The Romney campaign has been talking a lot about the Wednesday debate, saying it expects Gov. Mitt Romney to try and correct what he thinks are “inaccurate” portrayals of his positions from President Barack Obama and Democrats.
This is a pretty rich strategy, especially coming from Romney – whose campaign and allies have spent tens of millions of dollars spreading lies about the president and even bragging that their strategy wouldn’t be “dictated by fact-checkers.”
Sorry, Gov. Romney, but when you are running for president of the United States with the stakes so high, facts and specifics matter, and so far the Romney campaign has been light on both.
Perhaps during this first debate will see yet another reinvention of Mitt Romney. But no matter which Mitt shows up, we expect him to be well prepared and disciplined, since he has already participated in 20 debates during the GOP primaries and began debate prep for the general election in July.
But the focus of tonight’s debate isn’t about the Romney or Obama campaigns; it’s about the American people, who are looking for specific answers and visions from the two men seeking to lead our country over the next four years. There will be big decisions that must be made on jobs, the economy, taxes, deficits, energy and education.
These decisions will have a huge impact on our lives and on our children’s lives for decades to come.
President Obama is working to create jobs, expand opportunity and ensure an economy built to last — one that’s built from the middle out, not the top down – by investing in American manufacturing, education, and domestic energy while working to reduce the deficit and make America more secure.
Our economy has not fully recovered, but make no mistake about it, we are moving in the right direction and away from the failed policies of the past, to which Mitt Romney would take us back. We’ve seen 30 consecutive months of private-sector job growth, resulting in more than 5.1 million new jobs. Manufacturing jobs are being added for the first time since the 1990s.
The president has offered detailed proposals for creating 1 million new manufacturing jobs, doubling our exports, cutting our oil imports in half and reducing the deficit in a balanced way that protects the middle class.
Romney’s plan would undermine that by slashing investments in things like education, research and domestic energy production, rewarding companies that ship jobs overseas, and cutting taxes for millionaires and billionaires at the expense of the middle class.
Just last week, Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan, refused to provide specifics about how a Romney-Ryan administration would pay for its $5 trillion tax plan, claiming he didn’t “have the time” to do the math. But even with all the time in the world, Ryan can’t do the math on the team’s tax plan because it doesn’t add up.
Romney says he’ll just cut deductions for the wealthy, but independent experts say there aren’t enough to cover the cost of his tax breaks. That means he’d have to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for huge tax breaks for millionaires like himself.
The poet Maya Angelou says when someone shows you who they are, you should believe them.
Well, Mitt Romney has shown working-class Americans who he is several times. He doesn’t understand their lives and isn’t offering any solutions to the challenges they face.
Let’s not forget that Gov. Romney wrote off half of the country not too long ago, when he said many Americans consider themselves victims and aren’t willing to take personal responsibility for their lives.
That’s not the America that Barack Obama believes in and has been fighting for these last four years.
In Wednesday’s debate, those are the Americans President Obama will be speaking to, continuing to lay out his vision to move us forward.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz is chair of the Democratic National Committee.
