Daily Herald | Posted: Friday, October 20, 2006 11:00 pm
The four candidates seeking the seat for Utah's 3rd Congressional District discussed several issues Friday, including the ones listed below. The candidates are Democrat Christian Burridge; the incumbent, Republican Chris Cannon; Libertarian Philip Hallman; and the Constitution Party's Jim Noorlander.
Immigration
Burridge: "We need to enforce our laws, and that starts with businesses. That makes it so that it's easier to enforce the borders, and it stops draining our local resources. We regulated child labor 100 years ago. We can regulate our illegal hiring practices now."
Cannon: "I want to have an environment where businesses can grow and prosper but where we don't have the social problems that relate to people who are here illegally. We've done a great deal, actually, on immigration with our border enforcement. In fact, the number of people coming across apparently has plummeted recently."
Hallman: "We need to allow immigration like Europe does. Give ID cards to everybody, keep the criminals out ... let everybody else travel across the borders. Let capital and labor freely cross borders, and be able to exploit the markets."
Noorlander: "It is now the official public policy of the United States not to close our borders, but to eliminate them and to do it in 3.5 years. The plan is to merge Mexico, Canada and the United States economically, politically and socially and create a North American regional government that will completely unravel everything the Founding Fathers ever did."
Iraq
Burridge: "The key is that we've got to be successful when it comes to Iraq. Whether or not you agree on how we went there, the fact is, we're there. We need to go in there and use diplomacy and force to get this into three regions with the Kurds, the Sunni and the Shias, and give them self-government and then come up with a cooperative atmosphere whereby they can have shared power."
Cannon: "We've got to stay there. We have, in fact, declared war. It is not a declaration of war against a country, because we are not fighting a country. They have declared war on the group of people that would destroy our civilization through terrorism. They are bent on doing that. The purpose of civilization is to civilize. We need to do that, we need to do that in Iraq."
Hallman: "It's a failure. It has made the world a more dangerous place. Terrorist attacks throughout the world have gone up dramatically. We've done a terrible job there. We need to get out of there as fast as possible. Congress needs to stop funding that war."
Noorlander: "The war is fundamentally unconstitutional because there was no declaration of war. We need to get out of there. We need to come home, mind our own business."
Education
Burridge: "We need to do a better job in funding our education. I do think the federal government has a role. I think Pell Grants are good. I think subsidized student loans are a great program. We do need to bring more localization of our curriculum to schools, and gut the No Child Left Behind Act."
Cannon: "We are spending a little, tiny bit of money, by percentage, on education, but we are requiring vast amounts of paperwork and resources. There's nothing that the federal government brings to bear for education that is good."
Hallman: "Our primary education system has a lot of problems. What we need to do is set up something where the money follows the student. I'm in favor of vouchers and allowing choice in education. That's why our college system is so great. People can choose what kind of education they want."
Noorlander: "The No. 1 problem, as I see it, is what's being taught and how it's being taught. That's why you have all the division right now in education. There's nothing in the Constitution that allows the federal government to be involved in education."
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A8.