Romney Says He’ll Shoot Farm Price Supports, Draught Relief and Veterans’ Benefits, Right Along With Big Bird!
Slate’s William Saletan has a terrific article there today, with a terrific title: Tax Evasion: Romney’s preposterous arguments for not telling you which tax breaks he’d abolish. And, yes, elsewhere, too, mainstream-media folks are showing some morning-after queasiness about their debate verdict, by getting into the “um … huh?” stuff now.
But in pointing out that Nixon really doesn’t have a plan to end the Vietnam War—er, I mean, that Romney doesn’t really have a plan to balance the budget—they’ve been talking mostly about Romney’s refusal to identify the tax loopholes and deductions he’ll end. They haven’t mentioned much Romney’s other demonstration of, um, willingness to be specific about extremely important budget matters: His statement that he’ll end all programs that, in his opinion, aren’t worth borrowing money from China for.
Which include Medicaid and Sesame Street. But what other programs?
The effective end of federally supported Medicaid is obviously too serious a subject to joke about, and it needs much more attention from the news media than it’s getting—as well as from the Obama campaign, which should put up ads featuring nursing home residents and nursing home owners; i.e., small-business owners who are jobs creators, to explain the issue.
But Obama also should say—yes, say—when he’s campaign in, maybe, Iowa, eastern Colorado, Wisconsin and North Carolina that Romney doesn’t think farm subsidies, flood insurance, hurricane and tornado disaster relief are worth borrowing money from China from.
And when campaigning in North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio and, well, everywhere else, he should say that Romney doesn’t think veterans’ benefits are worth borrowing money for China for. And that that might make it harder to recruit those additional 100,000 people into the armed services that he says he wants to add, although of course he might just have a military draft in mind. You never know; he’s not all that keen on revealing specifics, after all. (Does Romney ever think beyond the end of whatever sentence he’s mouthing at the moment?)
Seriously. The only way to start to nail down Romney’s plans is to start actually filling in his blanks. Say, outright, that Romney plans to end farm price supports, drought relief, disaster relief and veteran’s benefits. Romney then will have to say that he has no such plans. Great! Then say that Romney plans to shut down the FDA and the National Transportation Safety Board; a few hundred deaths from dangerous medications and airplane crashes each year aren’t worth borrowing money from China to prevent. Not when you have more important needs, such as incessantly spiraling tax cuts for the wealthy.
Which, despite his Wednesday protestations, he does think are worth borrowing money from China for.
Or here’s another idea: Let’s develop a contest in which the winner accurately predicts Romney’s selections for Programs Worth Borrowing From China For. And a bonus contest in which the winner correctly calls the tax loopholes and deductions eliminated in Romney’s tax-code revision plan.
The winners will be announced on the same day as the announcement of the Publishers Clearinghouse winner for 2015. The prize? We can have another contest to guess that.
Beverly
i would alter this a bit…
we don’t need to borrow money from China to pay for these programs. we could actually raise taxes.
meanwhile, as someone smarter than me pointed out right here on Angry Bear… we don’t borrow money from china to pay for government. we “borrow money from china” because they sell us more stuff than they buy from us, giving them a lot of money they have to put somewhere.
we could stop borrowing from china if only we could remember how to make stuff in america that people want to buy.
Yes, coberly. I know. But apparently Romney doesn’t. OK, well, Romney claims not to–knowing that most other people don’t know.
I’m taking Romney’s claim that he’s going to cut out a bunch of programs but that he’s not gonna tell us which ones–and I’m saying that Obama should say, “Fine. We’ll fill in the blanks, and swing-state-wise, it won’t be pretty.”
“We could stop borrowing from China if only we could remember how to make stuff in America for five cents an hour with open waste disposal.” FTFY
small-business owners who are jobs creators
Please, please, please do not give any credence or support to the business owner = job creator canard.
JzB
China? Who cares about them. They aren’t even buying government debt at the level they did a few years ago and it doesn’t matter. Domestic demand picks it up.
Romney is a rentier leach that never produced a thing for this country.
What Jazzbumpa said. +1
Coberly: You are right about raising taxes. I just can’t see that happening without a major shift in the public buying into the notion. Even then, you’d still have a block of well, blockheads in Congress that would do everything possible to derail tax increases. At current rates of interest borrowing just might be cheaper. (Short run.)
Coberly, you’re right again. But I think it’s important for Obama to keep taking Romney’s words and throwing them back at him, with an “Oookay ….”
Beverly
i am disposed to agree with you. But I think most of the people who will vote for Romney won’t even realize he is talking about ending stuff they need.
But “borrowing from China” has an evil ring to it that they will certainly vote against.
I’d like to find a way to hang “borrowing from China” on “tax cuts for the wealthy.”
Unfortunately for my political career I can’t complain about tax cuts for the wealthy as long as the not so wealthy are saying “cut my taxes.. because i am not rich and shouldn’t have to pay for any of that government stuff i need.” It just sounds too self serving.
hey all, catch this:
Debate Rules: No props, notes, charts, diagrams, or other writings or other tangible things may be brought into the debate by any candidate. Watch romney’s hand, approaching the podium.
Nah. Some reporter looked at the entire debate video, and at some point mid-debate, Romney pulled the thing out of his pocket, and it was a handkerchief. Obama had one, too.
Romney didn’t need a sheet to cheat. He cheated by channeling George Orwell. Apparently, several people in his campaign simply decided to take fact after fact and have Romney say the opposite of the fact is true. Since these were complete fabrications, some of them on out-of-the-blue things—like that Dodd-Frank institutionalizes rather than undermines too-big-to-fail banks—it would have been really hard for anyone, no matter how quick on his feet and aggressive, to deal with an onslaught of outright fabrications.
On the TBTF issue, though, I think Obama should ask Romney, rhetorically (since the debate is over and it’s too late to ask him there), whether he supports the Volcker rule.
The most memorable thing that happened in the 90 minute debate was the threat to kill Big Bird. And then some better employment numbers came out. Obama is lucky.
Actually, I think he plans to leave the killing of Big Bird to Scalia And Cheney.
“The effective end of federally supported Medicaid is obviously too serious a subject to joke about, and it needs much more attention from the news media than it’s getting—as well as from the Obama campaign, which should put up ads featuring nursing home residents and nursing home owners; i.e., small-business owners who are jobs creators, to explain the issue.”
Do we think that Obama cares that much about Medicaid? He believes that Uncle Sam has to beg for pennies, and the poor have no lobby.
For months now I have thought that Medicaid will get the shaft in the next administration, no matter who wins the Presidency, unless the Dems take Congress.
Well, surprisingly, Min, if I recall correctly, Obama actually fought the Repubs pretty hard on the Medicaid issue during all the budget-standoff stuff in the last two years. One reason is that Obamacare significantly expands Medicaid; Medicaid expansion is a key part of Obamacare, and that was a big issue in the Obamacare Supreme Court case.
I wonder if Mitty Mitt will decide it’s worth borrowing money to keep the pitiful quagmire of Afghanistan going. Ok I really don’t.
But I appreciated learning on Moyers that GOP congressman Bill Young has realized how futile this carnage is.
Min:
It is not the poor who need Medicaid to retire, it is much of the Middle Class who have little to support themselves in nursing homes and assisted care. The Middle class depends on Medicaid also.
Bev,
I agree. But I think you underestimate the scale of the problem.
Shooting Big Bird will be easy. Mitt will have to deal with the fact that the federal government is spending about 40% more than it is bringing in http://suzysdailydeals.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/current-federal-expenditures.png
So we have to cut spending 40% across the board. If you exempt things like interest and SSI (a la Coberly ) the cuts will have to be greater.
Or raise taxes 50%, and hope that this doesn’t kill the economy or force the top taxpayers elsewhere (ha!).
@ Beverly and run
Well, maybe my thoughts about Medicare are wrong. I certainly hope so. 🙂
Typo: That’s Medicaid, not Medicare.
Sammy
in the first place SSI is not Social Security. I know almost nothing about SSI except that it is welfare.
in the second place, Social Security has not a damn thing to do with the deficit. The workers pay for it themselves. It’s the payroll tax stupid.
Social Security is not welfare, and it doesn’t have anything to do with the “budget.”
Sammy, your friends have filled your head with bad dreams. I can’t help you.
obama didn’t shoot big bird ,he just gave us the bird!
Min:
Most people do not know the role Medicaid plays for themselves if they have not put anything away for nursing home care. You have to conform to the rules concerning wealth, or be destitute, and roughly 40% of the elderly population do so in one way or another and end up covered by Mediciad in a nursing home. The same as Medicare, Medicaid is not the cost driver in all of this and too many economists, politicians, pundits, and voters who miss the message of the healthcare industry being the cost driver. There are some big names out here who are often cited on other economic issues missing the boat on this topic whom I have mentioned.
Obama has pledged to pay for the expansion of Medicaid up to 100% in the early years and slowly winding down to 90% for states. If the states do not expand Medicaid, these people will end up on the insurance exchanges in which case subsidies to them will increase from te Federal government. It could be this is a strategy by the states to keep them out of state Medicaid and force the Federa Government to cut them off over time. Safety and hiding in the House and Senate numbers.
What people do not understand, and what they will never understand as long as there is no leadership on the left, and the leadership on the right is lying
is that
they face a very high chance of having very high medical-related expenses at some time in their lives
and these will have to be paid for.
they mostly deny the possibility that it could happen to them.
if they have enough money to buy insurance at their current “level of risk” (age) they think this is a better deal for them than “government medicine”…
while they deny the possibility that something could happen to them that would make them unable to pay for insurance at their then risk level.
and those who already cannot afford insurance, but do understand something bad could happen to them… because it already has…
are convinced that someone else should pay for it.
“but don’t raise my taxes.”