Quotations and some notes on Mitt Romney's budget proposal

[OneOfTheseDays]

Wait, I thought you guys believed adding to the deficit was no big deal? Or is spending only good when government confiscates money and distributes it "properly"?

Is it the IRS that adds the magic smoke, or is that Congress?

You never addressed his original point. Don't comment until you do.

That's what we call classic diversion.

 

[Arglebargle]

Bush(43) was a successful businessman with a MBA from Harvard, was a successful twice elected governor of Texas. Obama had two years of doing nothing in the Senate.

This is doctrinaire crap, and operates just as a good reason to ignore your attempts at forum PVP.

Bush was a C grade student at Harvard, and at Harvard as a legacy student. His business affairs were not all so wonderful, and he had the supreme advantage of his father being a major mover and shaker in politics, who could get his kids' projects funded by billionaire friends.

He was governor of the state with the arguably weakest Governor position in the entire US. Though he wasn't terrible as a governor, it's too bad he declined as a President.

Your little claim is the 'On the surface it looks good' position.

 

[yllus]

The Economist appears to mirror my own thoughts:

The Economist - So, Mitt, what do you really believe?

...

In theory, Mr Romney has a detailed 59-point economic plan. In practice, it ignores virtually all the difficult or interesting questions (indeed, “The Romney Programme for Economic Recovery, Growth and Jobs” is like “Fifty Shades of Grey” without the sex). Mr Romney began by saying that he wanted to bring down the deficit; now he stresses lower tax rates. Both are admirable aims, but they could well be contradictory: so which is his primary objective? His running-mate, Paul Ryan, thinks the Republicans can lower tax rates without losing tax revenues, by closing loopholes. Again, a simpler tax system is a good idea, but no politician has yet dared to tackle the main exemptions. Unless Mr Romney specifies which boondoggles to axe, this looks meaningless and risky.

On the spending side, Mr Romney is promising both to slim Leviathan and to boost defence spending dramatically. So what is he going to cut? How is he going to trim the huge entitlement programmes? Which bits of Mr Ryan’s scheme does he agree with? It is a little odd that the number two has a plan and his boss doesn’t. And it is all very well promising to repeal Barack Obama’s health-care plan and the equally gargantuan Dodd-Frank act on financial regulation, but what exactly will Mr Romney replace them with—unless, of course, he thinks Wall Street was well-regulated before Lehman went bust?

Mr Romney may calculate that it is best to keep quiet: the faltering economy will drive voters towards him. It is more likely, however, that his evasiveness will erode his main competitive advantage. A businessman without a credible plan to fix a problem stops being a credible businessman. So does a businessman who tells you one thing at breakfast and the opposite at supper. Indeed, all this underlines the main doubt: nobody knows who this strange man really is. It is half a decade since he ran something. Why won’t he talk about his business career openly? Why has he been so reluctant to disclose his tax returns? How can a leader change tack so often? Where does he really want to take the world’s most powerful country?

It is not too late for Mr Romney to show America’s voters that he is a man who can lead his party rather than be led by it. But he has a lot of questions to answer in Tampa.