The candidates pulled out all the stops during the debate this Tuesday. There was a lot of tension and at times it seemed that a punch might be thrown. It seem that each candidate learned from the last debate that the winner is the one who manages to be louder and gets his point across. The competent moderator did a good job keeping the candidates on topic. President Obama showed improvement from the last debate, he was much more confrontational and stood firm in his ideas. Because Obama came confident and prepared, made former governor Mitt Romney’s usual approach of providing facts about the presidents faults but none about his plans much less effective.
Both contestants were willing to concede that things need improvement, but they are divided on whom the blame belongs to and how to actually go about fixing our country. Obama blames a partisan Congress and Bush. Romney blames Obama. Dwelling on the past is simply a diversion from what each candidate will really do in the future. This can be seen in any Presidential debate, each candidate agrees on the problems, but not on the solutions. It’s the same story throughout the course of the campaign. Obama has sought to show the controversial nature of his opponent’s beliefs while Romney sought to show the faults of the president’s last term, to which Obama replies that he tried his best and the faults of his term are not his own.
Two issues candidates had some agreement on were immigration and how to deal with China’s “cheating” system. They agree that some changes need to made to make it easier and cheaper to obtain legal citizenship, among other things.
Romney said that the best pathway to permanent citizenship for those with green cards is to join the military. This is an interesting proposition; only after you fight and risk your life for us do you deserve to belong in this country.
Obama claims that Romney wants to repeal the Dream Act and make the controversial Arizona law, that allows law enforcement to ask anyone who appears to be illegal for their identification and green card, the model for the nation. Romney responding by saying that he agrees with much of the law but not that specific controversial part of it.
The issue with China is that it is a country that has unfairly maintained a lower than normal currency value. The obvious solution is to raise tariffs in order to make them cease, artificially holding currency down to bring jobs back to the U.S. Obama makes the distinction between high-income jobs that can return and low-income jobs that will never come back that is proven by economics. Low income, low human capital jobs will always flow to under-developed countries. Once China makes enough money and becomes developed enough it will cease to have raw manufacturing power their low-income jobs will move elsewhere. What is important now is making it possible for Americans to have the education to become qualified for those higher skill jobs, since the lower income jobs are gone and it is good and right that they are.
It is also important to not that while Obama has improved the number of college students eligible to receive Pell Grants, Romney plans to cut the Pell system in order to not increase the deficit when he lowers taxes 20% over 10 years It is stated in both the Ryan budget proposal and by Romney earlier in the campaign. According to Romney, Pell is an unsustainable system that receives too much funding. However, there is no proposed alternative.
Does college not already cost too much? In a country that spends 4 percent of every tax dollar on education and 30 percent on our robust military, do we really need to cut education and increase military spending by $2 trillion? I think that it is unacceptable for our future as a nation and our individual futures to make it harder to succeed in this country. The American Dream becomes more distant every day.
