
Q: what specifically is anti-Semitic in what the President is saying?
CARSON: I think anything is anti-Semitic that is against the survival of a state that is surrounded by enemies and by people who want to destroy them. And to ignore that and act like everything is normal there and that these people are paranoid, I think that's anti-Semitic.
A: I want things to be fair for everybody. When you do things on a proportional basis, it works very well. 10% is an easy number to use because it's easy to do the calculations. But you know, you make $10 billion, you pay a billion. Now there are a lot of people that say that's a problem because the guy still has got $9 billion left and we need to take more of his money. But that's called socialism. But the problem with socialism is that it ends up looking the same, with a small group of elite at the top, and a rapidly diminishing middle class and a vastly expanded dependent class. That's not America.
Q: So include low earners as taxpayers?
A: When you have a tax system that includes everybody, it's very difficult for the politicians to engage in raising taxes.
CARSON: What we have to think about is, "How do we fix the economy so that it encourages entrepreneurial risk taking and capital investment? How do we create a ladder that allows those people in the lower income brackets to move up that ladder?" That's what we need to be concentrating on. Not how do we make them comfortable in that situation. That's not what America was all about. And we can do that.
CARSON: I say the thing that is really impacting that person making $30,000 or $40,000 is all of the regulations that we're coming up with. Every single regulation costs us in terms of goods and services. It increases the price of everything. Who gets hit by that the most? The people in the lower economic brackets. That's what we need to be concentrating on. Those are things that are driving income gap
CARSON: All options includes all options. That doesn't mean that would be my first option. When we look at Russia and we look at Putin, we can realize that he has great ambitions. His ambitions have been thwarted of late because of falling oil prices. And we should take note of that and realize that the economic weapon is a tremendous one in his case. We have incredible natural resources in this country in terms of oil, in terms of natural gas, but we have energy exportation rules from the '70s when we had an energy crisis that need to be gotten rid of, so we can use that to make Europe and other portions of the world more dependent on us. And that decreases his influence and his ability to expand.
CARSON: No, I wouldn't go to war over Ukraine, but I would handle Ukraine a very different way. You know, Ukraine was a nuclear arms state. They gave up their weapons. You know, it was agreed they would be protected if something happened with aggression. Have we lived up to that? Of course, we have not. And what does that say to our other allies around the world? It's not a good sign.
CARSON: Well, what I said is the president doesn't have to agree with it.
Q: No, of course not. But does he have to enforce it?
CARSON: The way our Constitution is set up, the president or the executive branch is obligated to carry out the laws of the land. The laws of the land, according to our Constitution, are provided by the legislative branch.
Q: But, since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, we have lived under the principle of judicial review: if the Supreme Court says this is the law, this is constitutional, the executive has to observe that.
CARSON: This is an area we need to discuss, because it has changed from the original intent.
Q: So, you're saying this is an open question as far as you're concerned?
CARSON: It is an open question. It needs to be discussed.
Carson: ObamaCare fundamentally changes the relationship between the people and the government. The government is supposed to respond to the will of the people. Not dictate to the people what they are doing. And with this program, we're allowing that whole paradigm to be switched around.
CARSON: I like the idea of a proportional tax. That way you pay according to your ability. And I got that idea from the Bible, tithing. You make $10 billion a year, you pay $1 billion. You make $10 a year, you pay $1. And also, if everybody is paying, it makes it very difficult for these politicians to come along and raise taxes. It's easy to raise it on 1 percent or 2 percent or 5 percent. It's very difficult to raise it on 100 percent.
CARSON: Wrong.
Q: Low and middle- income families would get a big tax hike, while wealthy families would actually get a tax cut.
CARSON: I don't agree with that assessment, let me put it that way, because I've been in contact with many economists. And, in fact, if you eliminate loopholes and deductions, then you're really talking about a rate somewhere between 10 percent and 15 percent.
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The above quotations are from Fox News Sunday interviews during 2015 (Chris Wallace interviewing candidates for 2015 and 2016 races). Click here for other excerpts from Fox News Sunday interviews during 2015 (Chris Wallace interviewing candidates for 2015 and 2016 races). Click here for other excerpts by Ben Carson. Click here for a profile of Ben Carson.
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