Sunday, June 24, 2012

POLITICO.COM "Mitt's no policy problem" : About Balancing the Budget : "Vague, general or downright evasive policy prescriptions on some of the most important issues facing the country are becoming the rule for Romney."

.
My comment about this excellent article :


Mitt Romney hides all the specifics and details about his Budget Plans, once in the White House. He distrusts the public and has the idea that if he tells his plans, he won't be elected. Romney lives in a world of Platitudes and Generalities about managing the Budget, eliminating many agencies and services for the Poor and the Middle Class.

His economic ideas seem to me to be the same "Trickle Down Economics" that caused the Great Failure of the past George W. Bush Administration, a proven recipe for Failure and Depression.

POLITICO.COM

Mitt's no policy problem
By JONATHAN MARTIN and ALEXANDER BURNS

June 24, 2012


Mitt's no policy problem


Some excerpts :

Romney is remarkably candid, almost as though he’s reading the stage directions, about why he won’t offer up details: he thinks it will undermine his chances to win.

*******************

It’s a lesson the former Massachusetts governor said he took from his first, painful foray into electoral politics in 1994.

“One of the things I found in a short campaign against Ted Kennedy was that when I said, for instance, that I wanted to eliminate the Department of Education, that was used to suggest I don’t care about education,” Romney told the Weekly Standard this spring.

That’s not to say Romney doesn’t have plans: he suggested at an April fundraiser overheard by reporters that the departments of Education and Housing and Urban Development might be eliminated or merged with other agencies, and even said he’d pay for proposed tax cuts by eliminating the second home mortgage deduction.

But as he enters the heat of this year’s campaign, Romney is testing just how far he can go in not telling voters what policies he’d pursue in the White House.

*************************

But Republicans not affiliated with Romney’s campaign aren’t so sure about that level of detail, and worry that Romney thinks running out the clock is sufficient to win.

************************

For Democrats, Romney’s refusal is a both a source of frustration and a target to shoot at. It’s hard to make the contest a “choice” campaign when the challenger is so determined to minimize his own issue profile in the race.

Former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo urged Obama to challenge Romney aggressively to “give me your plan” for the country. Right now, Cuomo said, Romney’s “playing the Nixon game. Nixon said, ‘I have a plan but you won’t know it until you elect me as president.’ ”

“His whole case is, ‘Trust me, I made myself rich,’ ” Cuomo said of Romney.

************************

On multiple major issue areas, Romney has left holes in the public record about what he’d do as president:

************************


Balancing the budget

It’s on the matter of how he’d get the country’s fiscal house in order that Romney has been so candid about why he won’t be specific. In the Weekly Standard interview this spring, he said he’d eliminate entire agencies – but then declined to say which ones.

“I think it’s important for me to point out that I anticipate that there will be departments and agencies that will either be eliminated or combined with other agencies,” he told reporter Stephen Hayes. But, noting what the Kennedy race taught him, Romney added: “I’m not going to give you a list right now.”

**********************

If not the Rosetta Stone to his presidential intentions, Romney’s remarks at a Florida fundraiser in April made clear that he’s just not saying publicly what his ideas are about how exactly he’d balance the budget.

“Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later,” Romney told the donors.

And the Education Department? “I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller. I’m not going to get rid of it entirely.”


***********************

No comments:

Post a Comment