Wednesday night’s debate began the next campaign phase for President Barack Obama and GOP challenger, Mitt Romney. The general consensus, as the dust settles and poll results are tabulated, is that the former Governor of Massachusetts made the best of this first opportunity for the candidates to spar head-to-head on key issues while the Democratic party incumbent was less effective than usual in communicating a vision of where the United States is heading under his administration.
Whether either candidate made a case that swayed undecided voters toward their camp remains to be seen. But if the issues facing Americans with disabilities factor into your decision-making process, both Obama and Romney did offer insights into how their policies would impact employment, education, and overall quality of life for these individuals and their families.
In fact, one of the debate’s most-excerpted quotes in morning-after reports involved how their respective approaches to balancing the federal budget would impact children with disabilities, among others. Here’s how the Boston Herald summarized it in its collaborative piece by reporters Chris Cassidy, Erin Smith, Richard Weir, and Gary J. Remal:
Obama counters that a big difference between them is that Romney was asked if would he take $10 of spending cuts for just $1 of revenue and said no to even that kind of tax hike. Taking such an ‘out of balance approach’ would ‘gut’ investments in education, seniors, Medicare and children with disabilities.
President Obama followed up a short time later with a more specific critique of the portion of the GOP plan that would restructure Medicaid support in a way that gave individual states more control over how it was allocated. Obama contended this could result in as much as a 30% cut in across-the-board benefits. Page 6 of the ABC News transcript reads:
[…] that may not seem like a big deal when it just is, you know, numbers on a sheet of paper, but if we’re talking about a family who’s got an autistic kid and is depending on that Medicaid, that’s a big problem… And governors are creative. There’s no doubt about it. But they’re not creative enough to make up for 30 percent of revenue on something like Medicaid. What ends up happening is some people end up not getting help.
Romney’s response focused on his party’s belief that the “brilliance of our people and states” would be a more effective administrator of Medicare benefits than the federal government, but didn’t specifically discuss its impact on people with disabilities or any other specific underserved population, instead grouping them all as “our poor.” Later, however, when the topic shifted to the role of government, he did affirm its responsibility to serve these individuals.
Interestingly, he placed that within the Constitutional language that protects American’s “right to pursue happiness,” rather than “promote the general welfare.” Again, from page 6 of the ABC News transcript:
We’re a nation that believes that we’re all children of the same god and we care for those that have difficulties, those that are elderly and have problems and challenges, those that are disabled. We care for them. And we — we look for discovery and innovation, all these things desired out of the American heart to provide the pursuit of happiness for our citizens.
On more than one occasion, Romney referenced with pride that “Massachusetts schools are ranked number one in the nation,” due to his commitment to education while serving as the state’s governor. Found just a little further down on the transcript, he brought people with disabilities into the conversation when discussing his approach to education spending on a federal level:
I want the kids that are getting federal dollars from IDEA or Title I — these are disabled kids […] or lower-income kids… I want them to be able to go to the school of their choice. So all federal funds, instead of going […] to the school district […] let the parent and the child decide.
How do these statements impact your decision on who you’ll cast a vote for on November 6, if at all? Share below in the comments.
Image by DonkeyHotey.