Updated 10/22/2008 09:20 AM
6th district candidates go head to head
GREENSBORO -- From health care to the housing crisis, the congressional candidates for the 6th district of North Carolina laid out their views during a forum Tuesday.
The 6th District is made up of Moore and Randolph counties and portions of Alamance, Davidson, Guilford and Rowan counties.
Republican incumbent Howard Coble fielded questions about his vote against and then for the financial bailout bill.
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"But there was other obvious pork that was thrown in, but I felt at that stage timing was essential and I felt that inaction was probably no option. I think we had to do something. Someone asked me today if we did the right thing, I said I'll know in a matter of weeks and perhaps months, but I feel like we did and because at the time, the lines of credit were clogged, there was virtually no access to debt and that spelled obvious problems to me," Coble said.
Democratic candidate Dr. Teresa Sue Bratton talked about how she would have handled the situation.
"I would have voted yes to both bills. And the reason I would've voted for the first one is I feel like that we, I felt at that time that we needed immediate action in order to increase credit flow in markets. And I felt like the bill had provisions in it that would ensure that the American people would recover the money, either through the return on the purchases, the security purchases or through warrants that would be dispensed from the companies from whom these securities would be purchased," Bratton said.
The candidates also gave their opinions on energy independence and health care. They also addressed issues of immigration.
"So not only do we need to set up a mechanism to document the people that are here but we also need to change our immigration law," Dr. Bratton said. "I think that we can do this and we will disrupt our economy should we try to completely remove all these people from our country."
"I favor tight border control. I furthermore favor some sort of accommodations for guest workers. The problem here before is the two advocates of those issues ignore each other," Coble said.
The forum was hosted by the League of Women Voters of the Piedmont Triad. Watch the forum in its entirety on Carolina On Demand, Channel 1234.