The First Presidential Debate Essay, Research Paper

For the first time face to face the first debate of the 2000 presidential election was held at the campus of the University of Massachusetts. For ninety minutes last night, Democratic candidate Vice President Al Gore and Republican Candidate Governor of Texas George W. Bush battled one another over tax cuts, prescription drugs, Social Security, energy policy, abortion, and education.

On issues such as tax cuts, the Vice President proposed a plan, which cut taxes for middle class families, balance budgets every year, and pay down the national debt. He accused the Governor of cutting taxes for only the wealthiest 1% of the population. Gore s plan was for every $1 given to things like education and health, another $1 would be given for middle class tax cuts, and for every dollar spent there, $2 would be expended to bring down the national debt. Gore felt that it was important to resist squandering the budget surplus. He also felt the prosperity should be used to enrich families and

help parents strengthen families, making sure the schools they attended were safe, and preventing exposure to cultural pollution.

Governor Bush s views on tax cuts differed. His proposal was to put one half towards Social Security, one fourth towards important projects and the remaining one fourth to the people who pay the bills. Also accusing Gore of Medi Scare, he said he would make sure all seniors have Medicare and a variety of options to choose from. He also proposed a plan, Immediate Helping Hand, in which seniors could get immediate healthcare if they needed it.

Gore opposed his Medicare payment plan saying that it would fail to help seniors for the first four to five years and that Bush s plan spends more money on tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent, than all the spending he proposes for education, health care, prescription drugs and national defense combined. He also had much to say about the energy crisis. He wants to explore local areas for gas and oil, thus reducing dependency upon foreign sources. Gore agreed that reliance overseas for oil should be reduced but had something else in mind to reduce it. He proposed the idea of new trucks, cars, and machinery that reduces pollution and uses less energy. Bush felt that we should, rather than import one million barrels of oil a day from Saddam Hussein, drill the oil here. He wants to also join Canada and Mexico in exploring the land for oil reserves.

Out of all the comments that Bush made about Gore last night, the most prominent one probably was when he kept on asking why Gore s priorities haven t been accomplished by now. For example, on prescription drugs, he said, It seems like they can t get it done And on energy policy to prevent future shortages he said, He should have been tackling it for the past seven years. Another would be when Gore did the math on Bush s tax plan and demonstrated why it would not be a good decision, Bush replied that he was doing fuzzy math. and phony numbers They couldn t even agree on the size of the tax cut. Bush said that he would return $1.3 trillion of the predicted ten-year budget surplus to taxpayers. Gore said it would be $600 billion more than that.

These somewhat heated debates will continue Wednesday, October 11 and Thursday, October 12, 2000.