Hillary ClintonMike Huckabee
Party Affiliation
Republican
Current Job
Minister
Birth Date
08/24/1955
Interesting Fact
Lost 110lbs while governor of Arkansas
Relationship Status
Married to Janet Huckabee
Where I Want to Take America
Not provided by candidate
Where I Stand on the Issues
Abortion
I support and have always supported passage of a constitutional amendment to protect the right to life. As President, I will fight for passage of this amendment. My convictions regarding the sanctity of life have always been clear and consistent, without equivocation or wavering. I believe that Roe v. Wade should be over-turned.
No candidate has a stronger record on the sanctity of life than I do. I have always been actively and aggressively pro-life. I first became politically active when I helped pass Arkansas' Unborn Child Amendment, which requires the state to do whatever it can to protect life.
To me, life doesn't begin at conception and end at birth. Every child deserves a quality education, first-rate health care, decent housing in a safe neighborhood, and clean air and drinking water. Every child deserves the opportunity to discover and use his God-given gifts and talents.
Budget & Economy
No Stance Provided
Campaign Finance
No Stance Provided
Civil Rights
No Stance Provided
Corporations
No Stance Provided
Crime
No Stance Provided
Drugs
No Stance Provided
Education
I believe that every child should have the opportunity for a quality education that teaches the fundamental skills needed to compete in a global economy. As I traveled the country and the world over the last decade bringing jobs to Arkansas, the business leaders I met weren't worried about creating jobs, they were worried about finding skilled and professional workers to fill those jobs.
The success of our schools has to be judged by the results we obtain, not the revenues we spend. A focus on true quality rather than mere quantity requires us to set high standards for our students and teachers, measure their performance diligently, and hold educators and administrators accountable for the results in an atmosphere of transparency and efficiency.
As President, my education agenda will include working towards a clear distinction between the federal role in assisting and empowering states and in usurping the right of states to carry out the education programs for their students. While there is value in the "No Child Left Behind" law's effort to set high national standards, states must be allowed to develop their own benchmarks.
Energy & Oil
When energy shocks and crises come, we take aspirin to deal with the pain, but we don't address the underlying symptoms. This oil addiction is killing us. We have to stop popping pain pills and get ourselves cured. For all these years, we've never lacked the means, just the will. We've never harnessed the real energy source that independence requires - the energy of the American people.
The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. I'll use the bully pulpit to inform you about the plan and ask for your support. I'll use the bully conference table to meet with members of Congress until I have the votes. The plan will get underway during my first term, and we will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term. The Huckabee Administration will be remembered as the time when we finally, finally achieved energy independence.
Our dependence on foreign oil has forced us to support repressive regimes, to conduct our foreign policy with one hand tied behind our back. It's time, it's past time, to untie that hand and reach out to moderate Muslims with both hands. Oil has not just shaped our foreign policy, it has deformed it. When I make foreign policy, I want to treat Saudi Arabia the same way I treat Sweden, and that requires us to be energy independent. These folks have had us over a barrel - literally - for way too long.
Environment
No Stance Provided
Families & Children
No Stance Provided
Foreign Policy
No Stance Provided
Free Trade
I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade. We are losing jobs because of an unlevel, unfair trading arena that has to be fixed. Behind the statistics, there are real families and real lives and real pain. I'm running for President because I don't want people who have worked loyally for a company for twenty or thirty years to walk in one morning and be handed a pink slip and be told, "I'm sorry, but everything you spent your life working for is no longer here."
I believe that globalization, done right, done fairly, can be a blessing for our society. As the Industrial Revolution raised living standards by allowing ordinary people to buy mass-produced goods that previously only the rich could afford, so globalization gives all of us the equivalent of a big pay raise by letting us buy all kinds of things from clothing to computers to TVs much more inexpensively.
Government Reform
No Stance Provided
Gun Control
No candidate has a stronger, more consistent record on Second Amendment rights than I do. Other candidates say gun control doesn't affect hunting. Now I'm a very avid hunter, but the Second Amendment isn't really about hunting. It's about tyranny and self-defense. The Founding Fathers weren't worried about our being able to bag a duck or a deer, they were worried about our keeping our fundamental freedoms.
Zealously protecting your Second Amendment rights is another way that I will lift all law-abiding Americans up, by consistently championing your right to defend yourself.
Health Care
he health care system in this country is irrevocably broken, in part because it is only a "health care" system, not a "health" system. We don't need universal health care mandated by federal edict or funded through ever-higher taxes. We do need to get serious about preventive health care instead of chasing more and more dollars to treat chronic disease, which currently gobbles up 80% of our health care costs, and yet is often avoidable. The result is that we'll be able to deliver better care where and when it's needed.
I advocate policies that will encourage the private sector to seek innovative ways to bring down costs and improve the free market for health care services. We have to change a system that happily pays $30,000 for a diabetic to have his foot amputated, but won't pay for the shoes that would save his foot.
Health care spending is now about $2 trillion a year, which is close to $7,000 for each one of us. It consumes about 17% of our gross domestic product, easily surpassing the few European nations where spending is close to 10% and far higher than any other country in the world. If we reduced our out-of-control health care costs from 17% to 11%, we'd save $700 billion a year, which is about twice our annual national deficit.
Homeland Security
I will reassess, tighten, and strengthen the focus and mission of the Department of Homeland Security. When the Department was formed, it brought together 180,000 people from 22 agencies, and its size and structure have proven to be unwieldy and inefficient.
I will address the many security issues still unresolved after 9/11, such as the security of our ports and our chemical plants. If states choose even tougher standards to protect their people, I will respect their authority and not allow the federal government to pre-empt those standards. When New Jersey passed standards for its chemical plants, lobbyists for the chemical companies tried to get Congress to pass weak federal legislation for these plants and to pre-empt New Jersey from enforcing its stricter standards. I will always fight for you, not the lobbyists.
Immigration
My number one priority is to have a secure border. Right now, we have too many people entering the country illegally, and this must stop. We can't turn the tide until we stem the tide. We need to know who is coming into our country, where they are going, and why they are here. We need to create a process to allow people to come here to do the jobs - plucking chickens, tarring roofs, picking fruits - that are going unfilled by our citizens. They must have a tamper-proof, scannable I. D. with a finger or retinal scan, so that their employers know they belong here.
Besides stopping terrorists, we must weed out those with a criminal background or a communicable disease. We have to build a fence along our border with Mexico, parts of which will be electronic. We need more well-trained border agents and cooperation agreements with local and state law enforcement officials, so that we have a clear and consistent approach by all jurisdictions.
Infrastructure
No Stance Provided
Iraq
Iraq is a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror. The Democrats delusionally deny that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror even as we fight Al Qaeda there. Al Qaeda is a major ally of the Sunni insurgents in their fight against the Shiite majority. One of the most significant events in the Iraq War was Al Qaeda's bombing of the Shiites' Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006. That bombing led to the dramatic rise in sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites we've seen ever since, furthering Al Qaeda's goal of fomenting chaos and civil war. What's in it for them? They need territory, a place to plot their evil and train their murderers for another September 11. Al Qaeda intends to keep and expand its bases in the Sunni area of Anbar province. But we've made great progress in denying Al Qaeda that Anbar sanctuary, where the Commandant of the Marines, General Conway, says that "we have turned the corner." Fourteen of Anbar's eighteen tribal leaders no longer support Al Qaeda.
I am focused on winning. Withdrawal would have serious strategic consequences for us and horrific humanitarian consequences for the Iraqis. If we leave, Iraq's neighbors on all sides will face a refugee crisis and be drawn into the war: Iran to protect the Shiites; Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan to protect the Sunnis; and Turkey to protect its control over its own Kurd population. Iraq is a crossroads where Arab meets Persian and Kurd, Sunni meets Shiite, so if it's not a peaceful buffer, it can easily become a tinder box for the region. When we deposed Saddam, we emphasized Iraq's central location as a prime place to establish democracy and have it spread. That was the potential dramatic upside. Now we're faced with the potential dramatic downside that the terrorists are fighting to take advantage of: Iraq's central location as a prime place to create chaos and have it spread .
Principles & Values
No Stance Provided
Social Security
No Stance Provided
Tax Reform
But I am running to completely eliminate all federal income and payroll taxes. And do I mean all - personal federal, corporate federal, gift, estate, capital gains, alternative minimum, Social Security, Medicare, self-employment. All our hours filling out forms, all our payments for help with those forms, all our shopping bags filled with disorganized receipts, all our headaches and heartburn from tax stress will vanish. Instead we will have the FairTax, a simple tax based on wealth. When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.
The FairTax will replace the Internal Revenue Code with a consumption tax, like the taxes on retail sales forty-five states and the District of Columbia have now. All of us will get a monthly rebate that will reimburse us for taxes on purchases up to the poverty line, so that we're not taxed on necessities. That means people below the poverty line won't be taxed at all. We'll be taxed on what we decide to buy, not what we happen to earn. We won't be taxed on what we choose to save or the interest those savings earn. The tax will apply only to new goods, so we can reduce our taxes further by buying a used car or computer.
Welfare & Poverty
No Stance Provided
My Contact Information
P.O. Box 2008, Little Rock, AR 72203
