PRESIDENT OBAMA: I — no, I am not wrong.
MR. ROMNEY: You're wrong.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: I am not wrong. And —
MR. ROMNEY: People can look it up. You're right.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: People will look it up.
MR. ROMNEY: Good.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: But more importantly, it is true that in order for us to be competitive, we're going to have to make some smart choices right now. Cutting our education budget — that's not a smart choice. That will not help us compete with China. Cutting our investments in research and technology — that's not a smart choice. That will not help us compete with China. Bringing down (sic) our deficit by adding $7 trillion of tax cuts and military spending that our military's not asking for before we even get to the debt that we currently have — that is not going to make us more competitive. Those are the kinds of choices that the American people face right now. Having a tax code that rewards companies that are shipping jobs overseas instead of companies that are investing here in the United States — that will not make us more competitive.
And — and the one thing that I'm absolutely clear about is that after a decade in which we saw drift, jobs being shipped overseas, nobody championing American workers and American businesses, we've now begun to make some real progress. What we can't do is go back to the same policies that got us into such difficulty in the first place. And that's why we have to move forward and not go back.