Rick Santorum has a lot of problems when it comes to Economics. He has the most baggage in his voting record, or at least as much as Newt Gingrich. Rick Santorum has been an "active duty" politician for 16 years, first serving in the House of Representatives and then a Senator for Pennsylvania for 12 years straight. During this time, he cast a lot of votes. His voting record can be found here (via votesmart.org).
He made a few bad Economics votes, such as voting to raise the minimum wage which seems like a good thing for lower-income workers, but in fact has been proven to hurt more people than it helps by forcing employers to lay their workers off instead of increase their wage. Employers then either double the work load of the remaining workers, replace workers with wage-free machines, or produce things in China where they can pay remarkably low wages.
Rick Santorum voted for No Child Left Behind. There are arguments as to whether this program is successful or not, but regardless, it is bad policy. It has huge expenses and gives more power to the Department of Education. This federal department should not exist - it creates too much waste and inefficiencies. The responsibility to educate should lie with the States and local government. Let the states come up with their own programs, and let the people migrate to the state with the best program. Competition between the states will improve education while decreasing cost and inefficiencies.
Rick Santorum has voted to increase military spending every single time that he has had the chance, and he has voiced that he will continue to do so (to be fair, so has every other candidate but Ron Paul). But Rick seems to be the one who is most emotionally and religiously attached to protecting our allies and destroying our enemies. Emotion and religion should not play a part in defense spending and military action. Keep in mind, that defense spending is our 2nd largest budget item leading to our $15,300,000,000,000 debt.
Rick Santorum has increased the debt limit 5 times since he has been in office. The debt limit increases allow Congress to spend more and more and more and more. We need someone with the courage to vote against these debt increases, forcing us to default on our payments to our debtors, causing them to downgrade our credit, thus causing us to cut our welfare and military spending. Rick Santorum could not make this tough decision, so how can he make tougher decisions as President?
These are a few reasons why Rick will not win my vote.
I really appreciate your presidential candidate profiles! I agree with you that it is good to make an informed vote and that it is time consuming to find out for yourself what these people running for president are actually like. I feel like I never know who to believe and honestly, listening to the debates to hear them take up issues in person hasn't really helped much because there is so much bashing (although I haven't hear much Ron Paul bashing during debates) that it makes it hard to know who actually did what and why they did so... I like that you have facts written out for me to read in a short, concise article and that you point out some other resources.
ReplyDeleteAs for Rick Santorum, I didn't know these things about him. From what I have heard on the radio, news and debates, I guess I thought he was pretty ok. There were some of his views that I don't agree with but overall, I didn't have a huge opinion about him so I really appreciate some more facts on his record.
So do you know anything about how any of the candidates future plans or general views might directly impact graduate students? I'm in graduate school and I heard another grad student complaining about something that Obama did last year that negatively affected them but I don't remember what it was.
Thanks Daniela! I've found that the easiest way to determine which candidate most aligns with your values is to go to votesmart.org and go to their VoteEasy page. http://www.votesmart.org/voteeasy/ It's quick too.
ReplyDeleteAs for how any of the candidate's views will directly impact graduate students in the near future, Barack Obama is probably the preferred candidate for graduate students. He has strongly supported giving more loans and grants to students. So if you need short term assistance, and that is your deal breaker, Barack is your man.
Of course, that comes at a cost in the long run. Free money sounds great to the people receiving it, and as a politician, that is how you receive votes - promise more money to more people. And it's a free ride for those politicians because they don't have to deal with the consequences of their own spending. The time the massive deficits affect the economy, they'll be long out of office. So although free money from Barack sounds great, in the long run his spending spree is going to have a large negative effect on the entire country - including drastic cuts in education spending. The downturn in the economy will then hurt the chances of the graduates at that time to get a job. In the long run, massive spending is detrimental to everyone in the economy.