The fourth Republican primary debate on Tuesday was the most substantive yet when it came to economic and foreign policy, and it avoided the "gotcha" questions presented by liberal moderators at the last event.
Gathered below are five top quotes from each candidate on everything from the minimum wage to the war in Iraq.
Urgent: Do You Support Donald Trump for the GOP Nomination? Vote Here Now
Dr. Ben Carson
1. "First of all, thank you for not asking me what I said in the 10th grade . . . I have no problem with being vetted. What I do have a problem with is being lied about."
2. "Everybody should pay the same proportion of what they make. You make $10 billion, you pay a billion. You make $10, you pay one. You get same rights and privileges. I don’t see how anything gets a whole lot fairer than that." — On taxes
3. "Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases. It’s particularly a problem in the black community. Only 19.8 percent of black teenagers have a job, who are looking for one." — On refusing to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour
4. "I think in order to make them look like losers, we have to destroy their caliphate. And you look for the easiest place to do that? It would be in Iraq. And if — outside of Anbar in Iraq, there’s a big energy field. Take that from them. Take all of that land from them. We could do that, I believe, fairly easily, I’ve learned from talking to several generals, and then you move on from there. But you have to continue to face them, because our goal is not to contain them, but to destroy them before they destroy us." — On militant jihadists
5. "Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton won’t tell you that that’s the thing that’s really hurting middle class in the core. They’ll say it’s the rich, take their money, but that won’t help. You can take all of the rich’s money and it won’t make a dent in the problem that we’re having. We have to come back to the fundamental principles that made America great."
Donald Trump
1. "If you think walls don't work, all you have to do is ask Israel." — On building a border wall
2. "If [Vladimir] Putin wants to knock the hell out of ISIS, I'm all for it 100 percent."
3. "We have to get smart. We can’t continue to be the policeman of the world."
4. "We have to make our military bigger, better, stronger than ever before so that nobody messes with us, and a long run, it’s going to save us. I agree with Marco, I agree with Ted, we have no choice." — On military spending
5. "The TPP is a horrible deal. It is a deal that is going to lead to nothing but trouble. It’s a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone." — On international trade
Sen. Marco Rubio
1. "For the life of me, I don’t know why we have stigmatized vocational education.
Welders make more money than philosophers. We need more welders and less philosophers."
2. "It took the telephone 75 years to reach 100 million users. It took 'Candy Crush' one year to reach 100 million users." — On the pace of innovation in the 21st century
3. "I know that Rand is a committed isolationist. I’m not. I believe the world is a stronger and a better place, when the United States is the strongest military power in the world." — On military spending
4. "We have a president that treats the prime minister of Israel with less respect than what he gives the ayatollah in Iran. And so our allies in the region don’t trust us."
5. "Do you know why these banks are so big? The government made them big. The government made them big by adding thousands and thousands of pages of regulations . . . The big banks get bigger, the small banks struggle to lend or even exist, and the result is what you have today."
Sen. Ted Cruz
1. "There are more words in the IRS code than there are in the Bible, and not a one of them is as good."
2. "The Democrats are laughing — because if Republicans join Democrats as the party of amnesty, we will lose."
3. "I will say for those of us who believe people ‘ought to come to this country legally, and we should enforce the law, we’re tired of being told it’s anti-immigrant. It’s offensive. I am the son of an immigrant who came legally from Cuba to seek the American dream. And, we can embrace legal immigration while believing in the rule of law."
4. "My simple Flat Tax says that, for a family of four, for the first $36,000 you earn, you pay no taxes whatsoever. No income taxes, no payroll taxes, no nothing. Above that, every American pays 10 percent across the board — a flat, fair tax."
5. "The biggest lie in all of Washington and in all of politics is that Republicans are the party of the rich. The truth is, the rich do great with big government. They get in bed with big government."
Urgent: Who Should the GOP Nominate in 2016? Vote Here Now
Carly Fiorina
1. "A Clinton presidency will corrode the character of this nation. Why? Because of the Clinton way: Say whatever you have to, lie as long as you can get away with it."
2. "We need to actually reform the tax code. Go to a three-page tax code. Yes, there are plans that would reform our tax code to three pages."
3. "Obamacare has to be repealed because it’s failing. It’s failing the very people it was intended to help, but, also, it is crony-capitalism at its worst. Who helped write this bill? Drug companies, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, every single one of those kinds of companies are bulking up to deal with big government."
4. "We also have a set of allies in the Arab Middle East that know that ISIS is their fight. They have asked us specifically over, and over again to support them. King Abdullah of Jordan, a man I’ve known for a very long time, has asked us for bombs and material, we have not provided it. The Egyptians are asking us to share intelligence. We are not. I will. The Kurds have asked us to arm them for three years. We are not. I would."
5. "Government created the problem of a real estate boom. How did we create it? Under Republican and Democrats alike, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, everybody gathered together, Republicans and Democrats, and said, 'home ownership is part of the American dream. Let’s create a bubble.'"
Sen. Rand Paul
1. "I want a government really, really small, so small you can barely see it."
2. "I think that we ought to look where income inequality seems to be the worst. It seems to be worst in cities run by Democrats."
3. "When you think it’s going to be a good idea to have a no fly zone over Iraq, realize that means you are saying we are going to shoot down Russian planes. If you’re ready for that, be ready to send your sons and daughters to another war in Iraq."
4. "I do not think we are any safer from bankruptcy court. As we go further, and further into debt, we become less, and less safe . . . we need a safe country, but, you know, we spend more on our military than the next ten countries combined. I want a strong national defense, but I don’t want us to be bankrupt." — On military spending
5. "We also find that as the Federal Reserve destroys the value of the currency, what you’re finding is that, if you’re poor, if you make $20,000 a year and you have three or four kids, and you’re trying to get by, as your prices rise or as the value of the dollar shrinks, these are the people that are hurt the worst."
Gov. Jeb Bush
1. "Hillary Clinton has said that Barack Obama’s policies get an A. Really? One in 10 people right now aren’t working or have given up altogether, as you said. That’s not an A. One in seven people are living in poverty. That’s not an A. One in five children are on food stamps. That is not an A. It may be the best that Hillary Clinton can do, but it’s not the best America can do."
2. "On the regulatory side I think we need to repeal every rule that Barack Obama has in terms of work in progress, every one of them."
3. "Twelve million illegal immigrants, to send them back, 500,000 a month, is just not — not possible. And it’s not embracing American values. And it would tear communities apart. And it would send a signal that we’re not the kind of country that I know America is."
4. "We should have a no fly zone in Syria. We should have a support for the remnants of the Syrian Free Army, and create safe zones. If you want to deal with the four million refugees that are leaving Syria because of the devastation there, then we ought to create safe zones for them to stay in the region rather than go to Europe. And, that requires American leadership."
5. "What we really need is somebody that understands that we do need energy of all forms, and that means we will have solar, and wind, and hydro, but we will still have coal, and we still will have natural gas. And, we’ve got to have an all of the above policy."
Gov. John Kasich
1. "In 1986 Ronald Reagan basically said the people who were here, if they were law-abiding, could stay. But, what didn’t happen is we didn’t build the walls effectively and we didn’t control the border. We need to." — On illegal immigration
2. "We all know you can't pick them up and ship them back across the border. It is a silly argument. It is not an adult argument." — On Trump's plan to deport 11 million illegal immigrants
3. "When I was Budget Committee chairman in Washington, I stepped on every toe in that town, and we got to a balanced budget, and we had enormous job growth. And as governor of Ohio, we went from 350,000 lost jobs to a gain of 347,000 jobs."
4. "I’ll tell you about Wall Street: There’s too much greed."
5. "When you are faced — when you are faced, in the last financial crisis, with banks going under — with banks going under, and people, people who put their — their life savings in there, you got to deal with it. You can’t turn a blind eye to it." — On bank bailouts
Vote Now: Which GOP Candidate Would You Support in 2016?
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.