Drexel Democrats, Republicans debate economy
Zohaib Ahmad
Issue date: 10/31/08 Section: News
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The College Republicans, represented by Nick Wascovich, Ivan Skakun and Raghav Srinivasan, began the debate with an overview of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain's economic plans if he is elected.
"McCain believes that the free market has to exist," Skakun said.
The Drexel Democrats, represented by Dadly Cordero, John Lloyd and Babs Tennent, began with an overview of the current economic crisis. Tennent advocated the Democratic Party and Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, as the forces of positive change for the economy.
"Historically, the economic growth of Democrat administrations is much greater than those of Republican administrations," Tennent said.
The most debated topics at the event were education and student loans.
"McCain's standpoint on education, students and the private sector is the best part of his platform," Skakun said.
According to the Drexel Republicans, McCain proposes to allow private companies to give out loans to students, and he calls for higher education tax benefits.
On the other hand, Obama proposes the loans to be given out by the federal government. Yet, similar to McCain, Obama wants to simplify the financial aid application.
"The centerpiece of his proposals," Lloyd said, "is his $4,000 refundable tax credit." This credit is given to families with kids who are in college.
Both the Drexel Democrats and Republicans debated extensively on tax cuts.
McCain wants to lower tax rates, and to advocate this, the Drexel Republicans argued against Obama's plan to raise taxes for those people who earn more than $250,000 a year, and to give refundable tax cuts to those who earn less.
"Obama takes money from taxes and then the money goes to families who don't pay in the tax system," Wascovich said.
The Drexel Democrats countered with the argument that those families still pay into the system with things such as sales taxes.
Concerning businesses, McCain calls for cutting corporate tax rates, while Obama wants to raise the corporate tax rate to 1990s levels of 39 percent from 36.9 percent.
"[Obama] is going to target the most successful small businesses, which contradicts Obama's 'small business' rhetoric," Srinivasan said. He then referred to this as a move towards socialistic policy by saying, "[Obama] wants to spread the wealth around."
"It is ridiculous to say that the difference between socialism and free market is 39 percent and 36.9 percent," Lloyd said.
Professor Scott Knowles from the department of history and politics moderated this student-organized economic policy debate.
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