Mike Doyle and Rich Fitzgerald speak to Pitt College Democrats

Mike Doyle and Rich Fitzgerald both urged college students to stop crazy people who think two… Mike Doyle and Rich Fitzgerald both urged college students to stop crazy people who think two plus two equals five.

“If you let crazy people say crazy things, then you need to correct them,” U.S. Rep. Doyle, D-Pa., said Tuesday night to a room of 30 students. He urged the audience to make sure students know the right facts when it comes to political issues.

At the close of the meeting, Doyle donated $1,000 to the host of the event, the Pitt College Democrats. The club brought Pittsburgh natives Doyle and the Democratic county executive candidate, Fitzgerald, to the William Pitt Union for an hour-long talk in view of the upcoming November elections.

Doyle ended the evening by making a surprise contribution of $1,000 to the Pitt College Democrats, who as of Tuesday night had $250 in their account, according to Pitt College Democrat Business Manager Robert Beecher.

Doyle said he donated the money after he saw the turnout among students and heard their great questions.

“We were completely caught off-guard by the contribution,” club president Matthew DiFiore said.

Fitzgerald, a 1981 Carnegie Mellon University graduate and president of the Allegheny County Council, said he knows his election in six weeks is “not as hot as a presidential election,” but it is still very important. The deadline for voter registration is Oct. 11.

He drew comparisons between the Nov. 8 election  —  where he will compete with Republican candidate D. Raja for the county executive seat  —  and next fall’s presidential race.

“If I don’t win this race … it’s not going to happen for Obama,” Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald and Doyle both stressed how important Pennsylvania will be in the 2012 election, calling it a “critical state.” They said that if Obama doesn’t win in Pennsylvania, then he most likely will not win the White House.

Doyle said that young people were the reason Obama won the presidency in 2008 and that even though “we haven’t gotten everything we’ve wanted,” in terms of campaign promises, “the thought of one of the [Republican candidates] becoming president scares me.”

“If we can’t get young people out to vote in the numbers we did last election, we don’t have a chance to win,” Doyle said.

Doyle, who graduated from Penn State in 1975 and has been in Congress since 1994, also took time to discuss various issues plaguing the nation, such as the budget, the economy and the political gridlock in Washington.

He said the debt ceiling vote over the summer, which led to the formation of a super committee, was a “terrible mistake” that the congressional democrats and President Barack Obama compromised for.

“I’m mad because we had a defining moment for our party where we could have drawn the line and shown a stark difference between us and them,” Doyle said.

He also said that there needs to be fairness in the national budget, which can be accomplished by making the tax code more fair. The bottom tier will pay their share through entitlement cuts, while the upper class will pay through increased tax brackets, Doyle said.

“Those of us who have been fortunate in this world can give a little more,” he said.

He said that America should “invest in our people” by fostering small and medium businesses and allowing them to grow and improve the economy. But he said that Republicans in Congress stood in the way of that plan.

“Party politics are coming ahead of what’s good for our country,” he said, referring to Obama’s American Jobs Act, which he said Republicans are not supporting.

He stressed that instead of gridlock, America needs to start making decisions.

Fitzgerald also took time to talk about jobs. He said his main focus is to keep jobs in Allegheny County by creating incentives for companies to persuade them to stay.

He said that for the past 25 years, most students left the region after graduating from college because they couldn’t find jobs, himself included. But in the past few years, he said that he has seen more people moving to the region because of available jobs.

DiFiore said he was very pleased with the evening and that Doyle and Fitzgerald are both “awesome.”

“This is one of the most successful meetings in the three years I’ve been involved with the club,” DiFiore said.