Things that Romney Could Have Said

A lot of people are criticizing Obama for leaving things out of last week's debate. Might I level a similar charge at his opponent?............1) When Mr. Obama pointed out that Medicare's overhead is smaller that that of the private insurers, Romney could have responded by specifying that there is a lot of hidden overhead in Medicare and that the fraud rate for both Medicare and Medicaid is approximately 10% (a figure that doesn't even include the "soft fraud" and the milking of the system).............2) When Obama said that Mr. Romney's premium-support plan for Medicare (a concept that up to now has had a fair degree of bipartisan support) would allow for insurance companies to only accept the healthier seniors, he could have pointed out that he is opposed to insurance companies refusing individuals due to pre-existing conditions and that the denial of service rates are actually higher in Medicare than they are with the private providers.............3) When Obama said that the Affordable Care Act was exactly the same as that which Governor Romney first created in Massachusetts, he could have (in addition to what he did say about state versus federal) responded by saying, "Yes, Mr. President. The only difference we didn't dole out a bunch of bribes to legislators in order to get their votes AND, once in fact the program did start, we didn't grant a whole bunch of waivers to well-connected political toughies."............4) When Mr. Obama said that he wanted to hire 100,000 (I think that that was the number) new teachers, he could have countered that one by saying, "The only problem here is that, like with the stimulus package, once the federal money runs out, you're essentially back to square one. You're certainly not saying that the federal government should take a permanent role in hiring local personnel, are you?"............5) When Obama kept on muttering how he wanted to raise taxes on everybody making over $250,000 a year, he could have countered that one by saying, "Alright, let's say that we do do that. You do realize, don't you, Mr. President, that that would only raise approximately 70 billion a year (assuming that it doesn't dampen economic activity) and that the deficits for as long as the eye can see are in excess of a trillion a year. Don't you think that maybe you're being just a little cute on this one?" That, and he could have also pointed out that the top 10% already pay 70% of all the federal income taxes NOW.