REPUBLICAN DEBATE Here are the particulars of tonight's Republican presidential candidates debate. WHO: Gary Bauer, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Orrin Hatch, Alan Keyes, John McCain. WHEN: Monday, Jan. 10, 7 p.m.-8:30 p.m. EST. WHERE: Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Mich. SPONSORS: WOOD-TV of Grand Rapids and Kent County (Mich.) Republican Party. MODERATOR: NBC's Tim Russert. PANEL: Rick Albin and Suzanne Geha of WOOD-TV. COVERAGE: Live on MSNBC, C-SPAN, National Public Radio. MORE COVERAGE Republicans shift focus to foreign policy, free trade Candidates ruminate on a time capsule Truth Squad: Some overreaching rhetoric Excerpts from debate

Excerpts from Monday's debate in Grand Rapids, Mich., among Republican presidential candidates Gary Bauer, Texas Gov. George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, Alan Keyes and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, as transcribed by the Federal Document Clearing House.

The candidates were questioned on their tax plans.

BUSH: In the 1999 legislative session I proposed and was able to enact and sign the largest tax cut in our state's history, replacing the $1 billion record with nearly $2 billion of tax cuts.

I am a tax-cutting person, I know how to get it done. I have laid out a plan that is going to cut the rates on everybody in America ... I believe it's important to cut the top rates. I think it's important to drop the 39.6 to 33 percent. I also know it's important to make sure people who are on the outskirts of poverty get a tax cut as well.

I have a plan that takes $2 trillion over the next 10 years and dedicates it to Social Security. My plan has been called risky by voices out of Washington. In my judgment, what's risky is to leave a lot of unspent money in Washington, because guess what's going to happen? It's going to be spent on bigger federal governments.

MCCAIN: I'm very much in favor of tax cuts for middle-income and lower-income Americans.

I'm deeply concerned about a kind of class warfare that's going on right now. It's unfortunate. There's a growing gap between the haves and the have-nots in America. And that gap is growing, and it's unfortunately divided up along ethnic lines. I feel very strongly that we ought to have middle-income and lower-income taxes. Mine are basically comparable to Governor Bush's -- in some cases, far better. But I'm not sure we need to give two-thirds of that tax cut -- of that money -- to the wealthiest 10 percent of America.

HATCH: There isn't one of us up here who isn't going to reduce taxes. There are some of us -- in fact, I think you can look at me for an example -- who really played a major role in reducing marginal tax rates from 70 percent down to 28 percent by 1986. I'm not just talking about, I helped do it. I was one of those who carried that message to President Reagan, and he carried that message against all of Washington.

BAUER: We ought to take pornography off the stage of this country, whether it's children or adults. It exploits women. It exploits children. And I would say to my party, it better find it's voice on things like this, and in opposition to same-sex marriage, and in defense of the sanctity of life, or it won't matter how much we want to cut taxes because the country cannot survive another 10 years of the values meltdown it's in right now.

KEYES: Actually I don't think it's a free speech issue in this case. It's an issue of public decency. And anyplace you let our children into ought to be subject to standards of public decency that make it clear that they are not going to be polluted with garbage. I've got to tell you something. My kids don't have the right to free speech and they don't need to have it until they grow older.

MCCAIN: We are wiring every school and library in America to the Internet at taxpayers' expense ... We should have every school and library in America acquire filtering software and use that software to filter out a lot of this garbage that is having such a terrible effect on our young children, and that should be done according to community standards. The same way a library board filters out offensive printed material, they should filter out this offensive material.

MCCAIN: I would not. I would have had my people there tracking the flight when it was on the various legs and prevented it from taking off by shooting out the tires once it was on the ground. It would not have taken off again and it would not have reached Afghanistan.

The second thing that's important about this issue, even though perhaps you don't imply it, is that this is growing closer and closer to a flashpoint between two countries that have developed nuclear weapons and that are growing closer and closer to a brinksmanship situation which then is in our vital national security interest. And it is in our interest to make -- to do everything in our power to see that there's some settlement of the Kashmir problem, because that's the genesis of most of these difficulties that exist between those two countries.

BUSH: Listen, I think it's a free -- this is a case of a player (who) needs help. And I appreciate the fact that the Atlanta Braves are getting him counseling. But this is a world of -- in athletics, this is a world of some young men who make a lot of money who don't -- who aren't responsible for their behavior.

What I'd like to do, as the president of the United States, is usher in the responsibility era, so that each American, whether you be a baseball player or a -- anything, wear the uniform of the United States, are responsible for the actions you take in life; that each of us must understand with certainty that we are responsible for the decisions we make. And it starts, by the way, with having a president who behaves responsibly in the Oval Office.

KEYES: As I've always said, I think we have to address this issue not as if it's just some political football, we're talking about human beings, we're talking about a young boy, we're talking about a father. And I think we have to respect that father's will and that father's heart if we can determine what it is.

BUSH: I want to say something about Cuba in our hemisphere. There's some folks in our country who believe we ought to trade with Cuba. I don't. I think that would be wrongheaded. I think it'd be a mistake. Capital that goes into Cuba will be used by the Fidel Castro government to prop itself up. There is a commission-type system in Cuba. Dollars invested will be dollars that will end up supporting this totalitarian regime.

BAUER: Everything that you just said about Cuba applies to China.

BUSH: Let me say this: If we turn our back on the entrepreneurial class that has taken wing in China, we're making a huge mistake. If we turn our back on those that have gotten a whiff of freedom, as a result of the marketplace taking hold, we're making a big mistake.

FORBES: The Internet overall is stimulating commerce. It's allowing people who may not have time to buy things quickly and easily. And what does that mean? It means you need a warehouse to store the goods. It means you need more trucks and drivers to deliver the goods. That means more salaries, more jobs. It is a net wealth creator. It's no coincidence that the boom in startups and dot-coms came when Congress put a three-year moratorium on in October of 1998. And the boom in e-commerce (was) allowed to flourish and boomed after that moratorium was put on.

BAUER: I'll tell you what I will not do, and that is do what this administration has done for the last seven years. And that is, browbeat the state of Israel, our most reliable friend and ally, to give up more land for security.

I believe Israel has been our only reliable ally. I would stand with them. I would make sure that their security was safe and that that relationship between the two of us prospered. And I would begin to put some pressure on those other countries in the Middle East that rely on us to be their defense, their safety net, that if they want to be our ally, then they need to be friends with Israel, our major ally in the region.

BUSH: No one wants racial profiling to take place in any state. The governor of this state doesn't, the governor of my state doesn't. I'm interested in fair justice. I think we ought to hold people accountable if they break the law regardless of the color of their skin.

One of the problems I have with oftentimes what's happening in Washington, D.C., there's too much group thought; there's too much attempt to lump people in groups and pit one group of people against another. And that leads to disharmony, it leads to the balkanization of America. I intend to -- I intend to say each individual counts, each individual matters, the America dream belongs to each individual who's willing to work hard to achieve it.

MCCAIN: If I had confidence that that money would be well-spent, I would do it. But we have corrupt governments. We have organizations that don't treat the people. We have places where that medicine can't get to. So before I spent our taxpayers' money on that, I would have to make sure that it would go to the recipients and go to these poor people who are afflicted with this terrible disease. And very frankly, in a lot of parts of Africa today, I do not have that confidence.

KEYES: After all, asking whether we should spend $300 million to cure an incurable disease is kind of an academic point, and you should realize that. Especially when the spread of that disease is rooted in what? Is rooted in a moral crisis ... Sometimes we need to look at the moral root of that problem and have the guts to deal with it.

MCCAIN: The policy of "don't ask, don't tell" is working. I rely on people like General Colin Powell, people I served with all my adult life, who tell me that this policy is working. Now, we can applaud and yell and scream, but right now our military is in bad shape. We're not meeting our recruiting goals. We're not keeping the men and women we need, and right now I'd like to -- instead of focusing on this issue, I'd like to talk about pay, benefits, 12,000 enlisted people on food stamps, inability to carry out our duties and responsibilities throughout America.

FORBES: First of all, regarding China. It's critical that we allow the Chinese to know -- the Chinese government, what the rules of engagement are. If they violate those rules of engagement they should know trade is going to be in jeopardy.

And by the way, they should do far, far more to reduce trade barriers, which they've not done. And this administration will not get that kind of agreement from them, nor will they enforce it.

But trying to have the government close America off from the rest of the world sadly is not going to work. We've been down that path. We tried that in 1929, with the Smoot-Hawley tariff, and helped precipitate one of the worst depressions in this nation's history and destroyed millions of jobs.

McCain asks for an opinion on the merger between American Online and Time Warner.

HATCH: Well, the real question -- the real question in antitrust is whether these mergers result in the ability of the merged companies to be predatory, to be unfair, to not act in the best interest of consumers. I'm very concerned about this latest merger. And I have to say, we have to be very concerned about that and it has to be looked at very carefully.

MCCAIN: In the 1980s, Morris Udall -- a liberal Democrat and one of the loveliest of men -- and I and others worked to put three and a half million acres of pristine wilderness of Arizona in permanent preservation status. We did it through hearings, through meetings, through informal and formal meetings, working with the Native Americans, those who live on the land.

And after three years, we were able to put three and a half million acres of that land into permanent preservation status. We're proud of that. It'll always be there, as it was when Theodore Roosevelt and the first pioneers saw it.

FORBES: If ... being negative is telling the truth, I will continue to tell the truth. People deserve it, we deserve an honest and open and vigorous debate, and if a man breaks a pledge the voters ought to know it.

KEYES: Some people want to pretend that we don't have an adversarial political system, but we do. And therefore if the folks who are running against each other don't, in an honest, clear way, speak about the differences on issues, and if you're going to run on your record, they get to speak about your record.

BUSH: I support the death penalty because I believe it saves lives. I support the death penalty if we administer the judgment in a sure and swift way that is full of justice. I believe it -- I believe it creates a society that says I'm not going to go kill somebody. I believe it protects innocent people to have the death penalty.

MCCAIN: I think the character of the president of the United States has an impact on the lives of Americans because the important job of the president of the United States is to lead. And the people of this country have to have confidence in that leadership.

The job of president of the United States, as I see it, is to inspire young Americans to commit themselves to causes greater than their self interest. And I am convinced that the American people seek someone who doesn't spin, who tells them the truth, whether it happens to be what they'd like to hear or what they want to hear and in many occasions what they don't want to hear. And I think the American people all over this country want somebody that they can trust in that fashion.

FORBES: I think we should have learned from what happened in Somalia when President Clinton tried to remake that society, the limitations of what we can do. We can provide food. We can provide medicine. We can provide help for those who are victims of disaster. But that's very different from trying to remake a society or sending in troops to try to remake a society, as we tried to do in Haiti, first in 1915 and then again with the Clinton-Gore administration. It doesn't work. Don't confuse giving money to corrupt governments or the governments that become corrupt because of that money, with true humanitarian assistance, directly to the people involved, not through government bureaucracies.