The Economy, the Debt & the Deficit
Mitt Romney has made it blatantly clear that not only would he return to the policies of President George W. Bush, he would take them even farther. That would be all well and good, except for that fact that those policies have been abject failures. The massive tax cuts known commonly as the “Bush tax cuts” erased the budget surplus from his predecessor President Bill Clinton. Economists have said time and again that tax cuts do not create jobs. The proof is in the fact that taxes are at historic lows while the unemployment rate went to a historic high. If tax cuts actually helped the economy the way Mitt Romney and the GOP often claim, America would be in a time of plenty. The longer the Bush tax cuts last (particularly those for the super rich), the more they will add to the national debt.Adding on top of the already 16 trillion dollar debt with a proposed 5 trillion dollar tax cut (mostly to the upper brackets, plus another 2 trillion dollars in EXTRA military spending) is not how to fix the national debt, though this is what Mitt Romney has proposed. America simply cannot afford that sort of trickle-down approach. It has been tried, and it has failed.
The budget plan endorsed by Mitt Romney was created by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which is a name that I’ll mention in another segment. This budget plan cuts virtually any and very program that in any way helps the poor, needy, etc. In fact, it goes so far in doing so, that swaths of the religious establishment have arisen against it. Generally speaking, this group of folks is very GOP friendly. To illustrate this, a group of Catholic nuns went on a bus tour of the upper Midwest to protest this budget plan. This bus tour ended on the steps of the office building where Rep. Paul Ryan has his district office. Many other religious groups have also gone public with their disdain for this plan. When a Republican idea or plan goes so far off of the rails that religious groups are up in arms against it, you know that it has gone way past way too far, even by GOP standards. The word ‘radical’ comes to mind.
President Obama has gone on record saying that the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the super rich is a non-starter and he will veto any bill containing such a measure. President Obama is also for closing tax loopholes that allow the super rich to use dancing horses and private jets as tax right-offs which, in and of themselves, are often more than most people make in a year. He has also gone on-record as being against tax cuts that go to companies that outsource, instead favoring companies that bring jobs back to the United States. Cutting anything that benefit’s middle and lower income Americans to pay for tax breaks for the super rich and corporations (many of whom are already paying zero taxes or even negative taxes) is not a policy that benefits America as a whole. Conversely, Obama's policies have led to over 30 straight months of job creation, a drop in the deficit from about 1.9 trillion dollars to just under 1.1 trillion dollars. President Obama’s policies will do far more to help the economy and the national deficit than any policy proposed by Mitt Romney. In fact, they already have. We are going in the correct direction and we should not turn back.
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