Senators McCain (R-AZ) and Obama (D-IL) sparred on issues such as government spending, war, the environment and health care Tuesday evening at the second presidential debate at Nashville's Belmont University, moderated by Tom Brokaw.

The $700 billion Wall Street bailout just agreed to by Congress is the "final verdict on the failed economic policies of the last eight years," Obama said, policies he said McCain supported. McCain said that as president he would order the Treasury Department to buy Americans' bad mortgages and renegotiate new loans to reflect the current home values.

On health care, McCain assailed Obama, saying that Obama would fine an employer or a parent that failed to carry adequate health coverage for their subjects. McCain in turn was put on the spot to defend his proposed $5,000 tax credit meant to aid in buying health care coverage, Obama noting that it would result in employer-provided health benefits being taxed for the first time.

Brokaw asked, "Is health care in America a privilege, a right, or a responsibility?"

"Available and affordable" health care is necessary, McCain said, calling it a responsibility, but "government mandates I'm always a little nervous about."

"I think it should be a right for every American," Obama countered. "In a country as wealthy as ours, for us to have people who are going bankrupt because they can't pay their medical bills...for my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in a hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they're saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don't have to pay [for] her treatment--there's something fundamentally wrong about that."

Obama's plan does call to require children to have health care "because children are relatively cheap to insure, and we don't want them going to the emergency room for treatable illnesses like asthma.

"And when Senator McCain says that he wants to provide children health care, what he doesn't mention is that he voted against the expansion of the children's health insurance program that is responsible for making sure that so many children who didn't [previously have] health insurance have it now."

On being asked by a 78-year-old "child of the Depression" what meaningful sacrifices Americans are expected to make, McCain offered up a freeze of every government program not defense- or veteran-related and said that there would be some "that we may have to eliminate." Obama countered by proposing that Americans help locally through a "volunteer corps" in addition to within the military and globally after a funding increase for the Peace Corps.

Ominously, when speaking on entitlement programs, McCain said, "We are not going to be able to provide the same benefits for retirees that we provide today." He did not elaborate.

On energy, McCain called for more oil drilling, both offshore and on American land, while Obama countered that "we can't simply drill our way out of the problem" because of the potential to add to global warming. He advocated cleaner technologies that could also be exported to other polluting nations.

McCain criticized Obama for his open stance on Pakistan, invoking President Roosevelt's method of "speaking softly and carrying a big stick." "This is the guy who sang 'bomb, bomb, bomb Iran' and talked about annihilating North Korea," Obama shot back.

The following clips are from CNN.com, broadcast October 7, 2008.