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Candidates Spar over Unemployment, Economic Policy

HeadlineOct 17, 2012

Tuesday night marked the first presidential debate moderated by a woman in two decades. Contraception and other so-called women’s issues were featured more prominently than in the first debate. The candidates also sparred over unemployment and taxes.

Mitt Romney: “The president’s policies have been exercised over the last four years, and they haven’t put Americans back to work. We have fewer people working today than we had when the president took office. If the — the unemployment rate was 7.8 percent when he took office; it’s 7.8 percent now. But if you calculated that unemployment rate taking back the people who dropped out of the work force, it would be 10.7 percent. We have not made the progress we need to make to put people back to work. That’s why I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.”

President Obama: “Governor Romney says he’s got a five-point plan. Governor Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan; he has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector; that’s been his philosophy as governor; that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate.”

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