[cheers and applause] what that means, what that means is that today in iowa, in vermont, all over this country, women are having babies. and that is, for all of you who are parents, you know what an extraordinary moment that is. it's a pretty big day for the baby as well. but here is the reality. if that mom in iowa or vermont does not have a lot of money, she will be forced to be separated from her newborn baby in a week, two weeks, three weeks. and she will have to go to work, go back to work to earn enough money to take care of her family. that is wrong. that is not what should happen in this great country. and that is why i am strongly

supporting legislation that will provide three months e-- months of paid family and medical leave. now that legislation is not free. it costs money. it will cost the average worker about $1.68 a week. i think that that is a good investment for people to be able o take kear of their children. [applause] in this campaign, i have talked a lot about the realities of american political and economic life. and there are people who really don't like to hear what i say.

i've been criticized time and time again. but i believe getting back to the point that susan sarandon made a few minutes ago that if we are not honest, if we are not willing to have the courage to lay the real issues out on the table, then we cannot go forward. yeah, it will be hard. but we have got to understand what goes on and what we are up against. we have to understand why the middle class is declining and almost all new income and wealth goes to the top 1%. we have to understand why it is that congress continues to represent the interests of the wealthy and the powerful at the expense of ordinary americans. let me tell you briefly one story which i think encompasses a lot of what is going on in this country and why the american people are angry and

why they are demoralized. here's the story. a couple of weeks ago, goldman sachs, one of the largest financial institutions in this country, a major wall street firm, reached a settlement with the united states government to fines.billion in and they agreed to pay those fines because they were defrauding the american people and investors and they were selling subprime mortgage packages which were essentially worthless and they knew it. $5 billion in fines. that's reality number one. reality number two. this major wall street firm, in the last 25 years, has so much political power that they have provided two secretary os they

have treasury, and that is one of the most important positions in the administration, shaping financial policy, one under a democratic administration, one under a republican administration. point number three. the c.e.o. of goldman sachs today, who is a billionaire. a billionaire, went to congress a couple of years ago and this is what he said to congress. he said, you have got to cut social security, medicare and medicaid and give huge tax breaks to the rich and large corporations. point number four. and maybe the most important point as to why the american people are so angry and so distrustful of their government today. this company this financial institution, paid out a $5 illion fine.

if some kid in iowa or vermont today is picked up possessing marijuana, that kid will get a police record which will stay with him for the rest of his life. but the executives on wall street who drove this country into the worst economic recession since the great depression, whose greed and illegal behavior resulted in millions of americans losing their jobs, their homes, their life savings, these executives who pay billions of dollars in settlement agreements with the government, not one of them has been prosecuted. not one of them has a criminal record. and the answer, somebody says why not? i'll tell you why not. when these guys on wall street,

whose fwreed and recklessness forced our economy -- whose greed and recklessness forced our economy to the verge of collapse, they went to the middle class and got a bailout, as you all know, because the banks were too big to fail. they went down, they would take half the economy with them. that was the lodge ex. it turns out that not only to we have banks that are too big to fail, we have bankers who are too big to jail. that's wrong and together we're oing to change that. and when we talk about the ways that our country has got to move forward, we have got to understand that the campaign finance system that we have

right now is corrupt, it is ndermining american democracy. i am proud to tell you that i am the only democratic candidate running for president who does ot have a super p.a.c. now when you have a situation which is the case right now where as a result of this disastrous citizens united supreme court decision, where you have a situation where billionaires like the koch brothers an a few of their $900 s are able to pour million into this campaign cycle, when you have billionaires buying elections through super p.a.c.s, that is not democracy.

that is oligarchy and together we are going to change that. when we talk about what goes on in america today, everybody here knows that for this country to succeed, we need to have the best educated work force in the world. everybody knows that. truth is, 30, 40 years ago, we did have the best educated work force in the world. truth is we do not today. today, we have hundreds of thousands of bright, qualified young people who have the ability to do well in college, who want to go to college, but who cannot go to college for one reason. and that reason is their families lack the funds.

that is not only unfair to those young people, it is unfair to the future of our economy. because we need to tap the intellectual resources of all of our people. and that is why i believe that in the year 2016, when we look at public education, we cannot only be looking at education up to the 12th grade. 50, 60 years ago, when you had a high school degree, you went to, you know, public high school, got out, you could get a pretty good job. today in many ways a college degree is what a high school degree was 50 years ago. and that is why i believe that today we should make public colleges and universities tuition free. cheers and applause]

and here is something else that i believe. all other iowa and i've had dozens and dozens of meetings just like this, i hear from people who are saddled and being crushed by high student debt and high interest rates on that student debt. anybody here with a student debt? all over the country, millions of people. now, stop and think for a second. as a nation, our job should be to encourage young people to get all the education they need. that's what we should be doing. we should not be punishing people because they sought to have an education. now, when i go around iowa, this is what i hear.

a few weeks ago, talked to a young man, 29 years of age, married two kids he works in sustainable energy. doesn't make a whole rot of money. he's paying 53% of his income in tudent debt. talked to a young woman in burlington, vermont, a few years ago, had a meeting on this issue. her dream was to become a medical doctor, working in primary health care for low income people, exactly the doctors we need. her punishment for doing exactly what our society needs was $300,000 in debt. then a few months ago, i was in des moines. i mentioned that fact, $300,000 in debt. a woman comes up to me after my remarks and said, $300,000? i just graduated dental school, $400,000 in debt.

i was in nevada last month, a guy comes up to me, 55 years of age, he's been paying off his student debt for 25 years, he is more in debt today than he was when he started paying it off and he is worried that when he gets social security, they're going to garnish his social security payments to pay off his student debt. hat's crazy. that is crazy. so if we want the best educated work force in the world, we have to make educational opportunities available and we do not burden people who get a college or graduate degree with outrageous debt. and that is why as part of my legislation we are going to allow students who graduate with lots of student debt to refinance their loans with the lowest possible interest rates

they can find. now, some people say it's a great idea, bernie, you're santa claus, you're giving it all away, free stuff what they describe it as. how are you going to pay for that? i'll tell you how we pay for that. we'll pay for it on a -- with a ax on wall street speculation. when wall street went under they went to the middle class for a bailout. now it's wall street's turn to help the middle class. as adults, as parents, as grandparents, we have a moral responsibility, a moral responsibility to leave this planet to our children and our

grandchildren in a way that is healthy and habitable. and i want you all to think about it. i want you all to think about what people will be saying 60 or 70 years from now. when they will be saying, why didn't you act in terms of climate change when you should have acted? you knew what was going to happen. i'm on the senate environmental committee and i'm on the senate energy committee. i have talked to scientists all over our country and all over the world. and here's the truth. the debate is over climate change tissue the debate is over. climate change is real. t is caused by human activity. and it is already causing devastating problems in our

country and around the world. if elected president, i will help lead the effort to reach out to china, russia, india, countries all over the world, i will help lead the effort to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and ustainable energy. [applause] now i want to connect a few dots here. i want you to ask yourselves, how does it happen that we have a major political party, the republicans, who refuse to even acknowledge climate change, let alone be prepeared to do anything about it. how does that happen? i'll tell you how it happens. it happens because the day that any republican candidate stood

up and said climate change is real and has to be dealt with, on that day that republican candidate would lose campaign contributions from the koch brothers and the fossil fuel ndustry. and that is what a corrupt campaign finance system is doing to our country. and i say to my republican colleagues. think about your kids. think about your grandchildren. think about the future of this planet. stop worrying about where you're going to get your campaign contributions. [applause] what this campaign is about is asking people to think big, not small. to understand that in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, when we stand together, there is nothing

that we cannot accomplish. [applause] now, turns out that the united kingdom provides health care to all of their people. germany does it. france does it. scandinavia does it. holland does it. canada does it. in fact, every major country on earth guarantees health care to all of their people as a right. we do not. now i have been criticized for this, but let me be honest and clear with everybody in this room and with the people of iowa. yes, i do believe that health care is a right of all people, not a privilege. [applause]

and yes, i do believe that we should move to a medicare for all single payer program. [applause] now, i am on the committee to help write -- that helped write the affordable care act. i helped write it, i voted for it, and i'm proud of the many accomplishments that the affordable care act brought about. before the a.c.a., private insurance companies had this obscenity of pre-existing conditions. which meant that if you were a person who had an illness, they would not insure you for that illness. that's like getting fire insurance except they won't insure you if you have a fire. totally absurd. totally crazy. it's gone.

we have added almost $18 million -- almost 18 million more americans into the ranks of the insured. we hould be proud of that have gone a long way to end discrimination against women who previously had to pay more for health insurance because they were women. so we have made progress in a number of areas. but, and this is the but, today in america, 29 million people still have no health insurance. and many more are underinsured with high deductibles and high co-payments. as i go around the state of iowa, i ask people. tell me about deductibles. anybody here have deductibles? what kind of deductibles do you have? anyone want to reveal it?

$6,500. $5,000. $4,500. $3,000. ok. i have talked to people who have deductibles, talked to a guy with a family of six, $13,000 educt bling. what happens if you have a high deductible and high co-payment? you don't go to the doctor. what happens if you don't go to the doctor when you get sick? you set get sicker. i have talked to doctors in vermont and all other this country who tell me that patients walk into their offices much, much sicker than they should be. and the doctor says, tell me, why didn't you come in here sex months ago when you first felt your symptoms? saw your symptoms? and people say, well, i had had a high deductible, edidn't have insurance, i couldn't afford it. some of those people die when

they should not have died because they got to the doctor too late. others end up in the hospital in great pain and great expense to the system. furthermore, furthermore, one in five americans today cannot afford to fill the pri scriptions their doctors are prescribing. think for a moment how draw si that is. you go to the doctor because you're sick. the doctor diagnoses, writes you a prescription, you can't afford to fill it because the cost of prescription drugs is high. we get ripped off by drug companies and we pay the highest prices in the world for medicine. these are the realities that we face today. i'll tell you one brief story here. in the late 1990's, when i was

vermont congressman, i took a bus load of women from vermont over the canadian border. you know why i did that? that's right. these were women who were suffering from breast cancer, working class women, we got up to montreal and we had prearranged this, they bought the medicine they needed for one tenth the price. 10% of what they were paying in vermont. if elected president, trust me, the pharmaceutical industry will stop ripping off the american eople. [applause] today in america, we have millions of seniors and disabled veterans and people with disabilities who are struggling to keep their heads above water. i just had a meeting the other

day in iowa falls and we heard from people trying to tell us with great emotion about what it's like to live on $10,000 a year, what it's like to live on $12,000 a year. now, i think that when you have millions of seniors and disabled vets trying to get by on $2,000 or $13,000 a year, we should not be doing what the republicans are proposing, which is to cut social security. we should be expanding social security. [applause] when brauk -- when barack obama was here in 2008 he had a proposal and i introduced legislation based on that proposal that proposal was pretty simple. it says that today, when

somebody is a millionaire and somebody is making $118,000 a year, they are both paying the same amount of money into the social security trust fund. if you lift the cap on taxable income going into social security, and you start at $250,000 we can extend the life of social security for 50 years from today, we can increase benefits for people making less $1 rks ,000 a year by 300 a year. that will make a difference in a lot of people's lives. that is what we should be doing. all of you are aware that we are living in a very dangerous world. and when you turn on the tv, you

see horrible, horrible acts of bar barity and atrocities. and nobody has any magical answer to these problems. but this is what i do believe. you are looking at somebody who, when he was in the house of representatives, listened to what george w. bush and dick cheney and don rumsfeld and all those guys had to say about their view about iraq, i listened very carefully and i said, they are wrong. i voted against the war in iraq. [applause] and if you go to my website, go to youtube, listen to what i said on the floor of the house about my fears about what would happen if we invaded iraq and it gives me no pride to tell you new york joy to tell you that much of what i feared would

happen, did happen. that was then, now is now. and now we are confronted with a barbaric organization called isis which in my view must be destroyed. but, what we must be is not just tough. we must be smart. and to be smart in my view means we must not get our young men and women in the military bogged down in perpetual warfare in the quagmire of the middle east. [applause] what that means is that the united states must form a strong and coordinated coalition. king abdullah of jordan made a very important point a few months ago and what he said is,

obviously terrorism is an international issue, impacts the whole world. but it is prior may -- primarily an issue of the muslim people because groups like isis have hijacked their religion, the soul of their religion and have converted it into a barbaric way of life. and what he said, and i agree with him, is that at the end of the kay day, it must be muslim troops on the ground, destroying isis with the support of the major powers on earth. and i agree with that. i believe that the united states, u.k., france, germany, russia, all of the major countries around the world,

should be active in supporting through air efforts, training of troops, helping the muslim troops on the ground destroy isis and here there is, maybe, maybe, maybe, some good news recently and that is, as you know, the iraqi army has not been a terribly effective fighting force. that's an understatement. but in the last few months, we have seen some progress. as you know, the iraqi army fought very effectively and has etaken ramadi. and it turns out that in the last year, isis has lost about 40% of the territory that it controlled in iraq. [applause] i believe we have got to train

the iraqi army, train our friends in the region. but i will do everything that i can to see that our young men and women to not get caught up in never-ending warfare in the quagmire of that region. [applause] back to the point that susan is a ran ton made a moment ago. well, it was measure a moment ago, i guess. a few moments ago. and what her point was, change is never easy. change never comes without struggle. change never comes unless we have the courage to stand up to oppression. that is the history of the civil rights movement. it's the history of the women's movement. the history of of -- history of

the gay movement. the history of the environmental movement. the only way that change takes place is when millions of people become engaged and stand up. [applause] let me just say something and i'm the only candidate for president who tells you this, but it's true. i cannot do it alone. no president can do it alone. because the powers that be on wall street, corporate america, and the corporate media and the koch brothers and all these powerful special interests, no president can do it alone. the only way we transform this country is when millions of people are prepared to engage and when people stand up and say loudly and clearly, this government of ours belongs to all of us, not just the 1%.

thank you all very much. [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2016]

>> vermont senator bernie

sanders in the crowd there. c-span has been in iowa all week with lye coverage of event, rally, town hall meet wgs democratic and republican presidential candidates. earlier today, kentucky senator rand paul was in des moines for campaign rally and he stepped up on the c-span bus to answer viewers' calls. here are some of the pictures we got of him. tonight, c-span is back at drake university for an event hosted by donald trump who is skipping the republican debate and hosting a fundraiser for veterans. iowa holds the first caucus on monday. we'll have live coverage of the donald trump campaign rally tonight at 9:00 eastern. >> c-span's campaign 2016 is taking you on the road to the white house. monday, our coverage begins at 7:00 eastern on c-span and c-span2, bringing you live

precaucus coverage. at 8:00 p.m. eastern, we'll take you to a republican caucus on c spand an a democratic caucus on c-span2. see the event live in its entirety. see the event live on c-span and join in the conversation. >> tomorrow on "washington journal" more on the upcoming en.a caucuses with david yeps and brad zaun on what he's doing to get trump supporters out to caucus. plaats will talk about conservatives and the iowa caucuses. here's more of our road to the white house coverage with former arkansas governor and republican presidential candidate mike huckabee who spoke to voters yesterday at a pizza shop in ames, iowa, this is about an

hour. > i met mike huckabee, i was a -- i was 33 years old, i saw what he'd done, a guy able to work across party lines. when i got elected in the legislature, i got to work in both woddies, i got to see how it was in the majority and how it was in the minority. i rchted the fact of working together with folks to get things done and finding common ground. a lot of folks who run for office want to be hard nosed and saze this is how it's going to be. they won't be an effective leader or person to make thicks happen. mike huckabee is exactly what i hink shows great leadership.

he was able to pass things and get things done. and what i have seen in the last few years in washington is not what i want to see the future of our country go. there are many, many opportunities to do better. and i want to feed on what is going on lately. what i see for the future of this country isn't what the people i surround myself with want to see either. they want to see positive things not only in this country, but the way we project ourselves around the world and see no opportunities. we have young people that are missing school right now because they wanted to come and hear the overnor speak. they have priorities and want to know where the country is going. this is an opportunity and able to show the rest of the opportunity. i hope you'll join me in supporting mike huckabee and look deeply at his candidacy and what he has done in the past. not just what he promises in the future. promises are easy. track record is something you've got to live with.

and he has a fabulous track record. as we move forward, i ask you to not only to plan on going out monday night and caucusing, but you have the unbelievable opportunity to affect so many others. there are people that will never meet mike huckabee but you have a lot of people that trust you. if you tell them about your experience, based on your judgment and personal relationships with them, they'll vote for that person. so there are thousand upon thousands of votes sitting in this room right now if you utilize that friendship that relationship, relative, family member, co-worker, all those can make a huge difference. so i hope you'll get engaged in the process, not just personally but this is an opportunity to really change with our couldn't -- where our country goes. a man walks into a doctor's office and he was bitten by a dog. doctor runs a few tests and he has rabies and he makes out a list and the doctor sees him

making his list out and the doctor says sir, you realize with modern medicine you are not going to die from rabies and said you do not have to make out a will. he said i'm making a list of the people i plan on biting. life is about attitude. you can have a bad attitude, you can say this is the way things are going to be, or you can choose to make a difference. mike huckabee had a successful, very successful, number one news show on the weekends in new york. great money, great lifestyle. he was a guest one time on his show. but he chose to give that up to try to make america better. i appreciate the fact that you would engage in the process. it's exciting for me. i took off nine days from work and i said use me. i thought i would be putting up signs or licking envelopes or mailing stuff, instead they put me in front of a crowd.

i hadn't tone this in a long time. i checked out of this six years ago. i tell people i got out of politics for health reasons, the voters got sick of me. i appreciate the fact. young people you coming out. i got involved as a small child my parents would take me around, it was an opportunity to meet the candidates. they said we want you to formulate your own opinions but we want to expose you to different candidates and different policies and visions or what they want to do in their visions. never did i think in my wildest deems i would meet a president or candidate for president or a governor. and so as citizens of iowa, you have the unique opportunity much like we do in south arolina. you get to see all of them. it's really unique experience for small rural states that both of us share. i don't know how far out the governor is. they told me he is coming in. oh, is he?

i heard one of the folks from the news media saying most of the time politicians will only answer expected questions. throw governor huckabee a curve ball. throw him a difficult question. he's not scared of them. i've been on the stump with him a lot of times, i was with him in 2008, i've seen him answer every question that was thrown at him and not duck or dodge the individual. throw out the toughest question. see where he stands. his answers have not changed since 2008 or every different part of the state we have been to. and we have been all over the state. you get to see the depth of an individual when you can throw him something different. oy grew a great friendship with wynn rockefeller, lieutenant governor, and with governor huckabee as well, and when you get down to policy and see how

effective someone can be, when you look at a legislateture, it was about 85% democrat majority in arkansas, when i went out there the first time, to get thing dones in those conditions s extremely difficult. it speaks volumes for the fact that, i think there were other 100 tax cuts, they improved roads, education, quality of life and improved the actual income over those years. look who is here. [applause] i'll wrap it up with this, as we sit in a restaurant, looks like everybody is done, about, eating. everybody wants to eat off a clean plate but not a whole lot of people want to do the dishes. dishes require work. that right there is a man that is willing to work for the people. i'm excited by his candidacy. i hope after he speaks you will

be too. thank you for coming out today. ladies and gentlemen. my friend and the people of iowa's friend, governor mike huckabee. [applause] mr. huckabee: thank you, aundrae. - andre. this is packed in and i don't know if you can see but we had a big surprise as i walked in, i found out my three-year-old granddaughter is here. scarlet, can you wave at everybody. there you go. you are all dismissed. i'm going to go play with my granddaughter. we were told she was going to get to come and my daughter said no. she has not had a fever. she's fine. she just did that to disappoint us and then today bless us tremendously by having her show p. my day just got a lot better. are you going to eat that? i'm kidding.

i promise i'm kidding. if it stays there the rest of the time, it's going to be gone, i'm telling you now. it looks really good. i keep looking around on everybody's plate and when we finish here, i'll dismiss all of you. and i'll eat pizza. let me say thanks for crowding into jeff's pizza place in ames. we are a few days away from the caucuses. i'm grateful to have friends from around the country who have ome to show their support. folks like andre bauer, former lieutenant governor of south carolina a great friend and great public servant, who spent his career as lieutenant governor primarily working on policies for helping seniors and he was very committed -- committed and dedicated to the task. a true public servant. later, you'll meet secretary of

has also alabama who come. we have brought all these southern boys up here and introduced them to what what snow really looks like. we have been living with it in january and december and i don't know how you get used to it. i used to laugh at people in the north when they would say on television, they'd say some person had heart attack shoveling snow. and i'd think, why would you shovel snow? and i always thought those crazy yankees are out there shoveling snow, don't they know it'll melt tomorrow? because in the south we never ot it, and if we did, it would melt the next day. people out there shoveling snow, why would they do that. up here, it doesn't go away. >> just like your deficit. mr. huckabee: it never goes away and keeps piling and higher and at the end of the obama term it ill be $20 trillion.

just a few days away from the iowa caucuses, i want to encourage you. if you are going to caucus for me and if you do, i hope you will fill out this form and say i commit to caucus with mike. and if you are going to do that, don't go alone. take a friend a relative, someone from work a neighbor. and make sure they go with you to caucus for me. don't let anything keep you away. i don't care how bad the weather is, if there's twice as much snow, if it's 30 degrees colder than it is today, whatever it is, go and caucus for me. if, however, you are thinking about caucusing for one of those other 320 people running on the republican ticket, i would encourage you to stay home that night, because it's cold out there and the snow is going to be falling and could be dangerous and treacherous.

watch it on television, do not risk getting out in that errible weather. we are doing 150 events in january here in iowa. we are doing that because i don't believe there is a shortcut to winning the iowa caucus. if there is, it will change forever the future of the caucus, but it's not iowa that loses if that happens. america loses. and here's why. i think the worst thing that has happened in the process of politics is that a handful of billionaires now control virtually every campaign and ultimately control the agenda of congress in washington. and three magic words that i can tell you that will help you get through the complexities of olitics. i urge you to memorize these three words, follow the money.

follow the money. if you wonder why things don't change much, whether democrats or republicans are in pow her seems like things just roll along the same. they keep raising the debt, spending money they don't have, borrowing money they can't afford to pay back, taking care of special interests, having no clue whatsoever what people out here in the heartland of america are experiencing. i met a man in davenport last week, came to my event, he and his wife make $59,000 a year. guess what? their health insurance is going to cost them -- guess what their shurns going to cost them in 2016. what do you think it is? $20,000? anyone else want to guess? $15,000. $po,000 rm sounds like an auction. $28,000. you guys kind of split the difference here. there is no prize.

you get to pay that guy's insurance. think about this. $59,000 a year, he's spend haffing his entire annual income just to have insurance for he and his wife no children at home. no special pre-existing conditions or diseases. nobody can afford that. this is what our country is coming to. i meet people every day in iowa who use to have had a good job at places like maytag and newton. and those jobs got shipped to mexico several years ago. and they've never been able to find a replacement job for the good one they had at the factory. we've lost five million manufacturing jobs since the year 2000 in this country. 60,000 plans like the maytag plant have closed across america. just in the past 15 years. and i'm telling you now that when people are fully financed by the folks on wall street and the billionaires and the goldman sachs and the citibanks and bank of americas of the world, they are not connected, i don't care

what they make their television commercials about or what they say in their speech, i guarantee you when they get to the office, they will continue to carry out that have costes a lot of american theirs jobs they fortunes, and their retimes and they will even say to those of you on social security, well, we may have to cut your benefits, may have to raise the age at which you work, without even understanding that they clearly don't even understand what social security is. it is not an entitlement. it is not welfare. it is an earned benefit that you paid for when you worked. and when you worked, every time you got a paycheck, somebody took something out of your paycheck. i don't have to tell you that, you're nodding your heads like, boy, do i remember. and i can remember some of my every will i pabling, i needed that money. i sure could have enjoyed keeping it. but no, they took it away. but they always told me, don't worry, we're taking this money from your paycheck so we can put

it aside for retirement and when you get to be retired, you can have your social security. it is not the government's money. it is yours. and when people are oblivious to that, or when they say, well, maybe people should work until they're 2, that's great for a person who is -- who has sat at a desk for his or her career. but i no a lot of people who stood on concrete floors their entire working lives and i'm telling you, you ask them to stand another six or seven years, on those concrete floors, you've virtually given them either a death sentence or you've pretty much put them in a wheelchair. and people making these kind of comments have no idea. what people are having to do to make ends meet in america. i am convince odd of one thing. the people of iowa will make up their own minds as to who is going to win next monday night.

every day i have to listen to the talking heads, the people on the east coast sitting in well-lit studios and they've already figured out what they're going to do they know who is going to be first, they know who is going to be second, they know who is going to be third, they've got it figured out thaverbing already announced it. there's one thing they've forgotten, nobody in iowa has even voted yet. not one person. [applause] ou will go and vote next week. every four years there's a big surprise in the iowa caucus. i'm trusting you will help provide a big surprise next monday night when you go to caucus. or me. and if you don't go caucus for me. where will you be? >> at home. mr. huckabee: we are making great progress. this is already a very roductive day.

i also -- i want to tell you about this little sticker for your car. take one of these and put it on your car. i know it's a few days away, but there's a couple of reasons. it will let your friends know how smart you are. but the second reason is we are getting reports when people put these stickers on their car, they are getting gas mileage. i cannot guarantee you will get those results but try it for a week and see whether or not that works. i'm going to take some questions from you in a moment. i want a friend of mine to come and just visit with you a few moments. i've got folks from alabama and south carolina. i've got a friend from arizona, mike ingram who is here. friends from tex ar ka in a, arkansas, dave and debbie who are here somewhere in this crowd. david was a legislator when i was governor. he was one of 15 republicans in a house of 100 people he

understands what it was like for me to govern in a state that was at some point 90% democrat. he know what is i did to fight the clinton political machine to win office. and to do it repeatedly. to keep winning. and not only did i challenge the political machine of the clintons, but i'm standing here as living proof that i lived to tell about it. and that may be very significant of all. so if you want someone who can challenge hillary clinton in the election, i hear some of the republicans say, i can't wait to take on hillary. that's because you have never done it. but i have one other special friend i want to introduce to you. you have seen him on the television show "home improvement" and "santa clause" the movie, you may have send his standup act in vegas or recently

at carnegie hall. he's a great friend, you'll get the accent that he's probably from new york. maybe that will come through loud and clear. some of his friends as he will tell you -- well i'll let him tell you where they are now today and his family. but i'm so delighted, he's a great friend, traveling here in iowa, going around with us and campaigning with us. i wanted him to come because i think sometimes in campaigns we take everything so seriously, we orget to laugh a little bit. and i think we need levity in our lives. i try to provide it. sometimes i go up to people and say, i'm mike huckabee and i'm running for president and they say, yeah, we were just laughing about that. so to give you a real good fun, i want to give a few minutes to my good friend, jim labriola.

and be nice that these people. i'm trying to win their votes. >> this is italian. this smells good. i'm italian. no offense, i have been sitting here for five minutes and i'm getting dizzy because italian people, if we don't eat every 11 minutes, it's all over. can i have a bite? thank you very much. what? you don't take a lunch break. that's good. i thought that was mine. can somebody order me a diet oke? any "home improvement" fans? i'm tim allen. i put on a few pounds.

i'm on a new diet. slim slow. ok, great. my career died right here tonight. this is where you hide people like me in the witness protection program. how do you hire a guy like me on the farm? how am i going to fit in? like they're not going to know it's me. hey, yea, what do i do? i'm a farmer. yeah, i bury things. thank you, sir. can you run around so it sounds like a crowd here. i come from one of those new york neighborhoods where there was a lot of crime but nobody ever saw or heard anything. and no matter how you got killed, it was an always heart attack. what is going on here. with an ice pick sticking out of his chest, comes

come, you're like, i think it was a heart attack. this guy grabbed his chest and fell on it 17 times. i'm up here and you're writing. geez, don't stare at my pizza. this is good. do you work for the f.b.i. you know what f.b.i. stands for? orever bothering italians. thank you, sweetheart. can you sit with this guy. actually new york mooter where we're fro, what i love about people is we all got something in common. you know what that is? stupidity. we all do the same stupid things. why is it when you are driving your car and looking for an address, you have to turn the radio down? does it make you see better. honey, we are lost, turn the radio down. there it is. you ever drive in your car and the needle is on e.

you get real quiet. don't look at the gauge.don't l the gauge. and turn the radio down, i don't want to get lost. this smells bad. taste this. what the hell are you writing? you could have wrote the ndependence. look at the small writing. anybody read chinese? you are a good sport. give me a diet coke. before i leave folks. i have to tell you this is jeff as a pizzeria. what, are you afraid of jeff? is he a mob guy? don't talk about jeff. what happened to the chef last week me? had a heart attack. he is in the back with the other chef.

i'm kind of getting nervous. i don't know who jeff is either. what happened to the comedian? he had a heart attack. got run over by a garbage truck six times. you know why i'm here for the governor? $10,000. i'm kidding. i'm here because i was on his show three years ago and in 2008, i didn't know who he was and even me and my wife. and getting to know the governor the last few years what i know about him. i'm honored to be here because this guy, the other people, what you get what you see is maybe not what you are going to get. and one of those guys is from my neighborhood because i could have mel whacked. what you see is what you get. he is real and believes in his faith. he is a christian.

i'm a christian now. hard to believe, right? jesus said let's count those votes again. 'm honored to be here. this man is the real deal. this is the real america. everybody thinks it's new york and l.a., no, this is where it's at right here. this is the hope we've got. i say this sincerely from my heart, from god, to me, to you guys, my personal belief,s the reagan of our era right here. this is the reagan we need right now.

please, just support him, i'm honored to be your friend, i love him he, brought me a turkey roaster, i'm going to do the fivers, you put the turkey in the grease, watch cnn i'm probably going to be blowing up. make sure you vote for him, i'm going to follow each and every one of you to the polls. we don't want any heart attacks. god bless you guys, god bless our next president, mike huckabee. [applause] mr. huckabee: jim will buy you an entire pizza to replace the slice he just devoured. i'm so grateful to have friends with traveled at their own xpense to be here. talk to your friends, explain how important it is that iowa makes a decision not based on the money but on the message and the future of our country.

but i've got to ask, why am i running? i did walk away from what was a pretty decent life after, gee, almost 20-something plus years of hardball, tough politics in a state where republicans never got elect and i was on the -- only the fourth one to be elected in 150 years and the first in 25 year the only one at the capital -- capitol, the one who when -- who when he got to his office, had it nailed shut for 59 days before i could get in had to deal with the most lopsided legislature in all the country, more than massachusetts, or maine or vermont or new jersey. hen after the 2008 election, ended up doing a television show, getting back to my first job, which was in radio, doing a radio commentary. why would i do this? quite frankly, you saw 20% of

the reason just a moment ago when you saw my little granddaughter. because i have five grandkids. she's one of the five. and i'm doing it because i worry about the country we're about to hand to them. you see, i was so blessed to live in this nation but even more blessed to have parents and grandparents who made incredible sacrifices so that the country they gave to me was better than the one they grew up in. my parents group in the depression. i feel like sometimes i did because they told me so much about it, i honestly thought i'd lived through it as well. some of you know that feeling from having parents who told you about it. but i want you to understand, i did not grow up wealthy. i did not grow up well-connected. my mother grew up, oldest of seven children in a house that didn't have a floor, just irt.

no electricity, no running water. my father never graduated high school. his father didn't and his father before him didn't. no male upstream from me had ever graduated from high school. i'm the first male in my lineage to do it. much less go to college. when i was a kid my dad used to say, son, don't look very far up the family tree. there's some stuff up there you don't need to see. of course i had to welcome and found out the old man was right, there was some stuff up there i didn't need to see. but my parents and grandparents gave me a much better america and a much better opportunity in life than they had had. but what we're about to turn over to the people of my children and more importantly my grandparents' era, is -- is a country so deep into debt that most of their paychecks will go to pay interest on the debt. a country that if they can afford to go to college, they'll have to take out huge loans and they never be able to pay them back. a country that's ship sod many jobs to mexico, to china, to indonesia and elsewhere. that they may never enjoy the level of opportunity and an optimistic view of having employment options that many of us have had. and i'm going to tell you

something, i feel like i owe something to my parents and grandparents for the sacrifices they made. and i feel like i owe something to my grandchildren. and i don't want to sacrifice their future for my own comfort. this selection about getting america back on track, monetarily so we can grow the economy again and make it where americans who work get omething for that. it's about getting this country back on track, militarily. so that we rebuild a very decimated military that now has half the number of ships that my grandfather knew in world war i when he served on a u.s. navy destroyer. half the -- the smallest number of troops that we've had since before pearl harbor. and in our air force, we have people flying b-52's right now

that are older than i am. in fact, there's an air force pilot flying a b-52 that his father flew in the 1980's and his grandfather flew the same airplane in the 1950's. and we need to have the kind of military force that's the strongest we've ever had in the history of the country was that's the way we make it so our sons and daughters have don't have to go to war. have a military nobody wants to fight. but in addition to getting things back in step, monetarily and militarily, let me unapologetically say we have to get this country back morally. we can't be a great country if we're not a good country. we can't be a good country if we don't understand that what made us a great country, was that we were a god and generous people and up until the last several generations and certainly decades, we were a people that didn't need a big government because we had big hearts and we took care of our families and our friends and our neighbors.

i'm convinced that while we rail against big government and talk about how they take 50 cents of every dollar we earn, which is indeed tragic if those of us who call ourselves followers of christ, if we would just give a dime out of a dollar that we earn in what ought to be our bare minimum obligation as believers, and if we took care of the needy, the widow, the orphan, through our churches and through our generosity, we would do more with a dime out of each dollar from our tithes than the government would do with 50 cents out of each dollar we earn and that's how you get government smaller, you make our hearts and our charity igger. >> amen. mr. huckabee: and we would solve a whole lot more of the issues of poverty

than we ever will with government programs that entrap people in poverty and never let them out. let me take some of your questions, and i'll do my best to answer them or make you think i am. we'll see which way it goes. yes, sir. >> my name is robert, i'm a student at the university across the street. i'm also a believer. i want to bring up the issue of the younger generation because i have seen not only in the secular world, in the university, but also at my own church and in various other churches, there seems to be a disillusionment or ignorance or hostility toward conservative beliefs. on the christian side i think a lot of it is -- a lot of issues ou brought up. we talk about, like, moral values, particularly the sanctity of marriage, but we're totally silent when no fault ivorce was made legal, there

was no movement to save marriage from divorce. how do we, particularly with our evangelical younger people, how do we get them back and admit, yeah we kind of, on the marriage issue, we missed t. mr. huckabee: that's a great question, how do we get young people interested, not just olitically, but morally, getting our country back. robert says he's an evangelical and wants to make sure young people growing up in the church have a sense of perspective, that they're involved he mentions the difference between how many people rail against same-sex marriage but said nothing about the growing divorce rate among traditional married couples in the church. i think robert is right. uite frankly, one of the

reasons the country is in trouble is because those of us who are professing believers, we've not been the salt and the light that we are called to be. there's a difference between being a thermometer and a thermostat. a thermometer reads the temperature of whatever the room is and reflects the temperature. most of the time, culture is a eflection. it doesn't change people, people change the culture. when we live as thermometers and when we elect people in political offices who are thermometer, they'll take a poll, find out what people think and believe and reflect what people think and believe. what we really need in america, we need thermostats. the purpose of a thermostat is, it can read the temperature but its purpose is to adjust the temperature. as a musician i understand that if i'm going to tune my guitar, i don't tune the tuning fork to the guitar, i tune the guitar to the tuning fork. you have a standard and you

adjust your instrument to the standard. you don't adjust the standard to the instrument. what happens is, when we try to change the truth, the eternal truth of what's right and what's wrong, this is why i say there's a moral issue here, when we try to move the moral standards to meet culture, it's as ridiculous as trying to tune the tuning fork to the instrument rather than tuning the instrument to the tuning fork. i'm an evangelical, but one of my greatest heroes in the world was pope john paul ii. he was being interviewed and someone asked, can you ex-plin how the church can be more relevant, how it can change its views and positions because it's so south of step with culture? don't you think the church should modernize and be more progressive?

and the pope said to the reporter who was interviewing him, when the question was raised don't you think the church should change its standards, the pope's response was, he said, my son, the church is the standard. i thought, what a brilliant nswer, i wish i'd said it. but since i didn't, i'll quote him and at least attribute the quote. >> what about the power of money in the political system. one thing in the country, people feel powerless, disillusioned in part by the incredible concentration of wealth which has accelerated dramatically in the last decades. hat's your tax policy?

what are your ideas about tax reforms? mr. huckabee: the question is, how can we do a real different tax policy, tax reform that would empower people at the bottom? and the reason i'm a passionate advocate for the fair tax is because that's exactly what it would do. the fair tax would transform the tax from punishing our productivity by taxing everything we do that's product i, whether it's our work or investment or save, even inheritance we wish to pass along in the form of a farm or business and tax that at point of consumption. people say that would be a regressive tax. it would be except a provision in the tax that untaxes people for their necessities. with the fair tax, the people in the bottom third of the economy, benefit the most by 14% or 15% over where they are today. the people in the middle of the economy benefit 7% or 8% and the people at the top are still better off but only by 4% or 5%. instead of being a regressive tax, it's not. here's what happens. today our tax system punishes the guy who wants to work harder and get ahead.

give you an example, i met a guy in a machine shop in new hampshire. he's an eight-hour day guy, works on his feet, in ha machine shop, doing it since he got out of high school. his daughter is in grad school. he said, i didn't want her to go into a big student debt soy started working a double-shift, 16 hours a day. he wanted to get the second shift totally to his aughter. ok, i'm working 16 her, i'm working a double-shift, i'll get a double paycheck. guess what, when he got his first paycheck from the double-shift he, didn't get a double amount of pay because working double meant he got bumped into a new tax bracket and the government got as much of his second shift as he did system of rather than him benefiting double for double work, the government benefited from his double work he, idn't.

folks, fundamentally wrong. so when we're talking about a tax policy, we ought to make it so that that tax policy helps the people at the bottom, not just the people at the top. the people at the top pay a lower rate of tax than the people who are working for a wage. people working for a wage will pay the highest tax rate. theoretically. people who are living off passive income and the greatest wealth in the country is concentrated on those getting their money off passive income, investments, rather than a wage, and the result is that tax rate is effectively higher and more stiff far guy working on the factory floor than it is for the big global investors ho can move their country -- their money all over the world to protect it from the tax code. many of them don't pay any tax because they've been able to use good accountants and good lawyers to get out of of it. guess what? who's paying their share? you are. everybody pays tack when you buy something at the retail level. it's very transparent but transformative to the economy.

that's what i would do let me tell you something else it does. you want to deal with the illegal immigration issue, have you ever wondered why republicans nor democrats ever deal wit and fix it? i can tell you why. goes back to my three magic words of politics, what were think they? follow the money. here's how. there's an economic advantage in hiring an illegal. robert if i hire you and you're an american and i pay you $12 an hour, i'm sure you're worth more than that, but we'll take things out of your paycheck for income tax, payroll tax, social security, medicare, so on. if i hire you and you're an illegal immigrant, i don't think you are, but i do need to see your green card just to make sure but if i hire you and you're an illegal immigrant and i pay you $8 an hour, a couple of things are happening. i'm exploiting

your hour by $4 an hour, underpaying what i would have to pay him. you're not going to tell anybody because you'd get in trouble. so you're going to keep your mouth shut. there's another reason you're not going to tell. at $8 an hour you keep more money in your pocket than he made at $12 because nothing is coming out of your aycheck. as the employer, not only have i cheated you by $4 an hour, cost you your job, i'm pocketing the 7.5% employer portion of the payroll tax which means 15% of what you would have been paid and what i was paying in doesn't fund your social security or your medicare and if you wonder why we keep underfunding it, it's because we have so many people cheating and we have fewer people paying in and it's part of the shortfall. so if you want to fix illegal immigration, change the rules so that we don't make it economically advantageous to hire an illegal. that's part of what needs to happen. i saw another hand. yes, sir. did you get your pizza back? >> yes, i did. thank you very much.

medical care is a complicated issue but i want to ask one question about it. i've read that pharmaceuticals from -- that one can guy in other couldn't res such as canada and europe are cheaper than they are here but most of the research and many of the medications are made here. why is it cheaper there? mr. huckabee: there are a few reasons. one particular reason is because the regulartory environment we have in the united states to get a drug to market is so very restrictive and it costses so much to bring a drug to market, that we have two things that jack up the price. one is the r&d cost has to be

recovered within seven years before the drug can become generic. secondly, the pharmaceutical manufacturer in the u.s. has to set aside billions of dollars because if somebody has some type of issue with the drug, it can be 1 years later, -- 18 years later, but if they have an issue with the drug, the liability from lawsuits is such that they have to protect themselves. now i'm not trying to let big pharma off the hook here. boy, did they ever make a nice deal with obama on obamacare. padded them nicely. but the importation of canadian drugs would be a great benefit to a lot of american consumers. but let's try to make it more permanent by having a situation here we limit and put a cap on punitive damage, not actual damages because i think if a person is truly injured by medical malpractice that's one thing but punitive damages can drive the cost disproportionately. also make it so that there is a

reasonable way in which somebody who does spend a lot f money developing a drug will be able to recover those costs so they have incentive to go back and develop more. and if it's a drug that really does benefit the country, maybe the government should just buy it out a one-time, $100 billion, we buy the drug, it's now hour, we'll it to you at $1 a pill. as president i would declare war on the four big cost driving diseases in this country. i often get asked what would you do different any -- differently in obama care. there's a lot of things i'd do differently but from a big picture perspective, most of our cost in the health care system are because we're paying for the cost of chronic disease. in fact it's 5%, 85% of the over $2 trillion in the health care system is chronic los angeles. -- chronic disease.

i'd say within a decade we're going to find cures to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and alzheimer's rm these four diseases. now i know there are a lot of other diseases but these four drive the biggest bulk of the health care $s in america. and we would approach it with the same intensity that we did the moon landing in the 1980's, and we would try to see the same results as we saw when polio was eradicated in my childhood. folks, i remember standing at the courthouse lawn in hope, arkansas, as a little kid, three sunday afternoons in a row, getting my polio vaccine so i wouldn't have to wear leg braces like older kids in town or have to go to the iron lung. do you know how much we spent on polio in america last year? nothing. because we eradicated it, cured it. we saved hundreds of billions of dollars because we don't have to treat polio. thank god for that imagine with me what it would be if we found a cure that would event -- either prevent or cure heart disease, alzheimer's dirke bee ees, cancer.

it would transform not only the health care system but the conomy of america. >> being surrounded by great ag land, crop raise, i'd like to hear how you came about being o pro-ethanol. mr. huckabee: question about ethanol. let me begin by saying it's really, really rare when the government comes up with an idea that works. agreed? usually the government comes up with something that fails. this time they came up with an idea, to create ethanol standards so we would move to greener and cleaner fuels, that we would use something sustainable and that was renewable, and that would be able to help reduce our ependence upon foreign oil which we were depending a lot on, particularly middle eastern oil which by the way when we

bought it, it funded the very people who teach the terrorists how to hate and kill us. so it looked like a reasonable idea system of the government put a renewable fuel standard which meant that over the course of the next several years, we have to going blend into our fuel renewable fuels. so because the government created that mandate, billions of dollars were spent building the infrastructure to refine the ethanol that came from plants like you've got a lot of corn up here, i don't know if you've noticed that or not but thriving through in the summertime, let me assure you, you've got a lot of corn up ere. there are times i've driven three hours in iowa and all i've seen is cornfields the entire time. here's the thing about ethanol. it used to be when the corn was harvested, the kernels were used for either the production of oil or feed, but the husk and the stalks all thrown away.

it was just waste. those husks and stalks are now turned into ethanol. by being turned into ethanol, it becomes a renewable fuel, nothing is wasted, stabilizes the crop for the farmer, gives him a substantially better marketplace for his fuels, the people who go to work in the industry of refining, 75,000 jobs all told in iowa that are somehow related to ethanol. but here's the best thing. this is a government mandate that worked. it's cleaner. it's greener. he octane in ethanol is higher than traditional fuel. i'll give you an example. how many of you knew that every nascar vehicle runs exclusively on ethanol? who knew that? couple of us. do you think nascar is putting it in their vehicles because it helps make their cars slow ore less efficient? of course not. now there are some candidates who don't support the renewable fuel standards. they want your vote for president. and polls show that some of

them are leading and doing well here. help me understand why would iowa vote for someone who doesn't understand, appreciate, and will not support a program that helps iowa farmers make sure they have a good market for their crops that reduces dependence on foreign oil that helps reward the people who invested billions into the infrastructure of ethanol, why would anybody vote for someone who will help potentially cost iowa 75,000 jobs and make your neighbors dependent upon you to make up for their lost jobs? folks, that would be like coming to my state of arkansas and suggest that can people quit shopping at wal-mart and that nobody ought to ever eat rice or chicken again. you'll be wearing chicken feathers on top of the tar that will be poured all over you if you were to come to arkansas and suggest that because you would be in essence insulting a large portion of the population of my state and the economy of it.

so i would ask people of iowa, think very carefully, now if you think i'm pandering about ethanol, it's what i've consistently said. it's also because i come from an agricultural state where over 25% of our entire state's economy is agriculture. i understand that the day we don't have a strong agricultural foundation in our country is the day we quit being free. a country that doesn't feed itself, doesn't produce its own food and fiber, will be hostage to whoever is putting the food on its table. and we have the best, most efficient, safest food supply in the entire world and by golly, we need to keep it that way for the long-term benefit of my granddaughter and everybody else like her. ok, somebody else? es, sir.

>> i'd like to move our conversation back to health care. i think the woodstock agenda is ruining our health care. we go become to the 1960's, we know what woodstock. is now they're running our health care system. it's destroying america. nd i believe one of the most fundamental things america needs to do is stop pharmaceutical advertisement. you see a pharmaceutical advertisement, run to a doctor to give you that drug, drug dealing. mr. huckabee: you make a good point. when you first used the word woodstock, i'm think, that takes me back to the 1960's. i wasn't at woodstock, i want to make that very clear for all the people who are here. but i know about it. >> you don't even remember it, right? mr. huckabee: i remember when it happened for sure.

the sound track was great, i will say that. but there's an important point here. the relationship of pharmaceuticals and the costs and how that figures into the health care system. somebody once observed that it's going to be very hard for us to ever balance the budget when 10,000 aging hippies retire a day and find out they can get free drugs on medicare part d. it's really a good kind of point to make. but what you point out, if you advertise drugs, and you tell people all the symptoms they might have and they self-diagnose and go to their doctor, they don't say, i've got a pain in my shoulder, they say, doctor, i think i need, and they name the drug. and the doctor is say, did you go to medical school in no, but i saw the ad, i'm pretty sure i know what i've got and what will fix it. and the balance between free marketplace, free speech and responsible health care is a tough one. bottom line in health care, if you don't have any interest in controlling the costs, we'll

never control the costs. three things need to happen to replace obamacare. replace it with something personal, portable and preventable and here's what i mean by that it's personal to you. your employer doesn't own your health insurance, you do. if you move, your health insurance moves with you. it's portable. it moves, you move. you own it. your employer doesn't own your car insurance, or your homeowners insurance, why should he own your health insurance? and the third thing is focused on prevention. you actually get rewarded for preventing or dealing with cures as opposed to just dealing with treatment. if your doctor takes seven visits before he correctly diagnoses your disease he, gets paid seven times. if he does it right the first time he only gets paid once. i'm not suggesting that doctors will unscrupulously misdiagnose the first six time, they won't. they're trying. but shouldn't we reward the doctors who got it right the first time? instead we punish them.

rewarding them in essence less than we do the doctors ta took many, many repeated tries. ok let me take another final question. anybody else? yes, sir. >> so i'm relatively new to iowa. i'm from the east coast, had my first encounter with evangelical christians and many of them whom i've met seem not to -- i do -- either do not believe in the theory of evolution or get a lot of facts wrong about it. i'm curious, as an evangelical if you do and if not how can i trust you when it comes to, you know anti-bacterial resistant mike robes, these things that are developing in hospitals. mr. huckabee: let me see if i get this right, evangelicals, evolution, and microbiological nfections.

>> because germs are evolving because they're becoming resistant to bacteria. mr. huckabee: i'm going to try o put that together. if the question is, how do i feel about the origins of the earth? i believe that in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth. how he did it, i honestly couldn't answer. i wasn't there the bible doesn't give me a lot of details, it gives me some, i have to assume he did it. how long did it take? i don't know. a year, a day, the same measurement that we -- i don't know. i just don't. but i don't think that this magnificent design we have of our earth and how our bodies function and how nature functions, i'm always just absolute awe of how nature works. and whether it's the animals who intuitively seem to know more than we do sometimes about when danger is come, i swear my dogs are smarter than we are,

they sense things that we don't. i know the human body is an incredible instrument that's just beyond my comprehension. i don't think anything of that level of design could be there without a designer. i just don't. other people think it happened by itself, ok, i'm not going to argue with anybody over it. i just believe that it makes more sense, takes mess of a faith leap for me to believe that there is a designer to the design than to believe that everything i see in this magnificently ordered universe is a sheer accident. as it relates to things like very resistant strains of bacteria, look, i think we're living in a world that is always in a state of change. i mean, look, we can't deny that it's always in a state of change. and we see change not only in how things function, i mean, let's face it, people are taller than they used to

be. people are heavier than they used to be. we might be able to control that. but we're taller. you know. things are -- we're just different. there's a certain level of undisputable change. and some of that is that we developed drugs that are supposed to help us and pretty soon we get where we're immune to them and they don't work anymore, people have to come up with something new. i think that's part of the cycle and circle of life. again, i marvel at how it all works. i don't have the answers to all of that. i really don't. and anybody who tells you that they do, let me know who they are because i've never met anyone that smart. i'm not a dumb guy, i'm not the smartest guy in the world but i'm smart enough to know this. i know what i don't know. you know who the person you need to be afraid of, especially electing a person president? be very afraid of the guy who doesn't know what he doesn't know. that's the guy who'll get you killed. the guy who doesn't know what

he doesn't know will believe that he knows things that he doesn't know and he will put you in danger that you don't have to be in. one needs to surround himself or herself with people who can ill in the gaps and i had to do that as a governor, 10 1/2 years i served. i never assumed i was oh the only person who knew anything. i wanted a cabinet of people not necessarily who agreed with everything i believed, i want people who knew things that i didn't know. and in the midst of a crisis i wanted them to tell me what they knew that i didn't know. because you can't manage a crisis without good information. and i can't win the caucus without your vote. and i'm going to go through this one more time. monday, inhope you're going to o caucus for me.

that's a smart, reasonable, thoughtful thing to do. and all the smart people here will in fact do that. you'll fill out this card and you will tell us that by say, i commit to caucus for mike. if you are, again, for some unreasonable reason, not going to do that, where will you be onday night? home. my gosh, this has been a productive and lovely day. thank you guys very much. i appreciate you coming out today. thank you very much. [applause] thank you. you are stuck over there, do ou realize that? >> like i said, the sound track as terrific.

>> hope i didn't pick on you too badly today. ok. how are you guys doing? hank you for coming today. >> retired navy, 31 years. >> come here, sweetie. >> that's grandpa. >> she doesn't like me. i love this little girl. that was such a pleasant surprise, to have her show up. >> we're grandparents. we have nine. mr. huckabee: you're ahead of s. five is all we can handle right now. how are you doing? i'm great. come take a picture. inaudible]

>> thank you. mr. huckabee: thanks again for coming. hi, roger. what's your major? outstanding. how are you doing? >> good. mr. huckabee: thanks for being ere. great question, too. >> thank you, sir.

inaudible] inaudible] >> there's no doubt about w.m.d.'s. are you aware of that? mr. huckabee: i'm not specifically aware of that eport. mr. huckabee: i think the discrepancy was this. saddam hussein had used gas, right.

but i think there was possibly doubt. i don't want to dispute that. >> but he said no doubt. bush w. said no doubt. how is that -- [inaudible] -- that's what i'd like to know. mr. huckabee: i can't answer that. i don't know exactly what he said. >> he said no doubt. there was no doubt. he had a pentagon report never released. i suggest you read it if you haven't. mr. huckabee: do you know what year it was -- >> september of 2002, before the war. you can read it the. the whole memo. except the last page is blacked out. mr. huckabee: i appreciate that. thank you very much. >> the last photo i was not in it. 'm back for another one. >> you've got to be in the photo, right? hank you, glad you came.

inaudible] inaudible] >> the mental health industry is going to -- [inaudible] i think you need to touch on it. it's so important with kids.

ur kids. ritalin, hdhd, all these things , pharmaceutical drugs for these kids. [inaudible] mr. huckabee: that was a horrible situation where she was in essence being held hostage by the state of massachusetts. let me thank some more people ere. >> pretty god, huh? mr. huckabee: appreciate you letting us take over the place here. >> any time. mr. huckabee: it's just what you expect in iowa every four years. >> thank you for coming.

>> i'm speaking for you at our awe caucus. mr. huckabee: good for you. >> i spoke for you eight years ago or however many years ago. mr. huckabee: it work worked, let's do it again. we going this way? >> we've got a sit-down with reporters. i know scarlet doesn't want to do that. [inaudible] mr. huckabee: thank you, glad you came. hey, thanks. >> i'll see you around. mr. huckabee: hi. how are you?

mr. huckabee: hi. this is scarlet. [inaudible]