Since asking the candidates at Tuesday’s presidential debate how they would improve his job prospects, college junior Jeremy Epstein has been lionized on Twitter, repeatedly interviewed on television and declared a nerdy sex symbol.
Unfortunately, as they have throughout the campaign, Romney and Obama avoided details when answering Epstein’s thoughtful question. Instead, they lampooned each others’ records and policies. Such answers are to be expected, arguably, in the waning weeks of an extraordinarily tight presidential campaign.
But an analysis of Obama’s and Romney’s specific proposals and the positions of their key advisers – particularly when it comes to creating manufacturing jobs – shows that voters do face a critical choice. This is, in fact, an election that will send the federal government in one of two very different directions when it comes to long-term job creation.
In his answer at the debate, Romney referred to his five-point plan that he said will create 12 million new jobs in the United States. The plan, which is detailed in a white paper endorsed by four leading conservative economists, is a full-throated endorsement of using tax breaks and market forces alone to revive the American economy. While Romney is tacking toward the center in the race’s final weeks, it is fair for voters to assume that he will slash the size of government, and rely on a free-market approach to the economy.
The white paper, for example, calls for reducing federal spending to 20 percent of GDP by 2016, its pre-financial crisis average. It hails Romney’s proposed across the board 20 percent tax break. And it calls for a sweeping reduction in government regulation, specifically repeal of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street regulations and Obamacare. The word “manufacturing” does not appear in it.
