Fragmente americane

Cu ajutorul lui @traianvij, thanks Alec, care mi-a semnalat transcriptul primei dezbateri din campania pentru Casa Alba, am reținut câteva idei:

MR. ROMNEY

My plan has five basic parts. One, get us energy independent, North American energy independent. That creates about four million jobs. Number two, open up more trade, particularly in Latin America; crack down on China if and when they cheat. Number three, make sure our people have the skills they need to succeed and the best schools in the world. We’re far away from that now. Number four, get us to a balanced budget. Number five, champion small business.

My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high- income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They’ll do fine whether you’re president or I am.

The people who are having the hard time right now are middle- income Americans. Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried.

MR. OBAMA

But under Governor Romney’s definition, there are a whole bunch of millionaires and billionaires who are small businesses. Donald Trump is a small business. And I know Donald Trump doesn’t like to think of himself as small anything, but – but that’s how you define small businesses if you’re getting business income.

Jim, I – you may want to move on to another topic, but I would just say this to the American people. If you believe that we can cut taxes by $5 trillion and add $2 trillion in additional spending that the military is not asking for – $7 trillion, just to give you a sense, over 10 years that’s more than our entire defense budget – and you think that by closing loopholes and deductions for the well-to-do, somehow you will not end up picking up the tab, then Governor Romney’s plan may work for you.

So, 77 government programs – everything from aircrafts that the Air Force had ordered but weren’t working very well. Eighteen government – 18 government programs for education that were well- intentioned but weren’t helping kids learn. We went after medical fraud in Medicare and Medicaid very aggressively – more aggressively than ever before, and have saved tens of billions of dollars. Fifty billion dollars of waste taken out of the system.

And I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut a trillion dollars out of our discretionary domestic budget. That’s the largest cut in the discretionary domestic budget since Dwight Eisenhower.

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