BIDEN: I'll be very brief. Can I respond to that?

Look, the maverick -- let's talk about the maverick John McCain is. And, again, I love him.

He's been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter

to people's lives.

He voted four out of five times for George Bush's budget, which put us a half a trillion

dollars in debt this year and over $3 trillion in debt since he's got there.

He has not been a maverick in providing health care for people. He has voted against -- he

voted including another 3.6 million children in coverage of the existing health care plan,

when he voted in the United States Senate.

He's not been a maverick when it comes to education. He has not supported tax cuts and

significant changes for people being able to send their kids to college.

He's not been a maverick on the war. He's not been a maverick on virtually anything that

genuinely affe

IFILL: Governor?

PALIN: Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced

your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell

Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and

I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher

for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with

education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to

be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be

paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in

the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think

is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at

Glady

The fact of the matter is, the policy of this administration has been an abject failure.

And speaking of freedom being on the march, the only thing on the march is Iran. It's

closer to a bomb. Its proxies now have a major stake in Lebanon, as well as in the Gaza

Strip with Hamas.

We will change this policy with thoughtful, real, live diplomacy that understands that you

must back Israel in letting them negotiate, support their negotiation, and stand with them,

not insist on policies like this administration has.

IFILL: Has this administration's policy been an abject failure, as the senator says,

Governor?

PALIN: No, I do not believe that it has been. But I'm so encouraged to know that we both

love Israel, and I think that is a good thing to get to agree on, Sen. Biden. I respect

your position on that.

No, in fact, when we talk about the Bush administration, there's a time, too, when

Americans a

IFILL: We do need to keep within our two minutes. But I just wanted to ask you, do you

support capping carbon emissions?

PALIN: I do. I do.

IFILL: OK. And on the clean coal issue?

BIDEN: Absolutely. Absolutely we do. We call for setting hard targets, number one...

IFILL: Clean coal.

BIDEN: Oh, I'm sorry.

IFILL: On clean coal.

BIDEN: Oh, on clean coal. My record, just take a look at the record. My record for 25 years

has supported clean coal technology. A comment made in a rope line was taken out of

context. I was talking about exporting that technology to China so when they burn their

dirty coal, it won't be as dirty, it will be clean.

But here's the bottom line, Gwen: How do we deal with global warming with continued

addition to carbon emissions? And if the only answer you have is oil, and John -- and the

governor says John is for everything.

Well, why did John vote 20 times? Ma

IFILL: Governor, are you interested in defending Sen. McCain's health care plan?

PALIN: I am because he's got a good health care plan that is detailed. And I want to give

you a couple details on that. He's proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they

can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. That's a smart

thing to do. That's budget neutral. That doesn't cost the government anything as opposed to

Barack Obama's plan to mandate health care coverage and have universal government run

program and unless you're pleased with the way the federal government has been running

anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to

consider health care being taken over by the feds. But a $5,000 health care credit through

our income tax that's budget neutral. That's going to help. And he also wants to erase

those artificial lines between states so that throu

副总统候选人电视辩论英文全文(2) (3) (4) (5) (6)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The vice presidential candidates, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden and

Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, debated in St. Louis, Missouri, Thursday night. Gwen

Ifill of PBS was the debate moderator. Here is a transcript of that debate:

IFILL: Good evening from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm Gwen Ifill of

'The NewsHour' and 'Washington Week' on PBS. Welcome to the first and the only 2008 vice

presidential debate between the Republican nominee, Gov. Sarah Pa

MCCAIN: And they showed solidarity with them, but, also, they are very concerned about the Russian threats to regain their status of the old Russian to regain their status of the old Russian empire.

Now, I think the Russians ought to understand that we will support -- we, the United States -- will support the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in the natural process, inclusion into NATO.

We also ought to make it very clear that the Russians are in violation of their cease-fire agreement. They have stationed additional troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

By the way, I went there once, and we went inside and drove in, and there was a huge poster. And this is -- this is Georgian territory. And there was a huge poster of Vladimir Putin, and it said, 'Vladimir Putin, our president.'

It was very clear, the Russian intentions towards Georgia. They were just waiting to seize the opportunity.

So, this is a very difficult situation. We want to work with the

OBAMA: Jim, let me just make a point. I've got a bracelet, too, from Sergeant - from the mother of Sergeant Ryan David Jopeck, sure another mother is not going through what I'm going through.

No U.S. soldier ever dies in vain because they're carrying out the missions of their commander in chief. And we honor all the service that they've provided. Our troops have performed brilliantly. The question is for the next president, are we making good judgments about how to keep America safe precisely because sending our military into battle is such an enormous step.

And the point that I originally made is that we took our eye off Afghanistan, we took our eye off the folks who perpetrated 9/11, they are still sending out videotapes and Senator McCain, nobody is talking about defeat in Iraq, but I have to say we are having enormous problems in Afghanistan because of that decision.

And it is not true you have consistently been concerned about what happened in Afghanistan.

OBAMA: Well, this is an area where Senator McCain and I have a fundamental difference because I think the first question is whether we should have gone into the war in the first place.

Now six years ago, I stood up and opposed this war at a time when it was politically risky to do so because I said that not only did we not know how much it was going to cost, what our exit strategy might be, how it would affect our relationships around the world, and whether our intelligence was sound, but also because we hadn't finished the job in Afghanistan.

We hadn't caught bin Laden. We hadn't put al Qaeda to rest, and as a consequence, I thought that it was going to be a distraction. Now Senator McCain and President Bush had a very different judgment.

And I wish I had been wrong for the sake of the country and they had been right, but that's not the case. We've spent over $600 billion so far, soon to be $1 trillion. We have lost over 4,000 lives. We have seen 30,000 wounded

LEHRER: Senator Obama, you have a question for Senator McCain on that?

OBAMA: Well, let me just make a couple of points.

LEHRER: All right.

OBAMA: My definition -- here's what I can tell the American people: 95 percent of you will get a tax cut. And if you make less than $250,000, less than a quarter-million dollars a year, then you will not see one dime's worth of tax increase.

Now, John mentioned the fact that business taxes on paper are high in this country, and he's absolutely right. Here's the problem: There are so many loopholes that have been written into the tax code, oftentimes with support of Senator McCain, that we actually see our businesses pay effectively one of the lowest tax rates in the world.

And what that means, then, is that there are people out there who are working every day, who are not getting a tax cut, and you want to give them more.

It's not like you want to close the loopholes. You just want to add an additional t