The Republican Presidential Debate

The Republican Debate at the Reagan Library

Published: September 7, 2011

The following is a transcript of the 2012 Republican presidential debate on Sept. 7, 2011, in Simi Valley, Calif., as transcribed by Roll Call.

SPEAKERS: REP. RON PAUL, R-TEXAS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

GOV. RICK PERRY, R-TEXAS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, R-MINN., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

HERMAN CAIN, REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

FORMER REP. NEWT GINGRICH, R-GA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

FORMER GOV. JON HUNTSMAN JR., R-UTAH, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

FORMER SEN. RICK SANTORUM, R-PA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

BRIAN WILLIAMS, POLITICO

JOHN HARRIS, POLITICO

JOSE DIAZ-BALART, MSNBC

WILLIAMS: Tonight, from the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library, in a place dedicated to the memory of this Republican icon, in the 100th year after his birth, we will hear from the eight candidates who would like to claim his legacy. They're all here tonight ready to explain and defend their positions on job creation, on spending, debt, and taxes, on America's costly dual wars, and the toxic gridlock that is Washington, D.C.

ANNOUNCER: Live from the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, the Republican candidates debate. Here now are Brian Williams and John Harris.

(APPLAUSE)

WILLIAMS: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Good evening, and welcome.

Thank you especially for joining us here in this spectacular space, this spectacular presidential library, where we are all gathered under the wings of Air Force One. We're going to get right to it tonight because we have a lot of candidates on stage, a lot of issues to talk about.

And for the next hour and 45 minutes, give or take, along with my colleague and friend, John Harris of the website Politico, we will be putting questions to the eight candidates on stage tonight. By agreement, they will have one minute to answer and then 30 seconds for follow-up or rebuttal, as they say, at the moderator's discretion. There will be no opening or closing statements during this debate tonight. With that out of the way, we're going to start with jobs and the economy. The numbers from our new NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll this week are, candidly, jaw-dropping. The country thinks the economy is going to get worse before it gets better. A majority of people in this country now believe the Republican policies of the first eight years of the past decade are responsible for the economic mess we're in. And we should quickly add, a majority also don't believe the current Democratic president has set the right policies to fix the fix we're in. Question is, really, who can?

Governor Perry, we're going to begin with you. You're the newcomer here on stage. You probably saw this coming a mile away. You have touted your state's low taxes, the lack of regulation, tough tort reform as the recipe for job growth in the Lone Star State, but Texas ranks last among those who have completed high school, there are only eight other states with more living in poverty, no other state has more working at or below the minimum wage. So is that the kind of answer all Americans are looking for?

PERRY: Actually, what Americans are looking for is someone who can get this country working again. And we put the model in place in the state of Texas. When you look at what we have done over the last decade, we created 1 million jobs in the state of Texas. At the same time, America lost 2.5 million.

So I will suggest to you that Americans are focused on the right issue, and that is, who on this stage can get America working? Because we know for a fact the resident of the White House cannot.

WILLIAMS: But you know by now the counterargument to that is the number of low-wage jobs and the fact that unemployment is better in over half the states of the union than it is right now in Texas.

PERRY: Well, the first part of that comment is incorrect, because 95 percent of all the jobs that we've created have been above minimum wage.

So I'm proud of what we've done in the state of Texas. And for the White House or anyone else to be criticizing creation of jobs now in America, I think is a little bit hypocritical.

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