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PEORIA, Ill. – Mitt Romney's final public appearance before voters here head to the polls was not a typical rally or economic-messaging event.
Instead, a crowd of more than 1,000 college students and area residents were treated to a town hall event, in which Romney made an economic pitch targeted directly at younger voters, while attempting to hold the line on his positions on issues that matter particularly to college students, like government's role in managing student debt or covering birth control.
On the manicured campus of Bradley University, where alum and Romney endorser Rep. Aaron Schock introduced him on Monday night, Romney expanded on his Monday afternoon economic speech, explaining in greater depth what he meant when he told an audience at the University of Chicago that he couldn't understand why young people would vote for Democrats instead of Republicans.
"I and my party are also devoted to making sure we don't pass on to you trillions upon trillions of dollars in debt. We have in the Democratic party people who are consumed with giving more and more benefits to me and my generation, and passing on those burdens to you," Romney said. "Every trillion dollars this president amasses, every year, guess who is going to pay that? Not me. I'm gone. I'm too old to pay it back. You're going to pay it back."
Romney has occasionally struggled to win over younger voters this primary season. In the tight race in neighboring Iowa he finished third among the 17 to 29-year-old demographic, behind Ron Paul and Rick Santorum. In his Ohio victory, Romney finished nine points behind Santorum with voters 18 to 29. In blowout wins in Florida and Arizona, Romney carried the youth vote by double digits.
On Monday evening, Romney told his mostly-younger audience that his economic agenda was designed with them in mind.
"My party, my vision, is about protecting economic freedom for you," Romney said. "I've had it for me. I've had economic freedom. I've achieved beyond my wildest dreams. I want economic freedom for you."
As the event moved to questions, Romney, who rarely delves into social issues unprompted, took a first question about birth control. Told by a young woman that she would like free birth control as part of her own "pursuit of happiness," Romney first appeared to stumble over the abruptness of the question, then gathered himself into a response that dealt with the economics of such a handout, not the morality.
"Look, let me tell you something,” Romney started. “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for? Vote for the other guy, that’s what he’s all about, O.K.? That’s not, that’s not what I’m about."
Likewise, Romney defended his opposition to federal funding for Planned Parenthood, for which he has been roundly criticized by democratic and women's groups in the last few weeks. Asked where women should go for mammograms or other care currently offered by Planned Parenthood after a Romney administration defunded it, the candidate responded:
"Well they can go wherever they’d like to go; this is a free society. But here’s what I’d say, which is the federal government should not tax these people to pay for Planned Parenthood," Romney said. "The idea of the federal government funding Planned Parenthood I’m going to say no, we’re going to stop that."
Regarding student loan debt – a pertinent issue for college students – Romney again opposed government handouts -- or any form of government relief for suffering students, for that matter -- but predicted President Obama would not do the same.
"Best thing I can do for student debt is get you a good job when you come out," Romney said. "And by the way, get ready for President Obama's claim ... I know he is going to come out at some point and talk about how he is going to make it vanish. And that's another -- here I'll give you something for free -- and I'm not going to do that."
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Democrats do not fund their promises...they borrow for them. That is Romney's point. Too many college kids know more about spending than saving..and they love freebies provided by the taxpayer...this is why so many are just wild about Barry. Free money, free loans, free condoms, free beer...whatever it takes - have dough, will vote. and for a hamburger today, we will "gladly" pay on Tuesday.
This should be the point where someone points out that Bush fought two wars and created Medicare Part D without funding.
All politicians try to hide how much they are costing the American taxpayer. The Republicans are just better at it.
As a current college student, I can confirm that what you've just said is true. People my age (myself included at times), constantly think they deserve every luxury the world has to offer, but that they shouldn't have to work for it. Handing us so much for free only reinforces the behavior that causes us to ask, "Why should I work and pay for that myself if someone else will buy it for me?"
Best thing he can do is get me a good job? Then what, raid the company I work for and leave me without my pension plan. Yea thanks Mitt but I think I will pass.
Why would young people vote for obama. Because he wants to tax people like romney more than the 14% of the millions that he makes on his long term investments that are not really long term investments. Why does romeny need to send his money overseas. To tax wash it.
Job Creation
http://energytomorrow.org/job-creation/#/type/all
America's oil and natural gas industry supports 9.2 million men and women across the United States in a wide range of highly skilled, well-paying
professions. In fact, oil and natural gas industry exploration and production
wages are more than double the national average. An analysis of
API's public data, independent research and corporate annual reports finds that
the industry distributed $176 billion in wages paid to U.S. employees, plus
benefits and payments to oil and natural gas leaseholders.
Oil and natural gas companies invest in cutting-edge
technology and offer fulfilling careers to the next generation of American
engineers, geophysicists, chemists, earth scientists, geologists, climate
experts and explorers. These individuals, working with the best technologies,
will help find and recover oil and natural gas here and abroad and help secure
America's energy future. In addition, the industry employs professionals that
most people don't normally associate with our industry, such as botanists and
marine biologists, even zoologists and veterinarians.
With the right government policies in place, the oil and
natural gas industry can create more American jobs that can help grow the U.S.
economy, generate substantial new revenues for government and provide greater
energy security for our nation.
In fact, with increased access to U.S. oil and gas
resources we can create 1
million new jobs in the next ten years alone. To put that in perspective,
that would provide enough jobs for nearly every citizen of Rhode Island. A
recent study by Wood
Mackenzie found that by 2030, nearly 1.4 million new jobs could be added
through policies which encourage development of America's oil and natural
resources, and facilitate Canadian
oil sands production through the development of Keystone XL and other
related piplines. A few examples are as follows:
Shale alone could create 160,000 jobs in Pennsylvania, 20,000 jobs in
New York and 30,000 jobs in West Virginia by 2015.
exploration and development could result in up to 100,000 new
Florida jobs by 2016--just with increased access to federal areas
within the Gulf of Mexico.
the Keystone XL
pipeline could generate nearly
85,000 jobs by 2020
To learn more about the Wood Mackenzie study and view
state specific job creation numbers, view this interactive job creation map.
Let me guess. You work for the PR office of an oil company.
Nice plug for the Marcellus Shale, btw. Can you get at it without polluting the local water supply?
What cracks me up is that he is telling people, essentially, go buy your own insurance that is completely unaffordable, whilst I reduce taxes, again, on the rich.
I'm not sure why he thinks that message is going to play in the general election.
The problem Romney has with people not buying their own insurance is that he doesn't understand what an average person makes. He can afford the best insurance in the country and considers it pocket change.
His idea of poor is owning less than 3 houses.
Willard just wrote off the young vote.
While I understand the positions taken by Mr. Romney, I have yet to hear sound solutions for jobs creation from Romney or any other Republican Candidate. As for young people gaining responsibility for the national debt, who is actually responsible for the national debt? If you were in favor of two wars and a buildup of the Military Industrial Complex, then clearly you should vote for a Republican. If you were for the deregulation of Wall Street and American Banks, then vote for a Republican. I am very open about my support for a national, single payor, healthcare system, because it would take profit out of healthcare delivery. Currently, it costs more per person for healthcare delivery in the United States than it does in any other industrialized country worldwide. Healthcare Insurance Companies make a 30% profit for healthcare insurance coverage. Currently, I can buy my prescription drugs from a pharmacy outside the United States for a price that is 60% less than here in the United States. People need to know that every pharmaceutical company backed the Democratic Healthcare Plan (you may call it Obama-Care) if the Federal Government would block "reimportation of prescription drugs) from foreign pharmacies. So guess what America, my prescription drug costs will increase significantly, I will need healthcare insurance coverage, and my cost of healthcare coverage will increase by thousands of dollars each year, and Healthcare Insurance and Pharmaceutical Companies will make more profit, and the United States will retain the title of "Most Expensive and Poorest Quality Healthcare System" in the world. Young people will not only inherit the debt left by the current administration, they will inherit the debt left by the Republican Party that voted for two wars, deregulation of Wall Street, and deregulation of the Banking System. Pick wisely America, and research everything any candidate tells you.
So let me get this straight: he and his group of lawyers did away with thousands of jobs at the airlines and other companies and now we are supposed to believe him when he says he is all about getting young people jobs? Yeah...right....maybe in China or India...
How did Mr. Romney repay his student loans? Never mind answering.
He transferred the debt back to Harvard and skipped town.
Romney: 'Best thing I can do for student debt is get you a good job'
Students pay college tuition to hear things that are intelligent, not steeped in stupid. Kiss the student vote goodbye. Insulting impoverished students is not the way to impress them, Mr. Money.
But this is the primary, and the base will LOVE it. That's the point, right?
The failed leadership of Willard Mitt Romney while governor of Massachusetts is stunning. His state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, 4 straight years of manufacturing sector job losses, what few jobs that were created, public sector outpaced private sector 6 to 1 and the state's debt increased 16.5%. With a failed leadership record like that, it is no wonder that Willard won't talk about his record as governor.
Thermen: What percent has the federal debt increased in less than 4 years under Obama?
The federal debt increased 89% during Bush II.
So a comparison is irrelevant! The info that I found was that as governor Romney presided over a series of steps that eliminated approximately $1.5 billion deficit for the state. Not sure where you got the state's debt increased by 16.5%. While governor the state hired two people for every one increase in the number of residents. Romney is not a great choice, but he is better than any of the other candidates which include Obama. I am in favor of replacing Obama, Reid, and Boehner since they have all failed and give a new crew a chance to deal with the issues.
Romney was a failed governor, that is why he won't talk about is record there. 47th out 50 in job creation speaks for itself. 46 of the other 50 governors did better than he did.
You had better check the unemployment rate of the other 47 states. Which have the lower rate? BTW he does talk about his record. He did in the debates and every event that I have heard his speak he has mentioned his record. Have a good day!
Romney still lagged behind, ranking near the BOTTOM. Your population metric is pitiful, 45,000 jobs created over 4 years in a state with a population over 6 million equates to .25% per year. Pitiful and disgusting. Not something to brag about. Romney was a FAILED leader. Massachusetts gambled on his "businessman" experience and lost badly.
Why is a comparison irrelevant? You were talking about federal debt and presidents.
The Iraq War cost $1.5 trillion while we cut taxes, a war we did not fund. When did Romney, Santorum, Gingrich, McCain, Boehner and Cantor stand up to that? Now it's a problem?
What this latest foolishness on Romneys part is simply is another example of how far removed his experience in the world is from regular working class folks. He is clueless. Electing him will be like electing Thurston Howell III for president.
More like Gilligan.
No, Santorum is the Gilligan character, and Newt is the Skipper.
Nice one Oats.
I prefer to think of them as the 4 horsemen of the apocolypse though.
Romney is Famine. As he will starve the country.
Santorum is Pestilence. As he will call down a religious plague upon all us non-believers.
Gingrich is War. He's a scrapper who will destroy anyone that gets in his way.
Which leaves Ron Paul as Death. Because his campaign is pretty much dead in the water.
One of Mitt Romney’s chief selling points as a presidential candidate is his business background and self-proclaimed ability to create jobs and boost a lagging economy -- a point frequently trotted out on the campaign trail in economically downtrodden swing states such as Ohio.
Yet, Romney’s record from his days as Massachusetts governor paints a different portrait, that of a politician who swept into office with big promises and a Harvard MBA but who failed to create a meaningful number of jobs for his home state and lacked a clear, concrete economic vision.
Economists from Massachusetts also say Romney was never able to solve the structural problems inherent in the state’s economy — issues that now plague the country as a whole and will challenge whoever becomes president in 2013 -- such as the decline in manufacturing and the dearth of employment for less-educated, low-income workers.
“There is nothing in his record as governor that shows he knows how to address economic failures,” says Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “The thing that’s bothered me most about the Romney campaign is this major distortion of his record.”
When Gov. Romney took office in January 2003, the state was reeling from the rise and fall of the tech bubble in the early 2000s -- a particularly tough blow for Massachusetts, heavy with top-notch biotechnology companies and tech start-ups. These were conditions that Romney inherited, along with an unemployment rate of 5.6 percent. Over the course of Romney’s term, the state’s unemployment rate fell to 4.7 percent.
Yet, look closer at the actual number of jobs created over that time period, and a decidedly less positive picture emerges. By 2007, the state had created roughly 45,800 new jobs, according to federal data, and that’s during a period the Romney camp spins as a time of economic recovery. Manufacturing employment in Massachusetts declined by more than 14 percent, according to Sum’s research, and the unemployment rate would have been much higher, local economists say, were it not for the droves of young college graduates and residents who left the state to live in lower-cost areas.
http://www.nationaljournal.com/2012-presidential-campaign/romney-s-massachusetts-job-record-not-as-great-as-he-wants-you-to-think-20120309
The free birth control question and its' response seemed so contrived--go find the video. They need a better actors.
I wish she would have followed up with "If you don't give free birth control to the ones who can't afford it... teens and the poor, they will have babies, the debt of which will cost this country $100,000 more per child than it would have been to prevent it".
I would love to hear his answer to that.
Your party ran up trillions of dollars worth of debt with unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the resulting nation building along with unfunded Medicare Part D as well as TARP, TBTF, and other socialist acts with the bailouts of the banks and Wall Street. The President of your party who loved the veto, especially the line item veto, could have, killed these socialist bills, but no, the Bush of your party signed all this legislation even when he stood before the American people and campaigned that he didn't believe or share those kinds of values! More and more lies from the righties who are owned by the corporate 1%er's. Your party's past actions and current actions speak volumes as to what "I and my party" truly stand for and the distortions and lies they are willing to tell in order to be elected!!!!
Remember to the Republicans it is only socialism if it helps the people. Corporations are only people if they are getting bashed for their bad business practices. Otherwise they are gods.
Romney wants another round of tax cuts for the wealthy that will add another $3 trillion to the debt. Does this guy really think that the American people are that stupid? He is banking on it.
Yes he does...and sadly some are. When ask about his tax "plan" Mitt said it couldn't be scored. Why, because there was no way to pay for it and it would not create jobs. Just another tax cut for the wealthy.
And then there is spaceman Newt and his 2.50 gas. Last year it was 2 bucks. Inflation I guess. Yet people buy into it.
Real/True American Dream is for each and every one of us to chase. NOT just sit back & relax and wait for hand out or wait for your dream to show up. I'm a new immigrant and I work my butt off to chase that dream. I work two jobs. WAKE UP AMERICANS.
I don't see how Romney can keep trashing the job Obama has done with our economy. Since inauguration day, the Dow is up about 60%, which probably means Romney is about 100 Million richer than he was when Obama took office. Most of us would be pretty happy with a lot less than that.
These repub candidates are idiots
GW Bush:
Repeal the 4th Amendment! No, wait…we’d better call it…the “Patriot Act”! Repeal the 1st Amendment (HR 347)? NDAA Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens? Spy Drones in U.S. air space? No, not yet. We’ll let Obama do those ones. Then we’ll be sure to win the House and the Senate back and eliminate the Constitution once and for all. Just make sure you find Republican candidates who will follow the agenda. Otherwise, put Obama back in since he already supports our agenda - the people really love that guy.
Romney:
Hmmm… Pro-Business? Or Pro-Corporate Elitist? Honey, help me out will ya? You have a straighter face than I do. Well, you know, I don’t know much about the Constitution or how to shred what’s left of it, but I was assured the new foreign policy team will tell me what to do. Well, I do agree with Obama on some things – I support the Patriot Act and the TSA, yeah, and the NDAA too since the Constitution isn’t upheld anymore. And there’s no reason to audit the Fed. It’s only a few tens of billions of dollars that were stolen from the people, and we certainly don’t want to upset our interests or the bankers.
Gingrich:
Simple. I’ll tell Floridians that I’ll put a “colony” on the moon. Trust me, they’ll believe it. They believe Mitt and Rick, don’t they? No, no, they have short memories - they have no recollection whatsoever that I wrote that the “Constitution should be replaced”. But I could always cover that up by using Paul’s lines if they’d ever get him out of the news media. And no, I have no interest in debating with Paul anymore.
Santorum:
Really? CREW (Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington) listed me as one of the top most corrupted Senators? Well I had to vote to raise the debt ceiling 5 times, and for the $7.2 Trillion in unfunded liabilities. I know, I know, I did vote against the 4th, 5th and 10th Amendments – do you think anyone really cares anymore? But at least I did tell them to “go vote for Ron Paul” if they wanted less intrusive government!
Obama:
Well, let me you tell you, the Constitution is “deeply flawed” - I’ve been working on that. We’re much safer now, now that I have implemented Spy Drones in the U.S. And I can assassinate or detain anybody indefinitely without being bothered by that due process mumbo-jumbo. Don’t worry about those meddlesome protesters, I’ve eliminated the 1st Amendment by signing HR 347. On March 16, 2012 I’ve also called for even more secrecy in Government. But they’ll still vote for me, I’m a Democrat!
NoOneButPaul2012!
Translation - Women are free to go where ever they can afford health care. If the can't afford it, tough noogies.
I don't get it: I'm a man, but the state does not own my body, my penis, my semen. With the exception of criminal acts or matters of public health, the government cannot tell me what to do with these. Why are women an exception? What is it that makes my wife's uterus a matter of public accommodation? If the GOP is the party of small, less intrusive government, why are they so hell-bent on setting up shop in her vagina? The debate on invasive vaginal ultrasounds, contraceptive availability, the work done by Planned Parenthood, are all simply astonishing to me. Unless somebody can tell me something different, this certainly looks like a thinly-disguised war on the rights of women to the sanctity of their own bodies and to their ability to seek medical care of their own choosing without having to have some old white dude legislator present in the examining room. I think the repubs have all gone crazy by shamelessly pandering to the religious lunatic, ultra-far-right, tea-bag nutcases to win votes, people who want to wrench the clock back to 1930 and put women in their place, e.g., barefoot and pregnant in the home. Who wants to go back there? Who wants back-alley abortions which kill people? As much as the GOP'ers don't like it, abortions are legal in this country, and the rules are being made by men who cannot possibly suffer the consequences of being pregnant, or dead as a result of unavailability of women's medicine.
Your logic is a bit flawed. The GOP does not want the federal government in your penis, semen or anyone's uterus. They want citizens and private businesses to have choices. Obamacare eliminates your choices. It tells the insurance companies what they will cover, how much they can profit, how they conduct business. It also tell the citizen what they have to buy. The GOP is not trying to limit "women's medicine".
" back to 1930 and put women in their place". This is what Democrats do. They assume that women will willingly give up freedom of making their own healthcare choices in exchange for no co-pay on birth control pills. Guess what??? If there is no co-pay, you just pay extra.
Republicans don't want their tax dollars spent on contraceptives or Planned Parenthood or student loan or any other socially relevant issue. All things which may improve the lives of the people benefiting from the help. I don't want my tax dollars spent on wars, oil company subsidies and campaigning to not have the rich people pay their fair share but no one seems to care what I think. Romney is so uncomfortable speaking in front of the people he reminds me of a kid in class who is just praying that the teacher does not call on him because he knows he doesn't have the correct answer. Santorum is a scary guy who wants less intrusive government but wants to impose his morals on the rest of us. Newt - well why mention this pompo
us, pink and sweaty little manYou are right. Republicans believe in personal responsibility. If you are on medicaid, you can already get contraceptives. If you are not poor, it should not come out of taxes.There are many things that benefit my life that I would never in a million years expect the federal government to supply me. Our taxes should go toward things that one cannot provide for themself....like security, roads.
A tax break to an oil company (allowing them to keep more of their own money) is not taking taxes from you. If we taxed them higher, they'd just raise the price. If you don't want your taxes spent on war, you should voice that concern to the people you voted for. You will likely find that they supported the war...not just the GOP.