ASHINGTON -- Whether outbidding each other on education dollars or describing the tax load on citizens, GOP presidential candidates seemed in need of remedial math at times in their Arizona debate.
Candidates who vowed to put education more in the hands of local decision-makers proposed expensive and perhaps even expansive federal programs Tuesday night to give parents the money to choose schools.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush declared "I don't believe in national testing" despite running on a platform that would require testing as a condition of aid to schools that get federal money.
Indeed, his plan calls for paying states to use a sample federal test, although they could select other tests if they choose.
For his part, Arizona Sen. John McCain said flatly, "We shouldn't have any federal bureaucrat deciding whether money should go to the states or not."
He did not explain how his proposed voucher program could work if no one in Washington was making decisions about it.
With six candidates making their pitches in the one-hour debate, nuances were lost and agendas were inevitably crowded into political shorthand.
Most of the candidates were eager to offer generous-sounding programs to let parents take federal tax money as vouchers that they could spend on private education or other schools of their choice.
Alan Keyes said every parent should be able to decide where the public money spent on each school child -- which he put at $6,000 to $8,000 -- should go.
And Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said if the funds for school vouchers aren't sufficient to give poor children a good education, "we should raise them so that they can be enough."
Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who tracks the candidates on issues as dean of the Annenberg School for Communication in Philadelphia, said they seemed to be describing an activist federal role.
"Here are people whose theme is, "We're going to get the federal government out,"' she said. But their proposals "would substantially increase the dollar amount and the federal involvement in education."
Also in the debate:
-McCain said a single mother "pays more in income taxes and, when you count them, Social Security and Medicare, than rich Americans do. And we're going to fix it."
In fact, a single mother of average or below-average income wouldn't pay more tax dollars than a millionaire, but she might pay a higher proportion of her income than someone who is rich
-Steve Forbes slipped into hyperbole when he asserted the "gravy train continues" for the 67,000 registered lobbyists in Washington if Bush becomes president because he would not scrap the tax code. Many of those lobbyists never work on taxes.
-Bush would not say what he would do if the projected budget surpluses he plans to use to pay for his tax cuts are smaller than he is counting on -- even though he assumes stronger economic growth than the Congressional Budget Office forecasts.
"I refuse to accept the premise that surpluses are going to decline if I'm the president," he said.
"No president can ensure there are going to be surpluses," Jamieson said. "Presumably, one should have a fallback plan in the event they don't materialize."
-Answering a question about what he'd do on the first day of his presidency, Gary Bauer said he would ban Nazi salutes in schools and require schools to display the Ten Commandments. But those likely could not be accomplished overnight because of Supreme Court rulings on First Amendment rights and separation of church and state.
Bauer also said Forbes would let his "rich friends" pay zero in taxes. But the Forbes plan would require middle-income and richer Americans to pay a flat tax.
-McCain sharply criticized the Clinton administration's foreign interventions, including Kosovo, saying it had conducted "photo-op foreign policy for which we will pay a very high price in American blood and treasure."
So far, at least, U.S. casualties have been limited. Troops suffered no casualties during the Kosovo conflict until three peacekeeping soldiers died in a vehicle accident in July, long after the American bombing campaign had ended.
