1st Debate

• gut

  BGFalcons82;1292041 wrote:The old saying goes, "Excuses are like ****s, everybody has one". Obama apparently has several.

  The undecided voters are responding to substance. Obama has none. He basically DID call Romney a liar, several times, during the debate and got bitch-slapped with substance every time.
• BoatShoes

  gut;1292048 wrote:The undecided voters are responding to substance. Obama has none. He basically DID call Romney a liar, several times, during the debate and got bitch-slapped with substance every time.

  You are over-estimating Romney's supposed "substance" as usual.
  
  Larry Summers describes Romney's amalgamation of proposals and objectives that you say amount to substance perfectly:
  
  "It's easy to say that my plan is to eat ice cream sundaes and chocolate cake and hamburgers as much as I want. My plan is to lose 60 pounds. And my plan is to avoid painful exercise. And those are all my objective and I'm committed to eevery one of them. You can do that , but it isn't likely to get you -- you don't know quite where you're going to go if you've got all three of those objectives."
  
  1. He has committed himself to a substantial reduction in marginal rates...which is expensive
  
  2. He has committed himself to increased military expenditures...which is expensive
  
  3. He has committed himself to not raising taxes on middle income americans...next to impossible to do if you want a deficit neutral tax plan including marginal rate reductions without fantasy growth the likes of which wouldn't require us to do anything to solve our long term budget problems.
  
  4. He has committed himself to pursuing a balanced budget...very hard to do without raising taxes on middle income americans when you're committed to reducing marginal rates
  
  5. He's committed himself to eliminating enough tax expenditures to get to revenue neutrality...which is very hard to do without raising taxes on the middle class and many of these are very popular such as the charitable deduction.
  
  
  Your man is devoid of substance in all reality and has said just about everything you can say related to tax policy on this campaign. Lucky for him and you he pulled it off in the political theater of the debate and the race is now neck and neck.
• QuakerOats

  Actually it is a very simple situation, one that even a Harvard guy might understand. Scale back spending merely to '07 levels, plus 5%; the budget will be in balance, the bleeding will have stopped, and then we can plot the course for debt reduction from there. We needn't spend more time in futile arguments regarding tax rates, tax policy, etc... We have record tax revenues RIGHT NOW, but obama skyrocketed our spending; just simply roll it back to where it was 5 years, plus a few % (a bone for the liberals) and we will have a balanced budget.
  
  
  All the references to economists who live in fantasy land are useless, all the quotes from learned liberals is useless, all the rantings from big spending democrats is useless. Just spend what was spent 5 short years ago, and the deficit disappears.
  
  This is where Romney once again, wins the debate.
• O-Trap

  

  QuakerOats;1292935 wrote:Actually it is a very simple situation, one that even a Harvard guy might understand. Scale back spending merely to '07 levels, plus 5%; the budget will be in balance, the bleeding will have stopped, and then we can plot the course for debt reduction from there. We needn't spend more time in futile arguments regarding tax rates, tax policy, etc... We have record tax revenues RIGHT NOW, but obama skyrocketed our spending; just simply roll it back to where it was 5 years, plus a few % (a bone for the liberals) and we will have a balanced budget.
  
  
  All the references to economists who live in fantasy land are useless, all the quotes from learned liberals is useless, all the rantings from big spending democrats is useless. Just spend what was spent 5 short years ago, and the deficit disappears.
  
  This is where Romney once again, wins the debate.

  We're spending more now on the military than we did five years ago. Romney wants to spend even more than we are now, if my memory serves me correctly (which is a crap shoot, to be fair). Going to be difficult to spend less overall when we're spending more on one of our already-biggest cash sucks.
• gut

  BoatShoes;1292897 wrote: Your man is devoid of substance in all reality and has said just about everything you can say related to tax policy on this campaign. Lucky for him and you he pulled it off in the political theater of the debate and the race is now neck and neck.

  Partisan rhetoric as usual. It absolutely blows away everything Obama has mentioned that even remotely resembles a plan.
  
  And here's a newsflash for you: Yes what Romney proposes is hard to do. That's called leadership. That's called tough decisions. That's called a plan. If it was easy, even Obama could possibly have already done it.
  
  So, in summary, you want to vote for the guy with no plan because the other guy proposes tough solutions.