Former Gov. Linda Lingle said Tuesday that she, like most people in Hawaii, was proud of Hawaii-born President Barack Obama but that the president has not done enough to improve the economy.
Asked by U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono, her Democratic opponent for U.S. Senate, why she believes former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney would be a better president for Hawaii than Obama, Republican Lingle said Romney has the proper experience to get the economy back on track.
"It’s true that President Obama inherited a very difficult economy and a very difficult situation. And he’s tried, and I’m sure he’s done his best to make things better. But it just hasn’t worked," Lingle said in a one-hour debate sponsored by KITV and the online news site Civil Beat. "We have more people today unemployed. We have more women living in poverty today. We have more people on food stamps."
Hirono questioned Lingle’s bipartisan theme given that Lingle campaigned on the mainland for the Republican ticket of U.S. Sen. John McCain and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin against Obama in 2008 and supports Romney this year.
"And like him, she supports eliminating Obamacare," Hirono said, "raising the age for Social Security, making sure that the richest people in our country continue to get their tax breaks. These are issues that are really important to the people of Hawaii."
The candidates dueled on federal health care reform, Social Security and Medicare during the debate.
Lingle, who has said she would vote to repeal the health care reform law unless significant changes are made, said she particularly opposes the $716 billion cut to Medicare’s growth in the law by reducing payments to hospitals and insurance companies. "We can’t shortchange our kupuna by taking so much money away from Medicare," she said.
Hirono said national Republicans have made the repeal of health care reform a priority. "So there is no amount of sugarcoating this — that if Linda Lingle gets elected to the U.S. Senate, and the Republicans gain control of the Senate, one of the first things they will do is to repeal Obamacare with nothing much to replace it," she said.
Hirono and Lingle both favor raising the payroll tax cap on income in Social Security, which would mean the wealthy would pay a greater share. But Hirono sought to draw a distinction, saying that, unlike Lingle, she would not raise the retirement age to receive full benefits.
Lingle, however, said that she too would not raise the retirement age. Lingle had announced in late August that she would consider a phased-in, one-year increase in the full-benefit age starting in 2027. She said it would need to be done in conjunction with new arrangements for workers who had physically demanding jobs.
"Congresswoman Hirono knows that I don’t support raising the age of Social Security. I said at our last debate that while people are living longer, those poorest in our nation are not living longer. So by raising the age, we would be penalizing them in particular," Lingle said. "I did say that we might want to find a split system for those people who work in physical labor their whole lives; perhaps they shouldn’t have to work as long as someone who works in an office."
THE debate, moderated by KITV’s Paula Akana, was the third of five between Hirono and Lingle. The candidates will meet again tomorrow on PBS Hawaii and on Monday in a forum sponsored by Hawaii News Now and the Star-Advertiser.
The encounters have centered on Hirono’s and Lingle’s main campaign themes: Hirono’s claim that Lingle, despite her bipartisan promise, would vote with national Republicans in the Senate; and Lingle’s contention that Hirono has been ineffective in Congress and too partisan to successfully advocate for Hawaii’s interests.
In the past few days, the Hirono campaign has released a new video and television advertisement that blend clips of Lingle making statements similar to Romney and U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., the GOP vice presidential candidate. The ads are intended to cement the connection between Lingle and a Republican ticket that poses a threat to Obama.
The television ad claims that Lingle and Romney both favor a premium-support option in Medicare that could burden seniors with an additional $6,400 in out-of-pocket costs. The option would give seniors the choice of buying private health plans as an alternative to traditional Medicare.
But the $6,400 estimate stems from a Congressional Budget Office analysis of a previous plan offered by Ryan, not the plan Lingle, Romney and Ryan now say they favor. Critics still believe a premium-support option could cost seniors more if it does not keep up with the rising cost of health care, and could also undermine Medicare by leaving the sickest seniors in the traditional program.
Lingle accused Hirono of trying to put fear into seniors. "So she’s trading on fear to try to get the kupuna scared," she said. "And I think it’s not only mean to me, I think it’s cynical, and I think it’s very disrespectful for the voters."
