An interesting article [2] in today's Washington Post caught the eye of some of us here at the CRFB office this morning. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney evidently has a "new sidekick": an enormous green debt clock. Mr. Romney debuted the clock, whose enormous numbers show the total of the continually-growing U.S. national debt, in a New Hampshire town hall meeting yesterday (his fourth in two days--no wonder he wanted to change it up a little!).
Mr. Romney made many references to the clock throughout the meeting, saying "It’s a frightening thing here as we watch these tens of thousands of dollars going by second by second, hundreds of thousands of dollars going by by the minute. I don’t know who told politicians that there was a number that was called a trillion, but they learned it, and now they’ve borrowed it."
The article also had an answer for the burning questions on all of our minds: where on earth did they get an enormous debt clock? Can you order them online? (If so just tell us where!) Turns out, the clock is homemade; two of Mr. Romney's aides made it by renting two huge flat-screen TVs, hooking them up to computers to connect them to one of the internet's many live debt clocks, and putting it all together with a self-designed green styrofoam cut-out. Very creative.
We at CRFB hope that fiscal issues will continue to be a central focus of the 2012 presidential campaign, and applaud Mr. Romney's efforts to draw attention to our growing national debt. What better way to do that than take an enormous, impossible-to-miss debt clock with you everywhere you go?
Links:
[1] http://crfb.org/sites/default/files/3980489159_9dcb615626_z.jpg
[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romneys-new-sidekick-the-debt-clock/2011/08/25/gIQA71dieJ_story.html?wpisrc=nl_wonk
