奥巴马罗姆尼辩论会：2012美国总统大选首场电视辩论视频及文(9)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: (Inaudible.)

MR. LEHRER: Come back to Medicaid, here, yeah, yeah, right.

MR. ROMNEY: — oil to tax breaks and companies overseas. So let's go through them one by one. First of all, the Department of Energy has said the tax break for oil companies is $2.8 billion a year. And it's actually an accounting treatment, as you know, that's been in place for a hundred years. Now —

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It's time to end it.

MR. ROMNEY: And — and in one year, you provided $90 billion in breaks to the green energy world. Now, I like green energy as well, but that's about 50 years' worth of what oil and gas receives, and you say Exxon and Mobil — actually, this $2.8 billion goes largely to small companies, to drilling operators and so forth.

But you know, if we get that tax rate from 35 percent down to 25 percent, why, that $2.8 billion is on the table. Of course it's on the table. That's probably not going to survive, you get that rate down to 25 percent.

But — but don't forget, you put $90 billion — like 50 years worth of breaks — into solar and wind, to — to Solyndra and Fisker and Tesla and Ener1. I mean, I — I had a friend who said, you don't just pick the winners and losers; you pick the losers. All right? So — so this is not — this is not the kind of policy you want to have if you want to get America energy-secure.

The second topic, which is you said you get a deduction for getting a plant overseas. Look, I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about. I maybe need to get a new accountant.

MR. LEHRER: Let's —

MR. ROMNEY: But the — the idea that you get a break for shipping jobs overseas is simply not the case.

MR. LEHRER: Let's have —

MR. ROMNEY: What we do have right now is a setting —

MR. LEHRER: Excuse me.

MR. ROMNEY: — where I'd like to bring money from overseas back to this country.

And finally, Medicaid to states, I'm not quite sure where that came in, except this, which is, I would like to take the Medicaid dollars that go to states and say to a state, you're going to get what you got last year plus inflation — inflation — plus 1 percent. And then you're going to manage your care for your poor in the way you think best.

And I remember as a governor, when this idea was floated by Tommy Thompson, the governors, Republican and Democrats, said, please let us do that. We can care for our own poor in so much better and more effective a way than having the federal government tell us how to care for our poor.

So let states — one of the magnificent things about this country is the whole idea that states are the laboratories of democracy. Don't have the federal government tell everybody what kind of training programs they have to have and what kind of Medicaid they have to have. Let states do this.

And by the way, if a states get — gets in trouble, why, we could step in and see if we could find a way to help them. But —

MR. LEHRER: Let's go.

MR. ROMNEY: But — but the right — the right approach is one which relies on the brilliance —

MR. LEHRER: Two seconds.

MR. ROMNEY: — of our people and states, not the federal government.

MR. LEHRER: Two seconds and we're going on, still on the economy on another — but another part of it.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: OK.

MR. LEHRER: All right? All right, this is this is segment three, the economy, entitlements.

First answer goes to you. It's two minutes. Mr. President, do you see a major difference between the two of you on Social Security?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we've got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound. It's going to have to be tweaked the way it was by Ronald Reagan and Speaker — Democratic Speaker Tip O'Neill. But it is — the basic structure is sound. But — but I want to talk about the values behind Social Security and Medicare and then talk about Medicare, because that's the big driver —

MR. LEHRER: Sure — it — you bet.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: — of our deficits right now.

You know, my grandmother, some of you know, helped to raise me. My grandparents did. My grandfather died awhile back. My grandmother died three days before I was elected president. And she was fiercely independent. She worked her way up, only had a high school education, started as a secretary, ended up being the vice president of a local bank. And she ended up living alone by choice. And the reason she could be independent was because of Social Security and Medicare. She had worked all her life, put in this money and understood that there was a basic guarantee, a floor under which she could not go.

And that's the perspective I bring when I think about what's called entitlements. You know, the name itself implies some sense of dependency on the part of these folks. These are folks who've worked hard, like my grandmother. And there are millions of people out there who are counting on this.

So my approach is to say, how do we strengthen the system over the long term? And in Medicare, what we did was we said, we are going to have to bring down the costs if we're going to deal with our long- term deficits, but to do that, let's look where some of the money is going. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars we were able to save from the Medicare program by no longer overpaying insurance companies, by making sure that we weren't overpaying providers.