I caught the audio of most of the presidential debate Wednesday night (transcript), and read lots of tweets and articles about it. It’s sad that Gary Johnson didn’t get to be part of it, but overall it was better than I expected.
Since the media regularly gives Obama an easy pass, it was amusing to see the vast majority of Americans conclude that Romney did way better than Obama. Romney generally sounded “smarter,” having good responses to things like Obama’s fake jabs at corporate welfare (Tim Carney expounds on this). It was also amusing to see the press torture themselves into admitting that Romney “won” in the softest way possible, and to see every news article remind us of the arguments Obama did not use, just in case we were thinking of voting for Romney now.
But that doesn’t mean I loved Romney’s performance, either. He talked a really good talk, simultaneously raving about states’ rights and limited government and free enterprise while sounding like a reasonable moderate on regulation and having experience working together with members of both parties. He sounded really smart, and I wanted to believe that a Romney presidency might not be as terrible as I’ve generally been assuming.
I just don’t know how much I can trust the “good” parts of his remarks. (Would Romney be so gung-ho about states’ rights if Washington or Colorado legalize marijuana next month?) And of course, there were still plenty of “bad” parts, like his continued insistence that we need to spend more money on Medicare and that he does not “believe in cutting our military,” as if every other department of the government has waste, corruption, and pork barrel projects, but the Defense department has zero, even though it gets more money than all the other Departments combined.
As I’ve written before, I think liberals attack Romney too much for only having a vague budget plan, since exact presidential campaign budget policies never get enacted by the subsequent Congress. Besides, even Obama’s actual budgets have been unanimously rejected by both parties the last couple of years – so who has room to talk about unreasonable budgets?
Still, given the few specific boundaries Romney has outlined, which involves (as I understand it) continuing to increase Medicare and Defense without increasing taxes, I don’t see how you can think Romney is truly any more serious about reducing the deficit than Obama is. What if new taxes from “economic growth” aren’t enough to offset those continuing increases, much less the rest of the enormous deficit? What if it actually makes the deficit worse? I guess real spending cuts are still too unpopular to actually talk about as a candidate…
I expect similar things from next week’s vice-presidential debate, which is supposed to include some foreign policy. I’m hoping Paul Ryan will make up for the media’s poor reporting on the Obama administration’s failings regarding the Libyan embassy attacks, and I will try to enjoy every minute of it, but I don’t expect Ryan or Biden to talk much about the despicable drone strikes or any of the other shady strategies and erosions of civil liberties that were started by Bush and expanded by Obama.
The problem with Romney’s plans are that they aren’t vague enough. He promises us all unicorns — Obama doesn’t. Saying you will fire Big Bird sounds tough, but eliminating federal subsidies to PBS would be just a drop in the bucket. To balance the budget, Obama is open to military cuts, cutting domestic programs and raising taxes (especially on the wealthy). Romney has made it clear that he won’t cut the following:
1) Military and national security. This includes homeland security.
2) Medicare
3) Social Security
He also said he won’t raise taxes. In fact, he said he would lower them.
If you do the research and do the math, it simply doesn’t add up. If you use the Bush budget of fiscal year 2009 as a guide, the U. S. government spent $2.2 trillion on Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt and defense (including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as The Global War on Terror). The government raised only $2.1 trillion. Even if all other parts of the government were eliminated (Medicaid, transportation, education, the V. A., etc.) then we couldn’t balance the budget unless we increase taxes or cut the military budget, Social Security or Medicare.
That’s the problem with Romney’s math, and presumably how he would govern. If he sticks to his guns (like Reagan and George W. Bush) then we will have an increase in the deficit (as we did with both of those guys). If he doesn’t (like George H. W. Bush) then we could see a drop in the deficit.
Obama, on the other hand, is way more likely to govern like George W. Bush, or like his good pal, Bill Clinton. If the economy recovers, he will do the hard work necessary to balance the budget. Of course, one of the reasons the economy hasn’t recovered is because he is too timid to increase the deficit in the short run. But getting the overall population to understand that we need to increase the deficit now and then turn around and shrink it is a very tough task. It is hard enough for them to understand arithmetic or that starting unnecessary wars can be really, really expensive.
I agree that Romney’s math is impossible, but I don’t think Obama is any more realistic. Is he really open to military cuts? The DoD has only expanded under his presidency, and he’s counting the winding down of wars as imaginary “savings.” He only wants to let the Bush-Obama tax cuts expire for the wealthy, but that doesn’t put much of a dent in things. He attacks corporate tax deductions for specific industries that are really tiny slivers of general rules (see the Tim Carney link above) that wouldn’t do any more for the deficit than cutting PBS subsidies. Obamacare is supposedly deficit neutral but it was so full of accounting gimmicks that the updated cost estimates are already unraveling. Maybe he really will “do the hard work necessary to balance the budget,” but then again maybe Romney really would, too, especially depending on what kind of Congresses they get. But again, if Obama’s budgets are any better, why does Congress keep unanimously rejecting them?
The problem with Romney’s plans are that they aren’t vague enough. He promises us all unicorns — Obama doesn’t. Saying you will fire Big Bird sounds tough, but eliminating federal subsidies to PBS would be just a drop in the bucket. To balance the budget, Obama is open to military cuts, cutting domestic programs and raising taxes (especially on the wealthy). Romney has made it clear that he won’t cut the following:
1) Military and national security. This includes homeland security.
2) Medicare
3) Social Security
He also said he won’t raise taxes. In fact, he said he would lower them.
If you do the research and do the math, it simply doesn’t add up. If you use the Bush budget of fiscal year 2009 as a guide, the U. S. government spent $2.2 trillion on Social Security, Medicare, interest on the debt and defense (including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as The Global War on Terror). The government raised only $2.1 trillion. Even if all other parts of the government were eliminated (Medicaid, transportation, education, the V. A., etc.) then we couldn’t balance the budget unless we increase taxes or cut the military budget, Social Security or Medicare.
That’s the problem with Romney’s math, and presumably how he would govern. If he sticks to his guns (like Reagan and George W. Bush) then we will have an increase in the deficit (as we did with both of those guys). If he doesn’t (like George H. W. Bush) then we could see a drop in the deficit.
Obama, on the other hand, is way more likely to govern like George W. Bush, or like his good pal, Bill Clinton. If the economy recovers, he will do the hard work necessary to balance the budget. Of course, one of the reasons the economy hasn’t recovered is because he is too timid to increase the deficit in the short run. But getting the overall population to understand that we need to increase the deficit now and then turn around and shrink it is a very tough task. It is hard enough for them to understand arithmetic or that starting unnecessary wars can be really, really expensive.
I agree that Romney’s math is impossible, but I don’t think Obama is any more realistic. Is he really open to military cuts? The DoD has only expanded under his presidency, and he’s counting the winding down of wars as imaginary “savings.” He only wants to let the Bush-Obama tax cuts expire for the wealthy, but that doesn’t put much of a dent in things. He attacks corporate tax deductions for specific industries that are really tiny slivers of general rules (see the Tim Carney link above) that wouldn’t do any more for the deficit than cutting PBS subsidies. Obamacare is supposedly deficit neutral but it was so full of accounting gimmicks that the updated cost estimates are already unraveling. Maybe he really will “do the hard work necessary to balance the budget,” but then again maybe Romney really would, too, especially depending on what kind of Congresses they get. But again, if Obama’s budgets are any better, why does Congress keep unanimously rejecting them?