COMMENTARY | It was a double debate weekend for the candidates in New Hampshire. With Saturday night's debate ending at 11 p.m. and Sunday's debate starting at 9 a.m., they only had 10 hours between debates. Rick Perry was definitely sporting bags under his eyes, and all the candidates were more hostile and less reserved than Saturday night. They were also more willing to dodge questions in order to push their own agendas.
Things started to heat up when the topic of heating oil was mentioned. As we all know, President Barack Obama cut heating oil aid by $1.2 billion, as reported by The Huffington Post. That means a lot of poor people won't have heat for the entire winter. When Jon Huntsman was asked if heating oil aide should have been cut for low income families, he quickly responded, "No. We have people in need. We have people suffering."
But instead of answering the question, he shifted the subject to the oil delivery system monopoly by stating, "We have to disrupt the oil monopoly delivery systems." Huntsman compared it to the breakup of the telecom industry. It was an interesting tactic and successfully avoided fully answering the question. His answer should have stated "No." Then he should have explained how he planned to fund heating oil assistance for the poor in the future.
When Mitt Romney received the question he stated, "We don't need to have the federal government saying we need to solve all the poverty problems in the U.S. Every state's poverty line is different." Then he went into a diatribe on the size and overhead of the federal government by stating, "Very little of the money meant to help people reaches the people" via Federal government programs.
While I agree with both Huntsman's and Romney's statements, I don't believe they fully answered the question. Neither explained whether or not they understood the impact of the $1.2 billion cut nor did they explain how they were going to fix that cut if elected president.
What they did say amounted to long congressional conversations on how to demonopolize the oil delivery system, how to reduce government agency overhead, and how to send more money to the states for poverty reduction initiatives. None of those ideas are going to help people heat their homes this winter or next winter. They might be able to heat their homes in 2013, but then that's just about the time the unemployment rate is forecast to go back to its prerecession levels.
conrad murray sentencing urban meyer adam shulman adam shulman nfl power rankings week 13 nfl power rankings week 13 patrice
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.