I have been very outspoken in my opposition to cuts in what I would call the means-tested entitlement programs: Medicaid, food stamps, and all of that. I feel very, very strongly that those cuts as proposed are unjust, but I am not prepared to label Ronald Reagan a "sinner."It seems to me that when you invoke the adjective "moral" you must be careful to distinguish what it is you mean by that.

I'm a product of a Notre Dame education; those professors taught me a lot about how you separate the city of God from the state. I'm also a reverent follower of the tradition of Thomas Jefferson. My years of public life have simply confirmed the intensity of my belief that what I have learned from Joe Evans and Thomas Jefferson was correct.

I think there has been an unfortunate tendency for a lot of different groups to forget that distinction between natural law and revealed truth and to say: Our complete agenda is to be enacted into laws governing the entire society. Many different religious groups claim that authority, not only Catholics. A lot of different Protestant groups as well are stepping forward to say: Here is our agenda, it is a moral agenda, ergo it must be enacted into law. I think that the distinction between natural law and more ultimate kinds of doctrine is being lost.

We've set aside tens of millions of acres of those northwestern forests for perpetuity. The unemployment rate has gone not up, but down. The economy has gone up.

I was nurtured in the church; I went to a Catholic school; I was an altar boy; I went to a Catholic university; I was steeped in the moral tradition of the Catholic Church. My Catholicism plays a very strong role. But I thought President John F.Kennedy answered rather well when he said that ultimately my conduct as a public official does not come ex cathedra from Rome; it comes from my conscience.

Taxes are the flip side of expenditures. The same issues apply on both sides. There are questions of fairness and justice as much in the way you take money away as in the way you disburse it.

I think the people will - who advocate having a step back and read those public opinion polls on the front page of the newspapers all over this country saying public supports restoration in restoration of the Everglades, protection of the parks and the creation of monuments.