CORKER: I am pro-life. I support the culture of life. I’d appoint judges who don’t create law from the bench, but interpret the laws that are on the books. I’d love to incrementally work to lessen the number of abortions in this country.
FORD: I’m pro-life too. We’ve got to take steps early on, even before a woman gets pregnant, by putting character education & abstinence programs in our schools, and other legislation to reduce the number of abortions.
CORKER: My dad has Alzheimer’s, and I know a lot of people are afflicted. I want to use every piece of science available to cure those diseases -- adult stem cells; cord research -- those types of stem cell research that have actually been proven, I want to see those carried out. I was incredibly disappointed that this last Congress did not add the money necessary to make sure that those types of technology are carried on. I do not support the type of stem cell research that destroys human life. But I strongly support those kinds that are proven to cure diseases, where we have tremendous breakthroughs.
FORD: When it comes to stem cells, I’m with [the people]. His party has blocked it. He claims that the Congress blocked it -- I would remind my opponent that the Republicans who control the House, the Senate, and the White House.
FORD: Everybody in our country--even children and newborns--owes the US government $28,000. In the last 6 years under my opponent’s party’s leadership, the debt has grown by almost $2 trillion. And the people who will pay it will be you and I and everyone else. I have a couple of simple answers. They’re going to call me a liberal, but if they wanted to control the debt, they could have by now.
FORD: Sen. Al Gore Senior worked with Pres. Eisenhower to build the Interstate highway system, which was enormously important to commerce. We need a similar approach with education. For us to win the international educational competition, we’ve got to ensure that you have the best opportunities. My opponent’s party has made Pell Grants more expensive. My opponent’s party funded the No-Child-Left-Behind Act at half its promised level. We should not penalize any school until NCLB is fully funded.
CORKER: Education is the key to our future. As mayor, I worked with teachers to put in place some unusual policies that helped them flourish. Here in Chattanooga, we put in place incentives--bonuses for high-performing teachers who caused the things that ought to happen. What we saw was that those schools outperformed the other schools. I want to take those abilities at education achievement to Washington.
FORD: We need energy independence. We can’t win a war on terror if you pay for both sides of the war at the same time. That’s what we’re doing. We have the capacity & ingenuity to grow our way out of these challenges. I have a lot of confidence in farmers to grow our way out of it, & in laboratories to use nuclear energy & coal in new ways. Our oil dependence is environmentally hazardous; it’s a drag on the economy; and it keeps young men facing the prospect of going overseas to defend an untenable appetite for oil. I know we can break our habit and find new ways to fuel our cars & power our homes. My campaign chairman is a farmer. His campaign chairman runs a big ol’ oil company.
Q: Do you support drilling in Alaska?
FORD: I do.
CORKER: I strongly support biofuel. My campaign chairman runs a retail operation, the largest seller of ethanol and biodiesel in Tennessee.
FORD: If my campaign chairman were in big oil, I’d be trying to explain it away too.
FORD: I’ve been in Congress for 10 years, and made 93% of the votes. During the last two years, while I’ve been running for the Senate, I’ve missed some votes, many of them procedural votes, where my vote would not have changed things one way or the other. A 93% record is pretty decent. I’m proud my name is on some legislation, even while we were in the minority in Congress.
CORKER: There’s a tremendous difference between the way Congressman Ford and myself approach the public arena. My work ethic is that I wake up each day wanting to make the most of it, toward solving problems. Congressman Ford is a great talker. But it really takes hard work and focus to solve our country’s problems. That’s what I want to take to the US Congress.
FORD: I have never hired an illegal immigrant. He has. Four of them. A worksite of his was raided, by federal law enforcement agents. I was not with Pres. Bush on granting amnesty to illegal immigrants.
CORKER: No one has ever worked for me who’s an illegal immigrant. 18 years ago, one of thousands of my subcontractors hired four people--and the INS applauded me for how quickly I ended that problem.
FORD: Why didn’t you just fire them when you learned about it? Why did you wait for the INS to come back 3 times before doing something?
CORKER: We had a contract, so we couldn’t just fire them. We rectified it quickly. My opponent is trying to make an issue out of an issue that doesn’t exist.
FORD: You ought to take responsibility for knowing that there were illegals working on your site, and you did nothing to stop them.
CORKER: I’ve had minimum wage jobs--unlike my opponent. The minimum wage is behind the times, since it hasn’t been adjusted for 10 years. We need to look at regions around the country and their cost-of-living. But I’d like to lessen the burden of taxation and regulation on small businesses.
FORD: Corker in the primary was opposed to the minimum wage increase. I’ve supported it every year in Congress. I did work in minimum wage jobs--as a parking attendant in college
FORD: Attacking my father has no place in this campaign. You call my family a political machine -- I wonder if you feel the same about the Bush family. My father is too decent of a person to do any of the things that my opponent claims. I didn’t think my opponent could stoop any lower into the gutter -- but it looks as if rock bottom hasn’t been hit yet. My dad nor any member of my family has never lobbied me, nor would I allow them to. I work for the people of my district. Leave my family out of this -- this is between you and I, your ideas and your platform versus mine.
CORKER: I’ve never said a disparaging word; I’ve just pointed out the relationship.
FORD: I went to a great law school, the University of Michigan. But even going to a great law school doesn’t guarantee that you can pass the bar exam. I took it one time, and I didn’t pass. I took it right after I graduated from law school, when I was first running for Congress and I had just gotten elected. I learned an important lesson--you got to study for that thing.
FORD: The stay-the-course strategy that Pres. Bush has pursued for 3 years is not working. There are other options, other than stay-the-course or cut-and-run. I believe that we can decentralize Iraq and still keep it together. Divide the country into three regions--Sunni, Shia, Kurd--give each regional autonomy, and help create a central government with authority over the borders and the ability to divide the oil revenue equally.
FORD: A month ago, Corker said we should stay the course. I don’t believe we should do that. Decentralization, modeled after Bosnia, would reduce the violence and let the people build the country their way