@ForThePeople. That is not exactly right. Most Republicans care about holding the line on taxes and controlling costs because taxes are a drag on economic growth. The more economic growth the more tax revenue there is to help the poor and disadvantaged. In addition the fewer poor and disadvantaged there are. In other words the Republican approach is two pronged. Create a bigger pie. The bigger pie creates a bigger slice for those in need. Both Ovide and Smith would agree with this. Both want to improve education and get people out of poverty and to help those who can not help themselves. The issue is how to get there.

"Both want to improve education and get people out of poverty " but not until after they cut the funding to all these social programs.

@Mike Healey. It is the economic growth that creates the revenue to fund these programs. Another question is "What are we getting in return for existing spending?" In many cases the answer is little or nothing.

One of the best public school systems in the country in the greatest public school system in the world is a pretty good return on our investment. What type of return do you from welfare recipients?

Is that so Tom?
http://www.commonblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/2011-03-21-American-pie-chart-distribution-of-wealth.jpg

How big does the pie need to be for the rich and wealthy for the folks on the bottom to get anything? You're joking if you think that making this inequality bigger than it is now will suddenly bestow the spirit of society on the party of the rich. I don't believe a word of your post, or of your candidates. The facts don't reflect your fiction.

When 20% of the people on 93% of the wealth, and you're crying for more, I'm going to have to call bullshi* on that.

@Mike Healey. New Hampshire's K-12 education quality is largely a function of demographics and by world class standards quite mediocre http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/PEPG11-03_GloballyChallenged.pdf

@ForThePeople, remember to vote on November 13th.

Yes, PISA testing of all American public school students takes us off the top, but this is a function of America's poverty epidermic, not our education system. America's 20+% poverty rate puts 20+% of our students at a disadvantage in the testing. Compared to Denmark's 2.4%, Finland's 3.4%, or Norway's 3.6%.
If you take that same PISA data and only compare student living above the poverty line in every country it reveals that the American Public education system is the BEST IN THE WORLD!
And here we have to Republican candidates fighting over who will put more New Hampshire residents into poverty faster.

http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2010/12/pisa_its_poverty_not_stupid_1.html

@Mike Healey. You would be right except that there are lots of schools that beat the demographics and they tell us how to do it. And when mediocre schools do what the great schools do, they do better. Here is a man who took some of the most disadvantaged kids in the country and had them performing at a world class level. He did it a number of times and others have used his ideas to do the same. http://crazylikeafoxthebook.com/ . Educators know how to fix education to be world class. Public education lacks the will to do it. And more money is not the answer.

That guy sounds like a right wing nut.
They only study for the Academic Performance Index (API), no other classes.
Pays students who have perfect attendance a $100
Students can be dumped because they are a charter school
Half the sixth grade students had been driven out before graduation, where are you going to dump poor performers from a real public school.

Not to mention all the crazy right wing propaganda he pushed:
We are looking for hard working people who believe in free market capitalism. . . . Multi-cultural specialists, ultra liberal zealots, and college-tainted oppression liberators need not apply.
—AIPCS teacher recruiting statemen
AIPCS mocks liberal orthodoxy zealously and has been praised by conservatives such as columnist George Will and Andrew Coulson of the Cato Institute.[21] The school claims to be just as intolerant of unions as it is of drug dealers, and prides itself on firing underperforming teachers.

Wouldn't it be easier to just work on getting Americans out of poverty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Public_Charter_School

Not electing extreme left wingers in the white house would be a good start

The full reference from Mr. Smith's quote was that he would create job opportunities in NH so that many NH residents would no longer need to commute into MA every day. By creating a more business friendly environment in NH, he intends to entice businesses to locate their operations in NH. He would be Patrick's worst nightmare by poaching those jobs back across the border.

So student loans are not an option for this honor/dean's list student ?

I can't believe that you are not aware of the game college administrators play. Rather than review exisiting programs for waste or streamlining, rather than holding the line on admistrative and professorial salaries, they do the easy thing - cut funding to students and / or raise tuition.