On how their proposed health care plans would aid older Americans on fixed incomes:

BRADLEY: As a part of an overall health care program that I've proposed, I cover drug costs for senior citizens. After they've paid the first $800, they pay 25 percent above that. If we make sure they get access to the right drugs and we pay for them, that will save overall health care costs, because they will not be put into hospitals or have to pay very much high expenses for doctor bills.

So, it makes good sense in a human area. It also makes tremendous sense in terms of saving money.

GORE: I allocate $374 billion over the next 10 years to the Medicare program. Under Senator Bradley's plan, he doesn't put a penny into Medicare. And I don't think that's a good approach because I think we need to take care to protect Medicare.

Under my plan, she would get the cost of her prescription drugs covered. Under Senator Bradley's plan, she would have a $500 deductible and then $300 premiums, so she wouldn't get a penny of help under Senator Bradley's plan. And if she gets Medicaid, which does pay prescription drugs, she wouldn't get it there either because he cancels Medicaid.

On exports of genetically engineered produce that are being blocked by some trading partners:

BRADLEY: I think the most important thing we can do is to use our authority under the World Trade Organization in order to petition to get access to markets. When, for example, Europe blocked our beef because of beef hormones, we went to the WTO. We formed a dispute settlement mechanism. We presented our case, and they ruled in our favor. There's still delay in the entry of that beef into Europe, but the decision was made.

GORE: The key point is we can't let Europe and Japan determine our farm policy. The decisions on GMOs, as they're referred to, or hormones in livestock really ought to be based on sound science. Not science controlled by people working for the companies that profit from these new technologies, but neutral, dispassionate experts who will give us the best and most accurate conclusions about their safety. If they are safe, and if they enhance productivity at no risk, then we ought to be able to use them.

On restoring public trust in government:

GORE: I think that we need campaign finance reform in order to restore a sense of trust and integrity in our government, and that's why I've supported, for 20 years, full public financing of elections. That's why I don't accept any PAC contributions.

And that's why I have suggested that we have twice-weekly debates, and instead of depending on these 30-second television ads and 60-second television ads, let's depend on debates like this one. Maybe the next one could be on agriculture. I know that you have said no, but as they say on that millionaire show: ``Is that your final answer?''

Gore asked Bradley why he voted against disaster relief following Iowa floods in 1993:

BRADLEY: You know, Al, I think that the premise of your question is wrong. This is not about the past. This is about the future. This is about what we're going to do to change the agriculture policy we've had the last eight, 10 years. The Republicans and Democrats.

The family farmers that I've talked to in this state, who are the backbone of this agricultural economy, have had no real help. Freedom to Farm (Act) failed. There was supposed to be a safety net. The administration said they were going to put a safety net in, and the first year after it passed, no safety net whatsoever.

GORE: Well, I understand why you don't want to talk about the past, because in addition to voting against the — you know, those floods — they created a new great lake on the satellite pictures out here. It was a genuine catastrophe, and most people said, yes, these farmers need help.

On instances when U.S. forces should be used in international military operations:

GORE: We always retain command of our armed forces. If we're part of an international alliance, our commander in chief always retains command. I think that we have to have assurance that military force is the only option that can really solve the problem.

We have to make sure that we've tried everything else. And we have to make sure that military force, if used, will in fact solve the problem. We ought to have allies who are ready to go in with us and share the burden.

We ought to also be absolutely certain that the expected cost is worth what we are protecting by way of our national security interests.

BRADLEY: I don't think that we can be the policeman to the world. I don't think we have the wisdom or the resources to do that. And that means we're going to have to move more and more to multilateral forums to resolve this, such as the United Nations. I personally think the action in East Timor is an example of how to work right.

And so I believe that the key thing is to never relinquish control of our troops, our command, but integrate more fully into a United Nations operation to deal with these ethnic disputes that are popping up all over the world today. We can't be involved in all 32 ethnic disputes in the world with our own forces. It has to be something we do together.

On foreign policy challenges facing the next president:

BRADLEY: I think the most important challenge for the next president of the United States in the international arena is maintaining strategic stability that now exists between China, Japan, Russia, Europe and the United States.

If we have any disruption of that, there'll be another arms race, we'll lose a lot of momentum that we have going forward. That is the central most important thing.

Second, I think we need to take our defense budget and move it more to a post-Cold War defense budget. We're still locked in the Cold War with a lot of assumptions and weapon systems that should change to meet the new threats, like nuclear proliferation, biological and chemical weapons, like cyberwar, terrorism and threats in the Persian Gulf and in Northeast Asia.

On defense spending's effects on social programs:

BRADLEY: We have tremendous economic growth driven by technological change and globalization, innovation, entrepreneurship in the private sector. That is producing this tremendous surplus. That means we can do more to try to help community colleges. I've proposed a way to do that — $2 billion for community colleges — because that's where people learn more so that they can earn more for a lifetime.

And one of the things that strikes me is if you look at what Al wants to spend money on, he wants to spend $127 billion on defense increases and wants to spend less than that for education.

GORE: Well, that's not right. First of all, I've presided over the so-called reinventing government program to downsize our federal bureaucracy, including, more than any other, the Pentagon and the Defense Department.

But you know, even as we've kept our military strong, we've turned the biggest deficits into the biggest surpluses in history. And now we have an opportunity to invest in education and human services. And if you work in the field of human services, you know how important Medicaid is to the people who receive those human services.

Bradley on what he calls Gore's ``misrepresentation'' that Bradley's proposed health-care program would eliminate Medicare without offering a viable option:

BRADLEY: What we have here is a scare tactic to try to make people say that what I want to do in terms of replacing Medicaid with something better, so that 40 percent of the people who live in poverty in this country who don't have Medicaid or any health insurance will have some health insurance, will be afraid to make this change. I reject that kind of politics.

On education:

BRADLEY: I think we need a major investment in early education and early child care. I would get kids ready to learn by doubling the slots in Head Start. I would then propose adding 600,000 great new teachers to the public schools of this country over the next decade.

So you can look at education in terms of where people live their lives — and that's the way I look at it — or you can look at it as if it's some bureaucratic box that says ``education'' that's unrelated to everything else we do in our lives. I think it's a different perspective on how we view education in this country. I have the perspective of life, and I think the vice president has a perspective that it's a box called education.

On school violence:

GORE: The number one cause of this problem is the need for better parenting, and that's not a copout. That's a real issue. And we need to help parents with an increase in the minimum wage, an expansion of the earned income tax credit, more flexibility to balance work and family and a lot of other measures to help these working families.

But now the one thing that all these incidents have in common is that they involve guns. And that's why I've helped to pass the toughest new gun-control measure in the last generation. I'm now proposing photo-license IDs for the purchase of a new handgun, a ban on assault weapons and Saturday night specials and so-called junk guns, and a policy of zero tolerance in our schools.

But, frankly, I think beyond guns, we also need to ask for more self-restraint in the media.

BRADLEY: The first step is commonsense gun control. And by that I mean registration and licensing of all handguns in America. If we can do that for automobiles, we ought to be able to do that — we ought to be able to do that for handguns. I'm the only person who's called for registration and licensing of all handguns.

On campaign finance reform:

BRADLEY: Money distorts the democratic process in a fundamental way.

The rich in this country should be able to buy as many vacations and homes and cars as they want, but they shouldn't be able to buy our democracy.

And until we have public financing of elections — we spend $900 million on democracy abroad, we ought to be able to spend the same amount of money to totally take the special interests out of democracy at home. And then our government will be returned to the people and this woman will believe once again and trust government to do the right thing most of the time.

GORE: Well, we basically agree on campaign finance reform. We support the same proposals. I feel like we could make the immediate progress that I talked about earlier by getting rid of the majority of the campaign finance that goes into these 30-second TV ads.

But, you know, I support the McCain-Feingold measure. I support full public financing of federal elections. I refuse to accept any PAC contributions. I have the smallest average contributor in the Democratic race.

On the ``gender wage gap'':

GORE: I support an equal day's pay for an equal day's work. I support vigorous enforcement of our laws against discrimination, including affirmative action, which all the Republicans are attacking today.

BRADLEY: I think that it is very important that leadership uses affirmative action to advance, to break through the glass ceilings that are in our country today.

I think that appointments should reflect that you see a world without gender. I think that women in the country today have so much talent burgeoning into the scene in the corporate sector and slowly in government. I think that there's an opportunity to unlock enormous potential in our society, so that we can be as good as we can possibly be.

On the character of the presidency:

GORE: I do think we have a different approach, different experiences, a different philosophy of what a president should do. I don't think that the presidency is an academic exercise or a seminar on theories. I think the presidency has to be a day-to-day, resolute fight for the American people.

The presidency, when you think about it, is the only position mentioned in our Constitution where the individual who holds it has a responsibility to fight not just for some special interest or one particular region or the wealthy or the connected. He or she has a responsibility to fight for all of the people.

BRADLEY: What leadership is about, I believe, is taking a national problem — health care, education — turning it into a public issue, and then engaging the idealism of the American people in order to make something happen.

That's what FDR did in the 1930s with Social Security. That's what Lyndon Johnson did with civil rights and Medicare in the 1960s. They didn't say, ``Well, we're just going to cover 20 percent of the people and see how it works out.'' They said, ``We're going to cover everybody with Social Security, everybody with Medicare.'' Just like I want to cover everybody with health care. And when they did that, they made us all better off.