Last night's vice presidential debate between Democratic Senator Joe Biden and Republican Governor Sarah Palin moderated by Gwen Ifill of the PBS NewsHour covered a wide range of topics. Predictably, a great portion of the debate time was focused on foreign affairs and specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both candidates tried their best to fulfill the role of VP as attack dog for the person at the top of the ticket, so much breath was spent on criticisms of the other candidate's policies and less on arguments for their own positions. However, OhMyGov! did scour the transcript and found a few tidbits from each VP candidate on their vision of the role of government.
Governor Sarah Palin
We need to make sure that we demand from the federal government strict oversight of those entities in charge of our investments and our savings.
Patriotic is saying, government, you know, you're not always a solution; in fact, too often you're the problem. So government, lessen the tax burden on the private sector and on our families, and get out of the way and let the private sector an dour families grow and thrive and prosper.
[McCain is] proposing a $5,000 tax credit for families so that they can get out there and they can purchase their own health care coverage. And that's a smart thing to do. That's budget neutral. That doesn't cost the government anything, as opposed to Barack Obama's plan to mandate health care coverage and have this universal government-run program. And unless you're pleased with the way that the federal government has been running anything lately, I don't think that it's going to be real pleasing for Americans to consider healthcare being taken care by the feds.
Senator Joe Biden
I think [the financial bailout bill is] neither the best or worst of Washington, but it's evidence of the fact that the economic policies of the last eight years have been the worst economic policies we've ever had. As a consequence, you've seen what's happened on Wall Street. If you need any more proof positive of how bad the economic theories have been --this excess of deregulation, the failure to oversee what was going on, letting Wall Street run wild -- I don't think you needed any more evidence than what you see now. So the Congress has been put in --Democrats and Republicans, have been put in a very difficult spot. But Barack Obama laid out four basic criteria for any kind of rescue plan here. He first of all said there has to be oversight. We're not going to write any checks to anybody unless there's oversight for the -- of the secretary of Treasury.
Barack Obama believes by investing in clean coal and safe nuclear we can not only create jobs in wind and solar here in the United States, we can export it.
Watch the clip courtesy of C-SPAN and for the full debate go to C-SPAN's debate hub.
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