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Home » Featured, News & Politics

Romney not the man for the job?

Submitted by Alexa Lee on Tuesday, 3 November 20094 Comments

Conservatives and Republicans alike find any opportunity to hoot and holler over President Obama’s economic plans.

Courtesy David Delay on flickr.

Mitt Romney recently slammed President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus plan stating that it didn’t work and either needed to be reformed or scrapped altogether. Romney has repeatedly spoken out on economic-related issues since ending his 2008 presidential election bid. Even while on the campaign trail Romney positioned himself as the man for the economy. Many pundits believe that if Romney had been elected to the Presidency he would have made drastically different decisions and our economic status would be positively progressing at a quicker pace.
But hold on a second.

Mitt Romney was the governor of Massachusetts from 2003 to 2007. Upon entering the governor’s office, Romney faced a projected $3 billion state deficit. Romney is often given credit for halving the state’s deficit to $1.2 billion. Really, unexpected capital gains taxes and federal grants reduced the projected deficit.

The state accumulated a $700 million surplus not because Romney significantly cut wasteful spending as he claims, but because he cut $277 million from the state’s local education aid budget and $130 million from higher education. This cut led to an average tuition hike of 63%. An additional $500 million was added to the surplus due to doubling fees (including those for marriage licenses, drivers’ licenses and gun licenses) and closing corporate “loopholes.”
State and local taxes also increased under Romney’s watch, from 9.8% to 10.5%. Some analysts have concluded that the two state stimulus plans passed while under Romney’s tenure have added only 12,000 jobs and doing little in the way of stimulating Massachusetts’ economy. In fact, reports show that the state economy has shrunk for the third consecutive quarter and unemployment reached 9.3 %, the highest rate since 1976.

So when people say that Romney is the man for the economy and that our current national situation would have been vastly different, I remain a skeptic. He raised taxes, cut education spending and helped pass seemingly ineffective stimulus plans. But maybe I’m wrong.

4 Comments »

frogLOVEr said:

“But maybe I’m wrong”

Yep…

Nothing comes for free, in rebuttal to your response about college tuition going up in MA. Anyway, the top quarter of students at MA got free college tuition, so that comment is pointless, anyway.

Seriously, though, it’s vital that we put debt, nationally, under control as soon as possible. There’s more to this concept than just red ink to reverse. It’s a known fact that China has highly invested in our national bonds. If we let ourselves continue to just pointless “buy, buy, buy,” we will eventually find ourselves completely bowing to the knees to this country.

Moreover, our country needs to revitalize “responsibility.” Let me pose an example: I’ve heard many the response that one isn’t being a true member of the Church if he or she don’t pay for every bill their irresponsible relative doesn’t make. Sure, we should always be willing to help… But, if that relative is totally unwilling to lift a finger, that’s not right. That’s when we help by not giving aid. Rather, we help them in helping themselves: aiding them in finding work.

So, in tying this in to our country, we mustn’t give lifelong government aid to the same poor person for no effort. They just don’t learn. Rather, that person must show documented improvement, such as proof of progress in obtaining an education/training with provided funds, applied for a certain number of jobs, etc. That’s just a start of what a Romney plan would entail.

I’m a bit out of time with other things to do, but hopefully this explains things better to everyone.

- 4 November 2009 at 5:51 pm

Bob said:

Maybe Romney cut in areas we don’t like to see cut but you need to understand that the government is always way overstaffed and run very inefficiently–been to the DMV, post office, VA or any other government run agency lately and counted how many people are doing the same task (it’s usually 2 or 3)? One thing that Obama hasn’t even had the guts to do is make the necessary cuts in government programs and departments, and all he really wants to do is raise our taxes whereas if her were a CEO for a large corporation he’d have to make the cuts in labor to “right-size” the ship and get it straightened out. If not, he’d be fired–something we as Americans should do anyway.

- 4 November 2009 at 10:56 pm

Justin Skidmore said:

Great analysis. However I think it’s important to note that a state’s economy is largely reliant on federal monetary policy that is completely outside of a governor’s control. And although Romney basically just raised taxes, there are plenty of reasons why direct taxation is better than deficit spending. Either way, the government is taking resources from the economy that could be better invested in the private sector. Still, when the government is spending more then it brings in, the best solution is to stop spending so much. It’s disappointing that Romney was unable to cut more spending as governor, and I doubt that he would significantly reduce spending as president. As for stimulus plans, they’ll never work regardless of who is in charge of them. If Republicans want a man that understands the economy, they should start listening to Ron Paul.

- 5 November 2009 at 7:40 am

Sandra Leavitt said: