Five Takeaways From The Final Presidential Debate

Much to the vexation of moderator Bob Schieffer, last night’s presidential debate on foreign policy kept swerving towards America’s issues at home. Here are the five things workers need to know about the final faceoff:

1. Romney’s jobs math doesn’t compute. Last night the GOP contender claimed, “I've got a policy for the future and an agenda for the future. And when it comes to our economy here at home, I know what it takes to create 12 million new jobs and rising take-home pay.” But The Washington Post’s fact checker has awarded him four Pinocchios – it’s most untrue rating – for a “bait-and-switch” that “does not add up.” The researchers cited by the campaign even say their studies don’t help support Romney’s 12 million jobs conclusion.

2. Don’t count on training programs. Romney said, “We're going to have to have training programs that work for our workers for our workers and schools that finally put the parents and the teachers and the kids first, and the teachers union's going to have to go behind.” But as ThinkProgress points out, “Paul Ryan’s budget, which Romney has fully endorsed, calls for spending 33 percent less on ‘Education, training, employment, and social services’ than Obama’s budget.”

3. We all love teachers, but Romney sure has a funny way of expressing his adoration. Remember when he mocked Obama for wanting to hire more teachers? NEA President Dennis Van Roekel said, “Mitt Romney claims he loves teachers on the one hand, while attacking teachers’ unions on the other. How he manages to separate educators from their unions is baffling. Regardless though, educators know that only one candidate has gone beyond the rhetoric.” AFT President Randi Weingarten quipped that he must love teachers like he loves Big Bird.

4. Romney said “Let Detroit go bankrupt.” Read it for yourself here. Despite his protests to the contrary, Romney’s plan would have destroyed America’s auto industry. Ezra Klein writes, “Note that Romney calls for post-bankruptcy guarantees, not pre-bankruptcy guarantees. That’s the rub: The credit markets were frozen, and most experts thought Detroit couldn’t find the private financing to survive a managed bankruptcy. That’s where federal money came in.”

5. There was little reaching across the aisle in Massachusetts. Romney claimed, “I was in a state where my legislature was 87 percent Democrat. I learned how to get along on the other side of the aisle. We've got to do that in Washington.” Yet The New York Times has discovered, “Bipartisanship was in short supply; Statehouse Democrats complained he variously ignored, insulted or opposed them, with intermittent charm offensives. He vetoed scores of legislative initiatives and excised budget line items a remarkable 844 times, according to the nonpartisan research group Factcheck.org. Lawmakers reciprocated by quickly overriding the vast bulk of them. The big-ticket items that Mr. Romney proposed when he entered office in January 2003 went largely unrealized, and some that were achieved turned out to have a comparatively minor impact.”