Romney’s Vow To Balance Budget Contradicts Key Promises

[dinar_stud]

Romney’s Vow To Balance Budget Contradicts Key Promises

After his acceptance speech in Tampa, Fla., Mitt Romney repeated his pledge to slash the deficit and balance the budget, vowing to lead where Republicans have failed in the past.

“We’re going to finally have to do something that Republicans have spoken about for a long time, and for a while we didn’t do it,” he told a crowd in Cincinnati, Ohio on Saturday. “When we had the lead we let people down. We need to make sure we don’t lead them down this time — I will cut the deficit and get us on track to a balanced budget.”

The remark received a roaring applause. But it’s difficult to square with many of Romney’s other promises, which involve raising federal spending or reducing revenues, that are core to his case against President Obama.

For instance, Romney has vowed to restore the $716 billion in cuts to Medicare provider reimbursements under Obama. His plan to make Medicare solvent by converting it into a voucher system would not take effect for a decade, and without Obama’s cuts the program is projected to go bankrupt by 2016.

The Republican nominee has also pledged to roll back the president’s $489 billion in 10-year military cuts as well as the half a trillion dollars in 10-year automatic Pentagon cuts, known as sequestration, established in last year’s debt limit law.

In addition to that, Romney’s plan to cut taxes across the board would diminish revenues by $5 trillion, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. That doesn’t include the hit to the treasury if the Bush tax cuts on high incomes are extended. He maintains that he’ll recover the revenues by closing tax loopholes, but he and his campaign have steadfastly refused to identify a credit or deduction he’d unwind.

The candidate has also steered clear of offering a plan to shore up Social Security, which is projected to exhaust its trust fund in 2033.

The cuts Romney says he’ll make during his presidency come largely from non-military, non-entitlement spending, which accounts for about one-fifth of the federal budget. Those savings would come from slashing Medicaid and other programs for low-income people, although the campaign has been light on details.

Parsing his domestic cuts with his deficit-raising policies on health care, taxes and the military — all of which are central to his case against a second term for Obama — it’s unclear that Romney would be able to make strides toward a balanced budget during his presidency. If the Republican nominee enacts the budget policies he has specified, the federal deficit is likely to surge, not diminish, while he’s in office.

A Romney spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.

Asked on CNN’s “State of the Union” why the campaign hasn’t been more detailed in its platform, top Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said, “Well we’ve put out a lot of policy over the last 18 months.”

[gidma]

Hey Stud....for one thing you're listening to all the wrong propaganda organizations. When Reagan cut taxes the government coffers grew. It's been tried and worked so don't listen so much to all the socialist/communists that want to take over our country. Remember all the 'redistribute the weath' governments in the last 100 years....they didn't work out so well, did they. And O admitted to Joe the Plumber he wants to redistribute the wealth. So ok, so you have a majority of people that don't want to get up off the couch and work getting $$$$ from the few who will get out and make a living....what the heck are you going to do when there's not enough people willing to work anymore to take care of the lazy? Again, other countries have tried those failed policies. IT DOESN'T WORK AND NEVER WILL. So get out and get a job and try to build yourself a life instead of relying on the hard working man to pay your bills for you. Get a life, it can be very rewarding to take care of yourself.

[dinar_stud]

Hey Stud....for one thing you're listening to all the wrong propaganda organizations. When Reagan cut taxes the government coffers grew. It's been tried and worked so don't listen so much to all the socialist/communists that want to take over our country. Remember all the 'redistribute the weath' governments in the last 100 years....they didn't work out so well, did they. And O admitted to Joe the Plumber he wants to redistribute the wealth. So ok, so you have a majority of people that don't want to get up off the couch and work getting $$$$ from the few who will get out and make a living....what the heck are you going to do when there's not enough people willing to work anymore to take care of the lazy? Again, other countries have tried those failed policies. IT DOESN'T WORK AND NEVER WILL. So get out and get a job and try to build yourself a life instead of relying on the hard working man to pay your bills for you. Get a life, it can be very rewarding to take care of yourself.

Reagan cut taxes? What history book are you reading?

1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser. As governor of California, Reagan “signed into law the largest tax increase in the history of any state up till then.” Meanwhile, state spending nearly doubled. As president, Reagan “raised taxes in seven of his eight years in office,” including four times in just two years. As former GOP Senator Alan Simpson, who called Reagan “a dear friend,” told NPR, “Ronald Reagan raised taxes 11 times in his administration — I was there.” “Reagan was never afraid to raise taxes,” said historian Douglas Brinkley, who edited Reagan’s memoir. Reagan the anti-tax zealot is “false mythology,” Brinkley said.

2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit. During the Reagan years, the debt increased to nearly $3 trillion, “roughly three times as much as the first 80 years of the century had done altogether.” Reagan enacted a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously. Despite the conservative myth that tax cuts somehow increase revenue, the government went deeper into debt and Reagan had to raise taxes just a year after he enacted his tax cut. Despite ten more tax hikes on everything from gasoline to corporate income, Reagan was never able to get the deficit under control.

3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. Unemployment jumped to 10.8 percent after Reagan enacted his much-touted tax cut, and it took years for the rate to get back down to its previous level. Meanwhile, income inequality exploded. Despite the myth that Reagan presided over an era of unmatched economic boom for all Americans, Reagan disproportionately taxed the poor and middle class, but the economic growth of the 1980′s did little help them. “Since 1980, median household income has risen only 30 percent, adjusted for inflation, while average incomes at the top have tripled or quadrupled,” the New York Times’ David Leonhardt noted.

4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously. Reagan promised “to move boldly, decisively, and quickly to control the runaway growth of federal spending,” but federal spending “ballooned” under Reagan. He bailed out Social Security in 1983 after attempting to privatize it, and set up a progressive taxation system to keep it funded into the future. He promised to cut government agencies like the Department of Energy and Education but ended up adding one of the largest — the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, which today has a budget of nearly $90 billion and close to 300,000 employees. He also hiked defense spending by over $100 billion a year to a level not seen since the height of the Vietnam war.

5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to choose. As governor of California in 1967, Reagan signed a bill to liberalize the state’s abortion laws that “resulted in more than a million abortions.” When Reagan ran for president, he advocated a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited all abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, but once in office, he “never seriously pursued” curbing choice.

6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.” He wrote in his memoirs that “[m]y dream…became a world free of nuclear weapons.” “This vision stemmed from the president’s belief that the biblical account of Armageddon prophesied nuclear war — and that apocalypse could be averted if everyone, especially the Soviets, eliminated nuclear weapons,” the Washington Monthly noted. And Reagan’s military buildup was meant to crush the Soviet Union, but “also to put the United States in a stronger position from which to establish effective arms control” for the the entire world — a vision acted out by Regean’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, when he became president.

7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants. Reagan signed into law a bill that made any immigrant who had entered the country before 1982 eligible for amnesty. The bill was sold as a crackdown, but its tough sanctions on employers who hired undocumented immigrants were removed before final passage. The bill helped 3 million people and millions more family members gain American residency. It has since become a source of major embarrassment for conservatives.

8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran. Reagan and other senior U.S. officials secretly sold arms to officials in Iran, which was subject to a an arms embargo at the time, in exchange for American hostages. Some funds from the illegal arms sales also went to fund anti-Communist rebels in Nicaragua — something Congress had already prohibited the administration from doing. When the deals went public, the Iran-Contra Affair, as it came to be know, was an enormous political scandal that forced several senior administration officials to resign.

9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act. which placed sanctions on South Africa and cut off all American trade with the country. Reagan’s veto was overridden by the Republican-controlled Senate. Reagan responded by saying “I deeply regret that Congress has seen fit to override my veto,” saying that the law “will not solve the serious problems that plague that country.”

10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. Reagan fought a proxy war with the Soviet Union by training, arming, equipping, and funding Islamist mujahidin fighters in Afghanistan. Reagan funneled billions of dollars, along with top-secret intelligence and sophisticated weaponry to these fighters through the Pakistani intelligence service. The Talbian and Osama Bin Laden — a prominent mujahidin commander — emerged from these mujahidin groups Reagan helped create, and U.S. policy towards Pakistan remains strained because of the intelligence services’ close relations to these fighters. In fact, Reagan’s decision to continue the proxy war after the Soviets were willing to retreat played a direct role in Bin Laden’s ascendancy.

I would recommend you try to peddle that one on someone who does not know how to read, write or think objectively.