Five candidates are seeking to represent the 8th District in Congress. The Southeast Missourian asked all five candidates the same 14 questions, which we feel are major issues in this campaign. Their answers will appear in a candidate profile today through Friday. Ballot order was used to determine publication date.

1. What should we do to lower the national deficit? Should we cut taxes or cut spending or both?

Kline: Right now the obvious thing is to balance the budget. Now we can balance that budget in 30 seconds and so can you, so can many citizens. Now Congress does not have the will to balance the budget and if they did, they would have balanced it long ago. We have a budget deficit and a national debt and we're still giving away tax dollars to foreign countries. And to give our money away when we are in debt demonstrates the height of stupidity or is it a deliberate act to destroy our country? A flat tax would balance the federal budget and the state budget. As a congressman, I will seek to balance the budget.

Now believe it or not, by cutting taxes, you generate more taxes. It's a hard ideology to understand but by cutting taxes you have more money to spend, which generates more taxes. In order to balance the budget, we're going to have to cut spending and we can start with the education department. We can start with downsizing OSHA to what it was originally established for. The Environmental Protection Agency, reduce it down to what it was originally started for, its original commission, I believe is what the word is. Even the Agriculture Department is to blame for our national debt. All of these agencies are part of the reason we have a national debt as well as the deficit. Somehow we need to distinguish between a national debt, and you don't have enough room in the paper for this stuff.

Let me try to explain the national debt and then maybe, well the deficit is very simple. We've just spent more money than we receive on a yearly basis. Now, the national debt, if you visualize kind of like a banking system that you use, when you receive your wages, you send your money to a bank and then you draw money out and you might even get a credit card. Now you overspend your credit card, this is debt. Visualize that as a national debt. What this country did was they gave all of its gold to the world bank. We drew money from the world bank just like you would a regular bank but we started spending more money than we had in the bank. We used basically a credit card system, we got ourselves very much in debt to the tune of $5.8 trillion and here's the significant part of it, we did this in 30 years. How do you spend $5.8 trillion in 30 years? We can expand upon that. You've heard me say this, but that $5.8 trillion is enough to buy every factory in the United States, every manufacturing plant, send every welfare recipient that's been on welfare, and we can put them through college. Probably buy them Jujubes and send them to the movie and still have money left over.

2. Would you support a balanced budget amendment?

Kline: I surely would. Not only would I support a balanced budget amendment, I would definitely support Bob Dole's less-tax agenda. But I would like to see an up front $10,000 tax deduction for each wage earner in the interim between now and a flat tax. Let's take up the gap. Now what that means is each person earning money would have a $10,000 deduction. Each family that has a mother and father working would have a $20,000 deduction and it would even take care of the school child that earns money. Until he makes $10,000, he doesn't get taxed either. Now that's fair for everybody. You're going to have to force Congress to balance the budget, one way or the other. Either by shotgun or amendment.

3. What is your stand on the abortion issue? Do you favor a constitutional amendment banning abortion? Do you support a ban on partial birth abortion?

Kline: Yes. The partial birth abortion was designed specifically to gather brain tissue for Alzheimer's research. That's the only reason why it was designed. If you notice, the partial birth abortion is contrary to natural birth. They have to deliberately manipulate that baby around in order to get that brain tissue. This translates into all kinds of problems. From the humanistic point of view, if you'd like to approach that, the 35 million babies that are killed, and you've heard me in my speech, these are potential taxpayers and we've lost 35 million taxpayers. I like this one here. Germany killed its 6 million but America killed its 35 million. And I am very much against abortion and as congressman, I will seek to eliminate abortion and that will be abortion of any kind.

4. Under the Medicare plan the Republican Congress passed but Clinton vetoed, did Medicare spending increase? What action or actions should be taken to keep Medicare from going bankrupt?

Kline: The whole premise is to save Medicare, whether it's Democrats or Republicans and I think that the way the GOP views it is that you pay a little bit more but Medicare will not go broke for a few years longer. Now, I say that if Medicare and Social Security are going to go broke in the future then it's broke now. We must fix it now and not repair it with futuristic promises. Whatever it takes. This is a contractual agreement between the American citizens, actually it's a contract on themselves, really. It just dawned on me, it is. It might have been implemented by government but it's the citizens' own contract upon themselves. Whatever it takes to repair the system. I'm particularly incensed that Social Security has always been intact. Medicare has always been intact but Congress takes the leftovers of Social Security, now they can't do it to Medicare because Medicare saw through that when it started, I don't even remember when it started. This is something that I can't relate to very much.

Government fails at everything it does. We should privatize both systems and take out government control, and we should demand complete accountability. You can tell right now, I'm not a politician. I'm just a guy that got angry and got lucky. To me, it's the answer. Get government out of it because government fails. Use Rush Limbaugh's statement, "Can you show me anything that our government has done that is good for us?" Anything they come up with seems to snowball into some kind of a nightmare. And Medicare and, of course, Social Security, there's no difference. It happened here as well. It started out like 2 percent of the income and now it's up to 15 percent. Why? What happened? It's a combination of a whole bunch of things. Escalation of the dollar value. You may receive a $10 wage, but it's still only worth $1 when you get down to buying something.

5. What is the most important issue facing 8th District residents?

Kline: Well, I wish I could put it into one area. Believe it or not, it's hard to explain. But there are three programs out there, one called the Conservatory, where they're going to confiscate land. Another called the Biosphere where they're going to confiscate land and a bio-diversity treaty. That's the United Nations treaty where they're going to confiscate land and for some reason or another they've targeted Missouri. We have nine different agencies, both federal and state, relating to wildlife, forestry, and they overlap each other. They're fighting each other to see how they can outdo the other and they are in complete compliance with the environmentalist wacko movement. These people are designing the system in such a way that they take property away from people for a simple insect or animal, which may or may not be endangered. And the classic example, a farmer said to me he had a little stream running on his property and could only plow up to 90 feet of that stream because the DNR or one of those agencies said there was a snail there. So I have to ask the question, who's going to feed you more, the farmer or the snail and is the snail more important than the farmer or is the snail more important than you and me? As the property is confiscated and put into a system they call public land, it doesn't become public anymore. Now the home and the property that you own is private property. Public land, the idea that connoted is that you have free access to it. But as a matter of fact, they block off all the roads. When you're up against a mega list of nine agencies, it's pretty hard to fight these people.

6. Do you support the nation's open trade policy?

Kline: No, I do not. I'm very much against NAFTA. I think that's a treasonist act, even Bill Emerson signed off on it; it's still treason. We managed to give away the sovereignty of our nation. When you think about the North American Free Trade Act, that's just on our continent. GATT is global and you look upon that as just global, just a bigger NAFTA. Now tax money, your tax money, is given to factories so they can relocate in foreign countries. Then more of your tax dollars are given to liberal agencies to provide training and emotional support to the unemployed. There's nothing free about the free trade agreement. This is the insidious part that just drives me up the wall. When the products are brought back into this country to be sold to America, they're sold at prices that reflect the product being made at American wages. So the 50-cent-$1 worker production is sold as if it was made with $10-an-hour wages. And that to me is insidious. As congressman, I'll seek to repeal, NAFTA, GATT and the World Trade Organization.

I do not favor open trade. I prefer if we're going to sell something to somebody that we charge them. And using the capitalistic system, if we can sock it to them and get a little extra, go ahead. When they bring their product into this country, I want to charge them. By the way, that's one of the three ways that the federal government can legally gather money, is tariffs, embargoes, what have you.

7. Do you support the current farm bill and elimination of farm subsidies?

Kline: If it does, in fact, turn out to be that way, of course, I favor it. But I find it ironic that the statement (legislation) is Freedom to Farm. That seems a little insidious to me, a little bit of an un-American connotation to it. You remember when I first started to run, I said something to the effect that every state has an agricultural department. Yes, I would like to not only get government off the farmer's back, I would like to shut down as much as possible all of the agricultural department, the United States Agricultural Department. And there's a lot of things that go on in the agricultural department that aren't farm related and that needs to be taken out as well.

8. Do you favor term limits for federal lawmakers?

Kline: Not only do I favor term limits but I, myself, will only serve four years. After four years, I will either seek a higher office or I will get out and retire for sure this time.

9. Do you support making English the official language of the federal government?

Kline: Yes, I do, but not as it's written. You said, government. How about the country? So actually, I favor English being the only language for the United States of America. The government can run itself using English, but that doesn't stipulate it for all the other people. Now when the immigrants came to this country, they had to know how to speak English. Not all of them did, of course. You probably had a great-grandmother that could only speak Yiddish or something of that nature. As congressman, I'll seek to change the word government to America and if I can't get that done, then, of course, I'll vote for that bill.

10. Do you support managed health care? Should the federal government have a role in it? If so, what?

Kline: Well, I do not. Uniformed health care, HMOs, is socialistic health care. Every socialistic country that has socialistic health care is trying to replace their health care with America's form of health care that we now have. England now uses both systems of health care. Citizens of socialistic countries come to America for their major surgeries. If it's not working for socialistic countries, what makes you think it will work for America? It isn't government's responsibility to provide you with health care, it is your responsibility. One answer to health care is low-cost health care insurance, completely transferable from employer to employer with a rider to pay premiums during times of unemployment, and we must hold the health care completely accountable. And as congressman, I will seek to prevent national health care.

If it's privatized out in the community, then it's competitive. If insurance companies are competitive with one another, vying for health care insurance, history teaches that if we have competitive business, insurance is no exception, then the price of insurance should go down, should be rather inexpensive.

11. Do you support collective bargaining for public employees?

Kline: Ah, now when you say public employees, you mean government employees. This is how I say this, and this comes from my military background. We were not allowed to have unions. I drew my money from the taxpayers, therefore I was obligated to the taxpayers. Any employee that draws tax money for his wages or draws his wages from tax money is not eligible, or should not be allowed to join a union of any kind. And why? Because they're responsibility is to the employer and their employer is the citizens of the United States.

12. Do you support school choice and a voucher system for public schools?

Kline: I would like to see competitive education in using the voucher system. Now that voucher should reflect the cost per student per school year, which right now is in the ballpark of $6,000. And I would like to take the government out of the school system, put God and prayers back in, give the schools back to the parents and give the students back to the parents. Goals 2000 and Outcome Based Education came right out of the communistic manifesto and if it didn't work for the Russians, what makes you think it's going to work for America. It failed then and it will fail now. The cost per student per school year is $6,000. Multiply 30 students by $6,000, you get $180,000. Pay the teacher $30,000, the bus driver $20,000, feed the children and maintain the school building with $30,000 and you have $100,000 left over. What is that $100,000 being used for? Where is it going? And why don't we know? This I would definitely love for you to put in there. In relationship to education, if the child will not listen to the authority of the parent, then the child will not listen to any authority. As congressman I will seek competitive education.

I would like to see a public school system, a private school system, a Christian school system and a technical school system and specialistic type of school system, and then the student's or the student's parents having the choice of picking one of those that suits their lifestyle. If they're a socialist, then send them to the public schools. If they're a Christian, send them to the Christian school, etc., etc. Whichever school that student goes to would receive that money, which is a voucher system. Whatever the public school system gets, the private school system gets, or in this way, the word I use, the competitive school would get. Now you have competition and it's fair. We (currently) have competition, but we don't have the funding for the competition. It's uniquely structured to where the Christian schools or the technical schools will not receive the same amount of money as the public schools.

13. Would you vote to extend the Brady Bill's five-day waiting period for purchasing guns?

Kline: Boy, that's a when-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife type question. No I would not and I'll tell you why. It's an infringement upon the Constitution and I find it ironic that 100,000 felons were stopped from buying weapons and they only prosecuted one. That's hypocrisy in itself. I think the instant check is the way to go and it's not necessarily an infringement. Either you're entitled to buy a weapon or you're not; you're either a felon or you're not.

14. Why should someone vote for you for Congress?

Kline: Well, first of all, I'm probably the most honest person you've ever run across in relationship to politics. I'm too naive not to be honest. I have only spent $2,200 on my campaign. I have received absolutely no financial assistance from anyone and that means that when I become your congressman, I will walk in owing nobody anything but the citizens of this country. Wouldn't you like to have a congressman walking into Congress, not owing anybody anything and not having spent $800,000 on a campaign to get a job that only pays $130,000? Right now, I can see the forest for the trees. That's why I'm going to get out in four years because I just know deep down inside when you stay in something of this nature that has that much pressure, induced stress that eventually you lose sight of the trees, the subject matter of various subjects.

TODAY'S PROFILE: RICHARD CLINE

Name: Richard Kline

Party: Republican

Age: 56

Hometown: Gipsy

Occuation: Served in the Navy from 1958-1962, and then in the Coast Guard until 1980, when he retired. Married to Lucille; four children.

Political: First political run.