The Very Latest
By on
In the town hall debate, Mitt Romney ignored the facts on the Libya attack to try and score cheap points. See why his political bluster fell flat—then share this video with your friends.
By on
During the town hall presidential debate, one native of New York posed an important question to Mitt Romney: "What plan do you have to put back and keep jobs in the United States?" When it comes to outsourcing, the difference between the candidates could not be more stark: President Obama is the only candidate with a plan to bring jobs back home.
But rather than telling voter the truth, Romney offered the complete opposite assessment of what his policies would do:
"We have made it less attractive to stay here than to go offshore from time to time. What I will do as president is make sure its more attractive to come to America again. This is the way we're going to create jobs in this country."
Here's the problem: Romney's policies would not accomplish what he promises. Romney is proposing tax reforms that would eliminate U.S. taxes on foreign profits companies earn overseas, which critics say “would prompt U.S. to shift offshore even more income than they already do.” According to one economic analysis, this could result in 800,000 jobs created offshore instead of here at home. And by slashing investments in education, innovation, clean energy, and infrastructure, Romney would make the United States a less attractive place for companies to invest and to hire.
And these policies reflect a pattern. Just take a look at his professional record:
Governor: Vetoed a bill that would’ve prevented Massachusetts from sending state jobs overseas, and signed a contract that included a call center in India.
Corporate buyout specialist: Invested in companies “that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories” in countries including China and India.
President Obama has a clear plan to encourage companies to insource jobs. He supports closing corporate loopholes and tax breaks that encourage outsourcing, and creating a tax credit that rewards companies that bring jobs back to the United States. He's also signed multiple tax credits to help growing U.S. industries create more jobs and remain globally competitive. These steps have already resulted in more companies looking to bring jobs back to the United States—and the President's policies would build on that progress.
Find out more about where the candidates really stand on on job creation here, then share the facts with your friends.
By on
Mitt Romney’s extreme immigration positions were on full display at Tuesday’s debate. From doubling down on his opposition to the bipartisan DREAM Act, to reiterating his support for the inhumane policy of “self-deportation,” Romney showed once again why he is the most extreme presidential nominee on immigration in modern history.
“Self-deportation.”
At the debate, Romney justified his support for “self-deportation” by claiming that it “let[s] people make their own choice.” But as the New York Times noted, Romney’s approach to immigration is “mass expulsion: a fantasy of ridding the country of 11 million unauthorized immigrants by making their lives unbearable.” And he’s not backing down from these extreme policies—after all, Romney’s immigration adviser, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, advocates a “true nationwide policy of self-deportation.”
Romney once again called undocumented immigrants “illegals,” proving just how little he understands and respects the Latino community. Romney has praised Arizona’s controversial S.B. 1070—which requires police to check people’s immigration status if officers believe there is “reasonable suspicion” someone could be an undocumented immigrant—as a “model” for the country. As President Obama pointed out, Kobach, Romney’s immigration adviser, is the author of Arizona’s immigration law. And Russell Pearce, who helped Kobach write the anti-immigration law, said Romney’s policy is “identical to mine… Attrition by enforcement.” President Obama opposes S.B. 1070 and believes that “no American should ever live under a cloud of suspicion just because of what they look like.”
The DREAM Act
Romney stood by his opposition to the DREAM Act, which would allow young undocumented immigrants—many of whom were brought to America as children through no fault of their own—a chance earn a path to U.S. citizenship by pursuing a higher education or serving in the military. Romney has even gone so far as to dismiss the DREAM Act as “favoritism” and a “handout”—a slap in the face to talented and hardworking young immigrants who are caught in legal limbo and want nothing more than to contribute to the country they call home. The Romney campaign also said it would end the Obama Administration’s deferred action policy, which lifts the shadow of deportation from responsible young immigrants by giving them a chance to continue their education or apply for work authorization.
Click here to get the facts on how the two candidates compare on immigration.
By on
Last night’s debate crystallized the clear choice American women face in this election. While President Obama outlined his strong record of cracking down on pay discrimination, ensuring women’s access to affordable health care, and making sure women can make their own health care choices, Mitt Romney revealed his plans to roll back reproductive rights and take women back to the 1950s. Here are three moments from last night’s debate that demonstrate President Obama’s unshakeable commitment to women’s rights and show why Mitt Romney would be the wrong choice for women across the country.
Planned Parenthood and access to birth control
Mitt Romney supports the Blunt Amendment, which would allow employers to deny women coverage for contraceptive care, as well as other health services, if doing so conflicts with their "religious beliefs or moral convictions." While Romney clearly feels comfortable letting politicians in Washington decide women’s health care choices, President Obama believes that women should make their own health care choices and have affordable access to health care services, including birth control. As the President noted last night, access to health care services isn’t just a health issue, “it’s an economic issue for women. It makes a difference. This is money out of that family’s pocket.”
Romney also wants to ban all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, saying, “We’re going to get rid of that.” But President Obama understands that women depend on Planned Parenthood for basic health services they can’t afford to lose. As he pointed out at the debate, “There are millions of women all across the country who rely on Planned Parenthood for not just contraceptive care,” but for preventive health care like annual exams and breast and cervical cancer screenings.
Equal pay for equal work
As he emphasized last night, President Obama is fighting to guarantee that women aren’t paid less for doing the same work as men. That’s why the first bill the President signed into law was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps ensure that women can fight for equal pay after they've learned about an unfair pay disparity.
Romney, on the other hand, has wavered for months on whether or not he would have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Act into law. After finally acknowledging that Romney opposed the bill, the Romney campaign immediately walked his position back to one of deliberate ambiguity, claiming that he “never weighed in on it.” Instead of giving a yes or no answer on the basic question of fair pay, the Romney campaign is making what should be an easy answer extremely complicated. As the President pointed out last night, “That’s not the kind of advocacy that women need in any economy.”
“Whole binders full of women”
In an effort to avoid owning up to his extreme positions on women’s rights, Mitt Romney tried to tout his efforts to hire women as governor of Massachusetts, claiming that he reached out to women’s groups who brought him “whole binders” of women qualified to serve in his cabinet. But the facts show that the percentage of senior-level appointed positions held by women actually declined throughout the Romney administration, from 30.0% prior to his taking office, to 27.6% near the end of his term in November 2006. And during the 1980s and 1990s, Romney did not have any women partners as CEO of Bain Capital.
But Romney didn’t stop there: “I recognized that if you're going to have women in the workforce that sometimes you need to be more flexible,” he said. But there is no “if”—women make up nearly half the workforce and they deserve to be paid equally for the same work and the same qualifications.
By on
Check out these highlights from last night’s debate—from Mitt Romney’s already-infamous “binders full of women” comment to President Obama’s powerful closing remarks.
By on
After President Obama stepped off the stage at last night's debate, supporters called in to congratulate him on a job well done. Listen to a few of their messages about why the President's steady, honest, and authentic leadership is the best choice in this election.
Tom from Wisconsin was particularly motivated by the President's performance:
"He clearly won the debate, and I immediately made a $100 contribution."
What about you? It doesn't have to be $100—chip in whatever you can afford to put the President over the top in the next 20 days.
By on
At the second presidential debate, President Obama showed his continued commitment to progress for women. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney didn’t offer a single policy or solution when asked about the problem of pay discrimination, just anecdotes. While the President talked about women as breadwinners, Romney talked about them as resumes in “binders”.
In a follow-up question, one of Romney’s top advisors claimed that the Governor opposed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act in 2009. Watch this video and share it with your friends to show why Romney is too extreme for women.
By on
From fact-checking Mitt Romney's views on equal pay to highlighting key moments from the night, here's what people are saying about President Obama's debate win:
“Obama won the debate decisively. The president had a simple formula: Defend and explain his record while insisting that Romney wasn't being truthful. He kept Romney on the defensive and came prepared with counter-punches to nearly every topic. It was devastatingly effective.”
—Taegan Goddard
“ … If you’re scoring it on points, Obama wins on points.”
—Charles Krauthammer
"Instant polls by CNN and CBS both found that President Obama came out ahead of Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate."
—Politico.com
“When George H.W. Bush looked at his watch in a 1992 debate with Bill Clinton and Ross Perot and absolutely bungled a question about how the national debt had affected him personally, he cemented the impression that he was out of touch with real Americans’ lives. When Gerald Ford denied in 1976 that there was any 'Soviet domination' of Eastern Europe, he cemented the impression that he was out of touch with pretty much everything. Tonight, Mitt Romney may have had a similar moment, during a back-and-forth about the attack on the Benghazi Consulate.”
—Andrew Rosenthal
“Mitt Romney’s solution on leveling the playing field tonight was to point out he once had a binder full of women applicants. That binder didn’t help me at Goodyear, and it’s not helping the women across this country, making 77 cents for every dollar a man gets. If Romney was truly concerned about women in this economy, he’d take a stand against paycheck discrimination. Instead, he has remained silent and refused to speak out for equal pay for women and their families. Simply put, Romney doesn’t get it."
—Lilly Ledbetter
"'Binders full of women' was certainly an awkward phrase to say and it failed to even work as an answer to the question. Instead, it reminded people of a time when women wore girdles or women in China bound their feet as status symbol that allowed them to marry into money … Obama talked seriously about contraception in health care plans, Planned Parenthood, and fair pay, and such a discussion was desperately needed."
—The Washington Post
"What's very clear is that President Obama dominated the debate last night and you know that because both sides are talking about the President's performance. I thought he drew very sharp and clear contrasts between policies that are actually causing us to recover jobs, versus the policies of the past that Governor Romney wants to take us back to because of the job losses in the first place."
—Governor Martin O'Malley
By on
President Obama won tonight's debate. He outlined in detail his plan to build our economy from the middle class out, not the top down. And he pointed out that Mitt Romney is offering the American people a "sketchy deal" in the form of a plan to spend $5 trillion giving the wealthy a tax cut they don’t need and $2 trillion on a defense build-up the Pentagon says it doesn’t want—all without explaining how he’d pay for it. Romney misfired on his attacks, and at times was caught in his own misleading statements.
In case you missed the exchanges, here are a few highlights from President Obama.
In response to Governor Romney's jobs plan, which was challenged by fact-checkers throughout the day
“Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan, and that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector, that’s been his philosophy as governor, that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate."
In response to Romney's refusal to release details of his tax plan:
"What he says is he’s going to make sure that this doesn’t add to the deficit, and he’s going to cut middle class taxes. But when he’s asked how are you going to do it, which deductions, which loopholes are you going to close? He can’t tell you. … If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend seven or eight trillion dollars, and we’re going to pay for it but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal. And neither should you, the American people—because the math doesn’t add up. And you can’t buy this sales pitch. Nobody who’s looked at it that’s serious actually believes it adds up.”
Speaking about the U.S. auto rescue, Romney falsely claimed that he and the President had taken the same position. The President responded:
“What Governor Romney said just isn’t true. He wanted to take them into bankruptcy without providing them any way to stay open, and we would have lost a million jobs. And don’t take my word for it. Take the executives at GM and Chrysler, some of whom are Republicans, may even support Governor Romney. But they’ll tell you his prescription wasn’t going to work.”
On immigration, Romney tried disavow his promise that he will veto the DREAM Act if it lands on his desk as president. The President responded:
“Now, Governor Romney just said he wants to help those young people, too, but during the Republican primary he said, ‘I will veto the DREAM Act’ that would allow these young people to have access. His main strategy during the Republican primary was to say we’re going to encourage self-deportation, making life so miserable on folks that they’ll leave.”
When Romney tried to mislead viewers about the President's response to the attacks on the U.S. embassy on Libya, the moderator made it clear that what Romney was saying was simply not true. President Obama answered:
“The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we were going to find out exactly what happened, that this was an act of terror, and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
And finally, when Romney tried to back away from comments he made to wealthy donors behind closed doors, dismissing half of the American people, the President concluded:
“There’s a fundamentally different vision about how we move our country forward. I believe Governor Romney is a good man—loves his family, cares about his faith. But I also believe that when he said behind closed doors that 47% of the country considered themselves victims, who refused personal responsibility, think about who he was talking about: folks on Social Security who have worked all their lives, veterans who have sacrificed for this country, students who are out there trying to hopefully advance their own dreams but also this country’s dreams, soldiers who are overseas fighting for us right now. People who are working hard every day, paying payroll tax, gas taxes, but don’t make enough income. And I want to fight for them. That’s what I’ve been doing for the last four years—because if they succeed, I believe the country succeeds.”
Happy with the President’s victory tonight? Join #TeamBarack and donate to help him finish this election strong.
By on
President Obama just sent this message:
Tonight, I hope you saw exactly what's at stake in this election.
This race is neck and neck. What happens in the next three weeks will determine which side wins.
That's in your hands—I'll be fighting as hard as I can, but I can't do this without you.
Stand with me tonight. Make a donation to support this campaign before tomorrow's final FEC deadline.
Thank you,
Barack