Representative Michele Bachmann stated during her debate segment with Senator Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) that health insurance costs have risen 9% in the past year under 'Obamacare,' and that families (women) pay $2,000 dollars more in gas per year under President Obama, and that these are the real issues that women should be concerned about.
What you can appreciate about this debate is that the two representatives from their respective sides elevated it beyond the misplaced comments by the CNN contributor Hilary Rosen. However, the two spoke on different planes. When asked about women, Mrs. Bachmann, as previously mentioned talked about the economic impact on women whereas Mrs. Gillibrand spoke about womens' freedom to make health care choices. When Mrs. Bachmann finally weighed in on the points that the Senator was making, her argument completely fell down. Congresswoman Bachmann said that HR1 was a law designed to have women make their own health care choices, but that's simply not the case - it was an abortion restriction bill, which has been followed by 90 state bills that have been passed restricting a woman's choices with her doctor. As we've said before, legislating womens' bodies is the ultimate in big government control over an individual, more so than a health care mandate ever would be. And speaking of the mandate, the reason why health care costs have gone up 9% is not because of 'Obamacare,' which hasn't been fully implemented yet, but instead it is because that private insurance companies are trying to reap as much profit as possible before it kicks in when they won't be able to charge what ever they want, taking advantage of people.
So when Mr. Gregory challenges Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on the strength of the economy and the recovery that is still underway, of course he's going to say is still pretty tough. And the reason that it's still tough right now, as it applies to this country, separating out for a moment Europe's financial situation and the effect it has on the stock market, is that President Obama and the Democrats put in place rules such as Dowd-Frank and the Affordable Health Care Act to rein corporate excess. Of course one person's excess is another person's extra profit.
In between the lines you can distill the different strategies. The Obama Administration is looking more long term, while Republicans are looking for the politically and economically expedient. This bears out with regard to the debt and deficit. Mrs. Bachmann stated that in 15 years our economy will collapse under the weight of our debt if we stay on the trajectory we're on, to which Mr. Geithner disagreed. But even if this collapse were inevitable, the Republican answer in the form of the Paul Ryan budget plan doesn't head this off. His budget, if enacted, would not balance the budget until 2040 - 28 years from now.
Despite the anemic job growth numbers, Secretary Geithner stated that by all indications, the policies the administration has put in place are having a positive effect. He cited the growth in business and manufacturing and an increase in consumer confidence. With a weak dollar, manufacturing will pick up hence businesses will grow which is all good, but a weak dollar doesn't help consumers so why the increase in confidence? It's a false label, it's not that consumers have more confidence, it's just that they've had to figure out how to buy things with less money and that took some time to figure out - get out of your house, take the second job, sell a few things, and only now are people starting to buy things again, specifically, for example, women and moms.
"Ridiculous," was the word Mr. Geithner used to describe Mr. Romney's statement that 92% of the jobs lost belonged to women. That's not even a real news maker because no one has really come to believe anything that Mitt Romney says, the core realization that the public will come to and the primary reason why he will not be elected President. Calling Mr. Romney out like that doesn't require any political courage, and where Mr. Geithner could have exercised some was when he rightly mentioned teachers losing their jobs and that a high percentage of those positions are held by women. Where he came up short was that he didn't explain that those teacher job losses were the product of Republican state houses cutting their public budgets and shifting the dollars to tax cutting. He didn't go there. Nor did he mention, as Mrs. Gillibrand correctly did, the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act that President Obama signed into law. How does Mrs. Bachmann defend, for example, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's decision to repeal that law on the state level. She can't and she has to change the subject as she did today because it's not OK that an employer can just decide to pay a woman 75 cents on the dollar for an equal amount of work - simply.
Then there is the whole 'still blaming George Bush' debate and if it's still valid to do so, as Mr. Geithner did today in the context of the tax cuts, with which Mrs. Bachmann took umbrage. Well, in a way as far as continued Bush blame - no, but ultimately in a way - yes. No, because the Obama Administration has not done a good enough job of controlling government waste in medicare and medicaid and has not cut the defense budget at all. However, we're still debating the Bush tax cuts. And if we really want to get rid of the 'blame George Bush' game, then we have to eliminate the tax cuts that carry his name. If you're a Democrat that means raising the rate back up to what it was in the Clinton era. If you're a Republican, that means replacing the namesake (insert Romney or Ryan) and providing an even larger permanent cut.
That's the choice going forward now that the general is effectively on, and as Mike Murphy said during the round table, it's going to get nasty, quickly - no one seemed to disagree. How could anyone in the stratosphere disagree with that? Thirty-five million dollars was spent between Mr. Romney's campaign and his surrogates on attacking Rick Santorum, in the primary. That figure will balloon to about $300 million in the general, not to be outdone by much by Mr. Obama. Ironically, Chuck Todd said that Mr. Romney was getting tagged with Santorum rhetoric. Mr. Romney had to go too far to the right in our estimation to get the votes over his opponents and in some cases, too far from which to recover. This is why Mr. Gregory illustrated the disparity in respective support from women votes - 57% for Mr. Obama, 38% for Mr. Romney. Also, a costly factor in the election. Voter turnout, as Mr. Todd, mentioned will be negatively effective, especially on the Republican side if Mr. Romney starts walking any hard right statements back to the middle, combined with the negative advertising.
And instead of debating whether or not Mitt Romney should make an appearance on Saturday Night Live, how about we give a little thought to what Mr. Geithner said during his interview, which was that history will judge what President Obama has done, is doing, and what he will do favorably. After all, Mike Murphy said that the election would be a referendum on each individual - stick with that. Some would argue that history will not be favorable given the $5 trillion in debt that has accumulated under the Obama Administration so far. They'll be correct if Mr. Obama wins a second term and doesn't focus on deficit reduction once the health care act is in full effect. If Romney wins the election, Mr. Obama's policies will be looked upon as even more favorably because Mr. Romney will throw back the country into a deep recession and then people once again long for fiscal sanity.
Round table: former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr. (D-TN), Republican strategist Mike Murphy, and NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie and Chuck Todd.
Postscript: Mr. Gregory's interview with Bill Cosby (excerpted during the program) provided nice closure to the program despite some frivolous conversation during the panel. We agree with Mr. Cosby that the Trayvon Martin shooting should be more a conversation about the gun instead of race. Sadly, there is nary a politician with the political courage to speak up about it. We would also agree that it is un-American to route for the failure of the President because in essence, hoping for that is hoping that America fails, and that just sucks.
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