What Mitt Romney has in store for us
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Complaints among progressives with the decisions of President Obama and many high-level Democrats are numerous and well justified. On everything from financial regulation to the environment, the Administration has been disappointing on a number of levels. To call the modern Democratic Party the heir to the party of FDR would be a misnomer. It has long since ceased to be that. Returning the party to its former stature of a true mover of liberal ideals should be the goal of progressives nationwide.
But the idea that we have two similar corporatist parties in America is simply insane. Case in point: Mitt Romney. You see, Mitt Romney has a plan for America posted on his website, which he expects America to fall in love with. Remember that this isn't stuff they're hashing out in backrooms while laughing maniacally and smoking cigars. This is stuff they're putting right out in the open:
FIVE BILLS FOR DAY ONE
- The American Competitiveness Act: Reduces the corporate income tax rate to 25 percent
- The Open Markets Act: Implements the Colombia, Panama, and South Korea Free Trade Agreements
- The Domestic Energy Act: Directs the Department of the Interior to undertake a comprehensive survey of American energy reserves in partnership with exploration companies and initiates leasing in all areas currently approved for exploration
- The Retraining Reform Act: Consolidates the sprawl of federal retraining programs and returns funding and responsibility for these programs to the states
- The Down Payment on Fiscal Sanity Act: Immediately cuts non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent, reducing the annual federal budget by $20 billion
More jobs-killing trade bills. Even lower corporate tax rates at a time of record corporate and no jobs. Drill baby drill. Pushes responsibility for jobs training programs back to states like Texas and Alabama. Even more cuts from an already stripped-to-the-bone discretionary spending budget.
But that's not all. With just 4 yearly installments, you also give five Executive Orders for free:
FIVE EXECUTIVE ORDERS FOR DAY ONE
- An Order to Pave the Way to End Obamacare: Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services and all relevant federal officials to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health care solutions that work best for them
- An Order to Cut Red Tape: Directs all agencies to immediately initiate the elimination of Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy or job creation, and then caps annual increases in regulatory costs at zero dollars
- An Order to Boost Domestic Energy Production: Directs the Department of the Interior to implement a process for rapid issuance of drilling permits to developers with established safety records seeking to use pre-approved techniques in pre-approved areas
- An Order to Sanction China for Unfair Trade Practices: Directs the Department of the Treasury to list China as a currency manipulator in its biannual report and directs the Department of Commerce to assess countervailing duties on Chinese imports if China does not quickly move to float its currency
- An Order to Empower American Businesses and Workers: Reverses the executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the playing field in favor of organized labor, including the one encouraging the use of union labor on major government construction projects
Reinstating the legality of pre-existing condition denials, and letting the states of Texas and Alabama decide "what works best for them." Defunding of regulatory agencies like environmental protection. Permits for drilling and fracking essentially anywhere. Scott Walker's plan for organized labor, nationwide. The only thing that stands out in this set of insane promises is the one to increase tariffs on Chinese goods. Does anyone expect that any Republican will actually raise a tariff on China as a trading partner? No, of course not.
But Mitt's not done here. He wants to keep taxes on the rich as low as possible:
While the entire tax code is in dire need of a fundamental overhaul, Mitt
Romney believes in holding the line against increases in marginal tax rates. The goals that President Bush pursued in bringing rates down to their current level— to spur economic growth, encourage savings and investment, and help struggling Americans make ends meet—are just as important today as they were a decade ago. Letting them lapse, as President Obama promises to do in 2012, is a step in precisely the wrong direction. If anything, the lower rates established by President Bush should be regarded as a directional marker on the road to more fundamental reform.
He wants to kill the Paris Hilton tax:
As president, Mitt Romney will work to eliminate the tax permanently. All told, the negative effects on savings, investment, and job creation show how pernicious an estate tax can be. For those reasons, it should be stricken from the books as soon as possible.
He wants to raise taxes on those who can least afford it:
In the long run, Mitt Romney will pursue a conservative overhaul of the tax
system that includes lower and flatter rates on a broader tax base. The approach taken by the Bowles-Simpson Commission is a good starting point for the discussion. The goal should be a simpler, more efficient, user-friendly, and less onerous tax system.
Oh, and he definitely think corporations are people just like you and me, and that it doesn't matter whether a dollar goes into the hands of a wage earner or a corporate investor:
Worries that a lower corporate tax rate are unfair or unaffordable are fundamentally misplaced. The truth is, as Mitt Romney likes to say, “corporations are people.” They represent human beings acting cooperatively to be economically productive. Each dollar earned by a corporation is a dollar that ultimately flows, in one form or another, to employees or to shareholders. And those shareholders include the millions of Americans who own shares in mutual funds or who have pensions that invest in the American economy.
But that's not all. Mitt Romney has many more policies as well on subjects ranging from the environment to labor. Pages 154 and 155 of his grand plan contain no less 59 policy targets, each more destructive than the last. They include a balanced budget amendment, capping federal spending at 20% of GDP, the creation of "Personal ReEmployment Accounts" (yes, that's just like health savings accounts, but for unemployment!), the national implementation of the union-killing initiative they're trying to put on the ballot in California by stopping any organization that collects deductions from payroll from political spending, cutting the federal workforce by 10% while cutting the wages of the federal employees who survive layoffs, and restructuring Medicaid as a "block grant" to states.
Now try to remember that Mitt Romney is the supposedly sane GOP candidate. The one that GOP voters are currently rejecting for being insufficiently conservative. However bad a Romney presidency would be, a Perry or Bachmann presidency would be far worse, both on economics and especially on social issues.
It doesn't really matter how disappointed with President Obama many of us may be. We every right to be angry and disappointed, and we have every obligation to make doubly sure that our presidential candidates are vetted for progressive values in 2016.
But anyone who sits out 2012 from a sense of disappointment in the current Democratic standard-bearer will deserve every last second of the Brave New America that Romney and friends have in store for us. Republicans are openly telegraphing their intention to remake America as an undisguised corporatocracy. It's up to us to do decide just what we intend to do about it.
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