Politics
Election 2012: Obama attacks Romney at 2nd debate – Obama wins
“We don’t have to settle for what we’re going through,” Romney said, urging Americans to fire a president they generally like, according to polls. “We don’t have to settle for unemployment at a chronically high level. We don’t have to settle for 47 million people on food stamps.”
Given that unemployment just recently fell below 8 percent for the first time since he took office, Obama cannot make rosy promises without looking foolish or insincere. He acknowledged that Americans are struggling. But he urged them to stick with policies showing slow but steady improvement.
“We’ve created 5 million jobs, and gone from 800 jobs a month being lost, and we are making progress,” the president said. “We saved an auto industry that was on the brink of collapse.”
Obama was most animated when claiming that Romney is trying to sell voters a bill of goods. He said Romney outlines feel-good plans for lower tax rates and higher military spending that would cost US$8 trillion over 10 years. The only possible ways to absorb such costs, Obama said, would involve sharply increasing the deficit or finding new ways to tax the middle class, or both.
Slyly complimenting his opponent as “a very successful investor,” Obama said that if someone approached Romney “with a plan that said, ‘Here, I want to spend US$7 – 8 trillion dollars, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it,’ you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal. And neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”
Romney indignantly said he can fulfill his promises. He would limit tax deductions for the wealthy, among other things, he said.
