Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Second Presidential Debate, Some Notes

Last night, Obama and Romney debated for the second time. Here is a link to the transcript and here is a link to the video. I want to make some quick notes on what Romney said. 

Revenue Neutrality
You heard what I said about my tax plan. The top 5 percent will continue to pay 60 percent, as they do today. I’m not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people. I am looking to cut taxes for middle-income people. 
And why do I want to bring rates down, and at the same time lower exemptions and deductions, particularly for people at the high end? Because if you bring rates down, it makes it easier for small business to keep more of their capital and hire people. 
And for me, this is about jobs. I want to get America’s economy going again. Fifty-four percent of America’s workers work in businesses that are taxed as individuals. So when you bring those rates down, those small businesses are able to keep more money and hire more people. 
Does anyone else here see the contradiction? If the wealthy keep paying the same amount they pay today, then they will not be able to keep more of their capital. He's made such a big point about his plan being revenue neutral that I'm surprised he turned it into a tax cut argument.

One may respond that he was talking about his middle income tax cuts here but then we have a conflict with his revenue neutrality. If the tax revenue from the middle class goes down due to tax cuts, then the revenue from either the lower or upper class has to increase to compensate for this. However, Romney has explicitly denied he will raise taxes on the wealthy or the poor.

AK-47's and Getting Parents to Stay Together

Romney's answer to the AK-47 question was awful and even the moderator called him out on it. I want to look at this part.
But let me mention another thing. And that is parents. We need moms and dads, helping to raise kids. Wherever possible the -- the benefit of having two parents in the home, and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone, that’s a great idea. 
Because if there’s a two parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically. The opportunities that the child will -- will be able to achieve increase dramatically. So we can make changes in the way our culture works to help bring people away from violence and give them opportunity, and bring them in the American system.
So what is Romney proposing here exactly? To make a speech to parents that they should stay together after having kids? That is an important part of his plan for reducing poverty and violence? See this blog post for a similar point.

Contraceptives

Romney's answer to the equal pay of women was also terrible. He did have this to say.
I’d just note that I don’t believe that bureaucrats in Washington should tell someone whether they can use contraceptives or not. And I don’t believe employers should tell someone whether they could have contraceptive care of not. Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.
Um, except the Republican party has been hammering Obama for making contraceptives a required benefit for health insurance. This supposedly denies the religious freedoms of some employers. Here, he seems to be saying that employers should not deny coverage for contraceptives to employees.

He may be saying that he is in favor of allowing women to spend their own money and not insurance money on contraceptives and that is what he meant here. However, that is irrelevant to Obama's point. Obama's point was that he was expanding access to contraceptives by making it a required benefit for health insurance and Romney ignored that.

Romney's 12 Million Jobs

Romney claimed again that his 5-point economic plan will create twelve million jobs in 4 years. He was asked to substantiate this claim and I will just leave it to Ezra Klein's team to debunk this. The studies Romney cites are:
  1. A study that claims a Romney-like tax plan will create 7 million jobs in 10 years (if fully paid for and instituted in an economy with full employment).
  2. A study that says under current policies, there will be 3 million energy related jobs over 8 years (not taking into account any of Romney's policies).
  3. A study that says if China were to respect our intellectual rights, 2 million jobs would be created (Romney is not proposing anything to help with this).
From these three studies, Romney concludes that his plan will create 12 million jobs in 4 years. What a joke.

Even worse, Moody's shows that over the next four years, 12 million jobs will be created under current policy anyways.

I was anxious for Obama to bring up these points but he did not do so. 

Pretty good debate overall and I'm glad Obama came out swinging this time.