Posted on 10/16/2012 8:03:49 AM PDT by IbJensen
Tonight’s presidential debate is the last one that will include questions on domestic policy. The previous presidential and vice presidential debates covered a host of issues, but there are key questions still to be answered. Heritage experts submitted five issues below—with questions—that it is important to discuss before the debate moves on to foreign policy exclusively.
Join us tonight at 9 p.m. ET—you can watch the debate live on our Debate 2012 page. We’ll have the live stream of the debate and a live blog of our experts’ analysis, and you can follow our tweets and chime in.
1. Welfare reform
Since the 1960s, government has spent nearly $20 trillion on the War on Poverty. The federal government now runs about 80 programs providing aid to the poor. Government at all levels spends nearly $1 trillion annually to fight poverty. The Obama Administration unilaterally issued a policy gutting the work requirement from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program.
Question: Should all able-bodied recipients be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving aid in federal public housing, food stamps, and cash assistance programs?
2. Trade
The United States ranks 10th in the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal Index of Economic Freedom. Trade barriers, from tariffs to a lack of free trade agreements with other countries, hinder America’s prosperity. Brand new research from Heritage shatters trade misconceptions, showing that imports—from China—actually create jobs here in the United States.
Question: The United States’ ranking in various international measures of economic freedom and competitiveness has dropped dramatically over the last 4 years. What policies would you propose to help Americans regain the economic freedom they have lost?
3. Medicaid
There has been lots of discussion about Medicare, but what about Medicaid, which delivers health care primarily to the poor? Half the gain in coverage under Obamacare was projected by adding millions more to Medicaid. On average, Medicaid physicians are paid only about 58 percent of what private insurance pays. According to a recent study, in 2011, one out of three Medicaid doctors would not accept new Medicaid patients—with a direct correlation to physician reimbursement rates. While the health care law does temporarily raise the payment rate for Medicaid primary care doctors, after 2014, these same doctors will face a 19 percent pay cut.
Question: What will you do to ensure that Medicaid beneficiaries get better access to health care?
4. Federal Spending and Debt
In 2012, the federal government spent $29,691 per household, $9,398 of which was deficit spending. Meanwhile, the national debt per taxpayer climbed to more than $111,000, which is more than twice what the average American can expect to earn in 2012.
Question: How would you cut spending and reduce the debt burden for Americans?
5. American-Produced Energy
Hydraulic fracturing—called fracking—has helped tap vast supplies of oil and natural gas in the United States. The boom in natural gas from the use of hydraulic fracturing has attracted the attention of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of the Interior—even as states have been effective at regulating fracking. Unnecessary layers of federal red tape would slow energy production and much-needed economic growth in the United States.
Question: How do you see the role of states in regulating energy production?
Watch the debate live with us tonight—we’ll be streaming it on our Debate 2012 page, in addition to our experts’ live blog and live tweeting. Join the conversation!
This repulsive, joker-grinning, destroyer of a nation knows little about nothing!
6. Immigration
Does he think that having a sizeable number of ADULTS dropped from the workforce is (A) good for America's GDP and (B) doesn't he realize America knows he's cooking the books to get the unemployment figure below 8% before election day? Who does he think he's fooling?
How many of the “undecided” participants in tonight’s townhall rally/debate are actually card carrying members of various political activist groups?
What is the penalty of someone claiming to be “undecided” is shown to have already submitted an “early voting” ballot?
Such a sham. Let the candidates themselves throw questions at each other. At least we’d know their motives for asking the questions from the get go.
Good issues to discuss.
However, I don’t think we’re allowed, per political correctness, to talk about issues such as the war on poverty. The war on poverty was started by LBJ and Democrats. We fought a war on poverty and poverty won, but, we’re never allowed to talk about the failures of Democrat policies.
Instead, it’s frustrating to think how we have institutionalized poverty as an institution. We have this whole “baby mama” culture which perpetuates it. We have the related gang culture which breeds it and feeds it.
And yet some liberals think the problems with poverty are because we haven’t spent enough trillions on the problems.
But, since we’re not allowed to talk about any of that, the subject is ignored, as more and more get on the dole.
I did my part as a true American after Lyndon Bird edicted the War On Poverty.
(I threw a brick at a beggar.)
Right-O!
It really did, you know. The reason was local control--then run by the Church, but on a Parish by Parish basis, where it was possible to impose moral values & personal responsibility, free of the pandering for votes, which the Left has brought to America since the New Deal.
Obama would not respond appropriately, if he was challenged about the lack of moral accountability in the Bureaucratically Administered Federal involvement. His Marxist orientation would come out loud and clear.
William Flax
Governor Romney, will you not stand with me and this audience to condemn the right-wing religious extremist who wish to deny women the Right To Choose, and who by their words and actions are nothing more than "Haters" who should be imprisoned for treason against all Wymin-hood?
What is morally & logically obscene is the notion driving the Jacobins, Marxists, Bolsheviks, Fabians & Nazis, that big Government can solve all human problems, which flow from fundamental differences between individuals, in aptitudes, motivation, conscience, etc.. We are all different, and the compulsive need to deny that reality is behind most of the real problems in the modern world.
See The Greatest Mischief Ever Wrought.
William Flax
FAST AND FURIOUS!!!! This had better come up.
Obama and Biden still blame "unregulated" banks and lending institutions for causing the crisis. By not challenging them on that claim, Romney-Ryan tacitly agree with them allowing Obama to get the support of millions of voters who think Pubbies are to blame for the crisis. Bush still gets blamed. Romney-Ryan must challenge the Obama team or lose millions more votes they could get.
The 47% plus 5% fraud. Guess he is planning on fooling the ones who pay the bills.
Kandy is definitely an anchor, and a rather large one.
I never watch her and even without the advent of television do I believe I’d listen to her on the radio as she’s a leftie if ever there was one. Why the Republicans would sign on to allow four leftist media types to ‘moderate’ the debates is mind-boggling.
She has quietly hinted that she’ll not abide by the rules she signed onto and will ask direct questions of the candidates. (Goody for Bozo and too bad for Romney.)
Perhaps her demeanor will permit Romney to recall a Gingrich moment when he turned a moderator’s mean-spirited query to slap that moderator in the face!
At any rate, we’ll be glued to our tv screen this evening watching for the gaffes to emanate from the Chicago weasel’s mouth!
7. Guns - especially Fast & Furious and its fallout.
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