iraq. he s also the vice president s son. mitt romney has hammered president obama for the automatic military cuts that could take place as a result of congress failing to reach a debt deal. even the defense secretary said the cuts could be staef dating. does that hurt the president in the vet community? number one, congress must act and avoid sequestration op any of these defense cuts. number two, you know, governor romney seems to confuse the defense budget from the veterans budget. what i have spent the last several months talking about is the president s, not just his decisiveness as a what happeneder and chief and what a strong leader he s been and going after al qaeda around the world and eliminating osama bin laden from the face of the earth, but also honoring the commitment to veterans. you know, mitt romney, as you well know, spent his entire convention speech accepting his party s nomination to be commander in chief and didn t
one of the main reasons record sur plass under bill clinton were turned into record deficits under george bush is because we put two wars it and two tax cuts on a credit card and now governor romney wants another $5 trillion in tax cuts that he can t pay for? not if i have anything to say about it. that s not going to happen. we are not going to let this country fall backward, not now, not with so much at stake. we ve got to move forward. we need to invest in small business and manufacturers who create jobs here in the united states. we need to recruit 100,000 math and science teachers, train 2 million workers at community college, bring down the cost of college tuition. [ cheers and applause ]
the country as we talk about there are certainly people on both sides locked in, but it s the independents that will turn this thing. i believe based on my research, it s abortion, birth control and equal pay for equal work. do you think mitt romney has enough time to make any time of dent in that. i don t think his platform is appealing to a modern woman. do you think we ve seen and heard a lot of critics saying mitt romney tried to get back to the middle in the first debate do you think we ll see that push in the second and third? i think we might but i m hopeful what we ll hear next time is about women and what matters to them when they vote. susan shapiro, thanks for coming in. i know a lot of women probably share your feelings about that and hope to hear from the president and mitt romney about their concerns in the next two coming up. so some of you may have noticed i m in pink today. this cool pink tie, not just any time, this is in honor of national breast cancer mo
joining me is susan author of the book the nine phases of marriage who teaches gender studies at marymount manhattan college. among the issues that we have not heard from either candidate from that debate, contraception, abortion, both big issues that have been leading up through the primaries certainly, why do you think they were omitted? i don t know. i can only tell you it was so unfortunate because nothing is more important than the female vote and also, equal pay for equal work and education and scholarship. these are big issues for women today. was this a moment of missed opportunity because there is a gender gap, certainly for mitt romney, with the president leading in the women s vote, the women s voter block. the president is leading there. let s see what happens next. i thought it was unfortunate. i mean there are more women in graduate schools and undergraduate programs today in america and women s have more, women of all ages. it s important for these two candidates
speech, that same kind of tone, and the part i would say he s got to add because romney was this human statistics machine and most of the statistics weren t even accurate, but statistics sound really good when you re not disabusing the other person of the factual nature of them. so the president has got to come back and be able to tear apart, you know, governor romney s arguments, not just rhetorically but with really hard numbers, and the numbers are there. and so i would if i was the president s team start putting those numbers in his stump speech. they will become second nature come the second debate. people like specifics, especially if they are based in a truthful foundation. my past to the power panel, chris, jonathan, and susan. coming up, the vice president s oldest son enlisted for re-election campaign efforts, particularly to get and connect with vets across this country. that s a voting bloc that beau biden knows very well. however, the president is not doing so well withi