Henry and I were able to attend this debate last night between Glen Urquhart and John Carney, moderated by a UD professor named Nancy Karibjanian. You can watch the full debate yourself at the UD website, or read an article at the delawareonline.com website, or keep reading here for my synopsis...
Carney has been a professional politician for many years, and it showed. Urquhart was very nervous at the beginning, but quickly hit his stride and spoke in detail about the issues. Where Carney stayed consistent with general statements of the Democratic Party platform, Urquhart was specific and energized about changes he would make.
Carney referred to himself as a “loyal Democrat” and smugly repeated the tired line, “I am a tea drinker, not a Tea party” candidate when asked. In his opening statement, he mainly focused on his time spent traveling around the state talking to residents who have fallen on hard times, citing the 6,000 home foreclosures in Delaware last year.
Urquhart stated that he was an independent jobs creator who had run against the establishment in the primary, and said that although he did not claim to be a Tea Party candidate, he was concerned like tens of millions of Americans that government debt is crowding out private investment. He gave a nod to Glenn Beck by saying he believed that “Faith, Hope, Charity and Trust” were vitally important. He said he would “peacefully and vigorously” work to restore the American Dream, and referenced the fact that his great-grandfather had come to this country as an indentured servant, and that he himself is the first member of his family to attend college.
For the most part, Carney talked about bringing people together by finding like-minded individuals. His solution to the economy is providing more government funding through programs like the recently passed $30B commercial bank fund. He also spoke about ‘green technology jobs’ and cited the wind turbines being built off the Delaware coast. He got quiet about that program after Urquhart revealed that Carney had personally taken a $1.5 million dollar federal grant to start his own wind turbine company. Funny how all of these green jobs promoters seem to benefit by the federal largesse is that area, isn’t it?
Carney frequently referred to the UD science and technology jobs that are being created, and stated that we need to deal with job creation immediately and put off dealing with the deficit as a ‘long term” goal. Somehow he missed the irony of going further in debt to create public sector jobs rather than reducing federal debt and allowing the private economy to grow and produce private sector jobs.
This was the most drastic difference between the candidates. Urquhart kept going back to debt reduction and private economy job creation, even pulling out Reagan’s quote “Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem."
Both candidates recognize the need for jobs in our state. With a current unemployment rate of 8.4%, there are about 35,000 unemployed Delawareans as I write this. When asked by the moderator for specifics, Carney said that government is responsible for ensuring that small businesses can thrive, and must supply the capital. Urquhart took a very different approach, saying that all of the thousands of pages of regulations are creating a “culture of compliance” where entrepreneurs are unwilling to take risks to succeed. He firmly believes that deregulation is needed, but not across the board. He specifically highlighted safety regulations as an example, and reiterated his point that government does not create jobs; its role is defense and protection.
Carney stated that the economic collapse is entirely due to risky Wall Street investments, while Urquhart equally blamed the government regulations that demanded quotas for high-risk mortgages and made millionaires of the government appointees who forced those quotas on private banks.
They discussed the current Dodd Frank bill several times, and Carney snidely suggested that Urquhart had not read the bill and that he himself had read the summary. I almost broke the silence rule at that point, because Urquhart is such a numbers wonk I am certain he read more than just a summary! Unfortunately, Urquhart missed the opportunity to respond. That bill devastates the Delaware financial industry, by nationalizing what had been Delaware’s unique corporate climate that has allowed the state to generate 20-25% of its state budget from corporate fees.
On health care, Carney said the current legislation is “a work in progress”, and that the solution is better management and electronic records to control costs. Urquhart called the current plan “government tax care” and mentioned the recent announcement by McDonald’s that it will no longer be able to offer healthcare to its employees due to increased costs of compliance. He believes that competition across state lines, and State managed high risk pools are a better solution than the current plan that mandates nationalized provisions demanded by special interests.
There was much more, so I will stop here and report the rest in my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment