Mr. Romney’s Missing Details
NYT editorial
The biggest whopper in Mitt Romney’s fiscal plan comes right at the beginning of the description on his Web site: “We will level with the American people about what it will take to truly cut spending and balance our budget.” Actually, Mr. Romney never tells voters the full cost of his plan to balance the budget while cutting taxes: popular programs would be slashed or eliminated, vital state and local services would disappear, misery would be inflicted on the poor and the working class.
Such details would make the plan a hard sell as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination, so Mr. Romney presents it as a breeze, with little pain attached. Just cap spending, make the Bush tax cuts permanent and eliminate the estate tax, raise the retirement age for Social Security, and offer some lower-cost Medicare options. Before you know it, economic growth will return to 4 percent a year and military cuts can be called off.
At no point does Mr. Romney deal with what every reliable budget projection concludes: Without new revenue it will be impossible to cope with an aging population and infrastructure or with the needs of those who are being left behind as the income gap widens.
Details are in short supply. For example, his plan supports passage of the 10-year House budget resolution written by Paul Ryan, with a hard cap on spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product (compared with the current 24.3 percent), but it never says what the House plan contains. Here’s a reminder: It would cut food stamps by $127 billion, which would remove millions of people from the rolls during a downturn and cut the benefits of those who remain. Nearly two-thirds of Mr. Ryan’s cuts affect low-income programs like Pell grants, housing subsidies and Medicaid.
(More here.)
The biggest whopper in Mitt Romney’s fiscal plan comes right at the beginning of the description on his Web site: “We will level with the American people about what it will take to truly cut spending and balance our budget.” Actually, Mr. Romney never tells voters the full cost of his plan to balance the budget while cutting taxes: popular programs would be slashed or eliminated, vital state and local services would disappear, misery would be inflicted on the poor and the working class.
Such details would make the plan a hard sell as he runs for the Republican presidential nomination, so Mr. Romney presents it as a breeze, with little pain attached. Just cap spending, make the Bush tax cuts permanent and eliminate the estate tax, raise the retirement age for Social Security, and offer some lower-cost Medicare options. Before you know it, economic growth will return to 4 percent a year and military cuts can be called off.
At no point does Mr. Romney deal with what every reliable budget projection concludes: Without new revenue it will be impossible to cope with an aging population and infrastructure or with the needs of those who are being left behind as the income gap widens.
Details are in short supply. For example, his plan supports passage of the 10-year House budget resolution written by Paul Ryan, with a hard cap on spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product (compared with the current 24.3 percent), but it never says what the House plan contains. Here’s a reminder: It would cut food stamps by $127 billion, which would remove millions of people from the rolls during a downturn and cut the benefits of those who remain. Nearly two-thirds of Mr. Ryan’s cuts affect low-income programs like Pell grants, housing subsidies and Medicaid.
(More here.)
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