drkohler said:
Actually that was the dumbest argument in the whole debate. Assuming that $90b argument is even true (doubtful as pretty much every number was false in the debate), what are you going to do with your 2m teachers the year after you hired them (you just spent the whole money for one year...)? It was interesting to watch the "debate" as a European. Not because the debate was interesting (from its contents and layout it was total crap), but because of how the two guys behaved. Hillarious how they both frantically shook hands at the beginning, neither one willing to stop shaking the other guy's hand (because the underlings told them it would "look bad if you let go first"). Then we had Romney saying absolutely nothing of value during the debate (expected as he hasn't said anything of interest in the past 18 months except when caught off-guard), and Obama completely unable to understand (and recover afterwards) that he got owned by Romney's reply to his assumingly wedding day opening zinger (it was completely clear that Ronmey had expected that opener and was prepared). From that moment on it was downhill for Obama for the rest of the evening - not quite unexpected as his re-election staff basically seems to consists entirely of yess-sayers and Obama-worshippers. I'd assume this debate goes into the books as another "unshaved Nixon debate" example. Lastly, I'm still amazed that the race still is open. With the economic situation (and the short attention span of the average american) , it should be easy for _anyone_ to beat Obama. |
Like all numbers thrown out by politicians the $90 Billion is mostly correct as long as you accept their definition of what is included in the funding ...
The talk about the teachers (in my opinion) was to put $90 Billion into terms that the average voter could understand and relate to the rest of Obama's platform. With Obama bragging about hiring 100,000 math and science teachers, demonstrating that his funding of green energy projects with close ties to his political campaing could have hired 2,000,000 math and science teachers is far more damaging than just listing the $90 Billion number.
Another example is turning the $700 Billion stimulus into real job numbers ... Assuming a total cost of employing them at $100,000 per year and these employees wouldn't generate any revenue to support their job position, the $787 Billion stimulus could have hired 1.96 Million people for 4 years. In contrast, the CBO estimated that between 0.2 and 1.5 million jobs were created by the stimulus (http://www.aei-ideas.org/2012/05/cbo-obama-stimulus-may-have-cost-as-much-as-4-1-million-a-job/).
