During an address to Latino voters at the Chamber of Commerce Wednesday, Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney promised to give special focus on the rising costs of higher education in the United States.
“We’ve got to stop fueling skyrocketing tuition that puts education out of the reach for way too many of our kids and leaves others with a crushing debt,” Romney told attendees of the Latino Coalition Summit. “Accomplishing real change is not going to be easy, the efforts to truly reform our schools always compete with strong businesses and entrenched interests.”
Romney also called out the hypocrisy of teacher’s unions, which “don’t fight for students.”
“Teachers unions are a perfect example of a group that has lost its way. Whenever anyone dares to offer a new idea, the unions protest,” Romney said. “Their attitude is memorably expressed by a long time president of the American Federation of Teachers Unions. He said, and I quote, ‘when school kids start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of students.’ ”
Romney pointed out that national teachers unions – the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) – have combined yearly revenues of approximately $600 million dollars, the bulk of which goes to influencing elections. The NEA was the largest campaign contributor in 2008. Approximately 90 percent of those campaign donations went to the Democratic Party, Romney said, which has stopped President Obama for seeking education reforms.
“Education is one issue where it should be easy to find common purpose and common solution, and I believe that the President must be troubled by the lack of progress since he took office. Most likely, he would like to do more,” Romney said. “But the teachers unions are one of the Democrats’ biggest donors and one of the President’s biggest campaign supporters, so President Obama has been unable to stand up to union bosses and unwilling to stand up for our kids.”
Romney also used the speech as an opportunity to indirectly respond to President Obama’s attacks on his tenure at Bain Capital, saying “It’s no wonder so many of his own supporters are calling on him to stop this war on job creators.”
Romney stayed on message throughout the speech, sticking to the GOP’s plan to focus on issues that are important to all Americans this election instead of pandering to Hispanics by heavily concentrating on perceived “Latino” issues like illegal immigration. Romney’s only mention of minorities was that black and Hispanic children are more adversely affected by bad education policy.
Videography by Sarah Muro
