Senator Kerry said in a recent interview that he absolutely will not raise taxes on anyone under -- who earns under $200,000 a year. How can he guarantee that and also cut the deficit in half, as he's promised?

EDWARDS: Because we will do what they've not done. You know, if you look at what's happened over the last four years, we have gone from a $5 trillion projected surplus when George Bush took office to a $3 trillion projected deficit.

They promised they were going to put $2 trillion of the surplus aside from Social Security. Not done.

Not only that, it's the biggest fiscal turnaround in American history.

And there's no end in sight. The Washington Post just reported they have several trillion dollars of additional tax cuts and spending, no suggestion of what they're going to do about it.

John Kerry and I believe we have a moral responsibility not to leave trillions of debt to our children and our grandchildren.

So here's what we're going to do, to answer your question.

To pay for the things that we believe need to be done -- and I hope to get the chance to talk about health care and also about education, because we have plans on both of those subjects -- what we're going to do is roll back tax cuts.

And I want everyone to hear this, because there have been exaggerations made on the campaign trail: Roll back tax cuts for people who make over $200,000 a year; we will do that.

We want to keep the tax cuts that are in place for people who make less than $200,000 a year and give additional tax cuts to those middle-class families, tax cuts for health care, tax cuts to help families pay for their college tuition, tax cuts for child care.

These families are struggling and hurting, and they need more tax relief, not less tax relief.

But to help get us back on the path to a balanced budget, we also want to get rid of some of the bureaucratic spending in Washington.

One of the amazing things that's happened is they've actually layered on more supervisory people, people at the supervisory level, in this government.

We also want to close some corporate loopholes.

Now, I want to be honest with people. We can't eliminate this deficit. People have heard that over and over and over in four years. We cannot do it. We're in too deep a hole.

But we can cut the deficit in half. And if we move, we can move this country back on a path to fiscal responsibility.

IFILL: You have 90 seconds, Mr. Vice President.

CHENEY: Gwen, the Kerry record on taxes is one basically of voting for a large number of tax increases -- 98 times in the United States Senate.

There's a fundamental philosophical difference here between the president and myself, who believe that we ought to let the American people keep more of what they earn and we ought to empower them to have more control over their own lives -- I think the Kerry-Edwards approach basically is to raise taxes and to give government more control over the lives of individual citizens.

We think that's the wrong way to go. There's a fundamental difference of opinion here.

They talk about the top bracket and going after only those people in the top bracket.

Well, the fact of the matter is a great many of our small businesses pay taxes under the personal income taxes rather than the corporate rate. And about 900,000 small businesses will be hit if you do, in fact, do what they want to do with the top bracket.

That's not smart because seven out of 10 new jobs in America are created by small businesses.

You do not want to tax them. It's a bad idea to increase the burden on those folks.

The senator himself said, during the course of the primaries, that the Kerry plan would drive us deeper into deficit. Those were the senator's word about his running-mate.

The fact of the matter is, the president and I will go forward to make the tax cuts permanent. That's good policy. That's what we ought to do. But with fiscal restraint, we'll also drive the deficit down 50 percent in the course of the next five years.

IFILL: Thirty seconds, Senator Edwards.

EDWARDS: We are committed to cutting back anything in our programs that need to be cut back to get us back on a path to fiscal responsibility.

John Kerry, Mr. Vice President, has voted or co-sponsored over 600 times tax cuts for the American people -- over 600 times.

And there is a philosophical difference between us and them.

We are for more tax cuts for the middle class than they're for, have been for the last four years. But we are not for more tax cuts for multimillionaires. They are.

And it is a fundamental difference in what we think needs to be done in this country.

IFILL: You have 30 seconds, Mr. Vice President.

CHENEY: Yesterday, the president signed an extension of middle- class tax cuts, the 10 percent bracket, the marriage penalty relief and the increase in the child tax credit.

Senators Kerry and Edwards weren't even there to vote for it when it came to final passage.