For this week's issue, which will also be the last issue examined in this election, we'll look at candidates' to the ScienceDebate.org Question. For those of you not familiar with the Science Debate Questions, they are a series of scientifically focuses questions selected from thousands of question submitted by scientist, engineers and concerned citizens that they felt were the most important science questions facing the United States the the candidates for president should be talking about on the campaign trail, and was refined into the final list of what are considered the most important science policy question for 2012 with the help of leading scientific and engineering organizations in the United States.As Science Debate says on their website:
Candidates readily debate jobs and the economy
even though they are not economists; they debate foreign policy and
military intervention even though they are not diplomats or generals;
they debate faith and values even though they are not priests or
pastors. We call on the candidates for President to also debate these
Top American Science Questions that affect all voters' lives.
Both the questions and the candidates' answers can be found here. I'm not going reproduce them here since they are fairly well arranged on Science Debate's website.
For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Housing. Once again, all information
and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
Barack Obama
President Obama offers no opinion about Housing on his website, so here are some videos of President Obama on the subject.
The only path to a healthy housing market
is a healthy economy, but a housing recovery is central to a healthy
economy. President Obama promised a much healthier economy by now, but
the economy he promised is nowhere to be found. Instead, our nation’s
economy remains stuck with unacceptably high unemployment over 8% and economic
growth too slow to ever reach a full recovery.
Under President Obama, home prices have fallen, homeowners have
received more than 8.5 million foreclosure notices, and 11 million
Americans owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
President Obama’s only plan to address the housing crisis was the same
plan he used to try to fix the economy: spend more taxpayer money on
big-government programs. To address the housing crisis, President Obama
rolled out an alphabet soup of more than ten housing finance programs
rather than offering a real solution. Meanwhile, credit-worthy
borrowers are struggling to get a loan as a result of the uncertainty
caused by the President’s policies.
By continuing to insist on a government-centric approach to housing
and to the economy more generally, President Obama has hamstrung the
economic recovery and slowed the recovery of the housing market. Right
now taxpayers are on the hook for almost 90 percent of all new
mortgages. The two government-sponsored government housing corporations
(Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) fueled a predictable disaster and
President Obama has done nothing to reform these entities.
Understanding that a healthy economy is the
key to a healthy housing market, Mitt Romney has an economic plan that
will result in more jobs and more take home pay. Independent economists
estimate that the plan will create 12 million jobs by the end of his
first term, an essential element to ending the housing crisis.
In towns across the nation, foreclosed homes sit empty, depressing
the value of entire neighborhoods. The government owns about 200,000 of
these homes, or almost half of all of the foreclosed homes in the
country. Mitt Romney will responsibly get the government out of the
homeownership business and return these vacant homes to productive uses
that will increase neighboring home values.
Foreclosures are a difficult, long, and expensive process for
homeowners and lenders alike. Mitt Romney will facilitate creative
alternatives to foreclosure for those who cannot afford to pay their
mortgage. These alternatives will minimize the instability of
communities hard hit by the housing crisis, preserve the credit of
homeowners, and can help keep families in their homes.
Since the housing crisis, the government has produced more than 8,000
pages of new rules and regulations. The problem is that they are
poorly designed, and have made it harder for people with good credit to
get loans. Mitt Romney will put in place smarter regulations to restore
a functioning marketplace that holds banks accountable and restart
lending to creditworthy borrowers.
Any serious plan for ending the housing crisis must address its root
cause. Two government-sponsored companies known as Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac were at the center of the housing crisis. Mitt Romney will
reform these government-sponsored companies to protect taxpayers from
additional risk in the future by ensuring taxpayer dollars in the
housing market are replaced with private dollars.
Obama's Rebuttal As President Obama offers no opinion about Housing on his website, so here are some videos from President Obama and his campaign on Romney's stance on housing. Conclusion
So in summary, the official stance from both parties are very similar, that the rules need to be reformed and that the housing situation will improve as the economy improves, although some of Romney's comments earlier in the campaign don't line up with this stance.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James
For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on National Security. Once again, all information
and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
President Obama kept his promise to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home.
President Obama is drawing down our troops in Afghanistan as
we transition security responsibility to the Afghan people, and is on
track to responsibly end the war there in 2014.
President Obama made the bold decision to order a raid on
Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, eliminating the man responsible
for the 9/11 attacks and the only leader al Qaeda had ever known.
In 2010, President Obama announced an international effort to
secure all vulnerable nuclear materials in four years, and has worked to
prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons in Iran and North Korea.
President Obama has strengthened our alliances around the
world with friends like Israel, our NATO allies, and our partners in
Asia and Latin America. And he has brought together international
coalitions to confront shared challenges, such as Iran’s nuclear
program.
President Obama has repeatedly sought to slash funds for
our fighting men and women, and over the next ten years nearly $1
trillion will be cut from the core defense budget. This budget cutting
enterprise is proceeding while American troops are in combat in
Afghanistan, returning from their mission in Iraq, and fighting the
remnants of al Qaeda worldwide. The Obama administration’s cuts have left us with a military
inventory largely composed of weapons designed forty to fifty years ago.
The average age of our tanker aircraft is 47 years, of strategic
bombers 34 years. The U.S.
Navy has only 284 ships today, the lowest level since 1916, and our naval planners indicate
we need 328 ships to fulfill the Navy’s role of global presence and
power projection in defense of American security. Our Air Force, which
had 82 fighter squadrons at the end of the Cold War, has been reduced to
39 today. President Obama has cut funding for national missile defense.
The Obama administration is seeking to reap a “peace dividend” when
we are not at peace and when the dangers to our security are mounting. This flies directly in the face of conclusions from the bipartisan
Perry-Hadley Commission set up by Congress in 2010. Even before Congress
had adopted its latest round of cuts and even before President Obama
had proposed yet deeper cuts, the Commission warned that: “[t]he aging
of the inventories and equipment used by the services, the decline in
the size of the Navy, escalating personnel entitlements, overhead and
procurement costs, and the growing stress on the force means that a
train wreck is coming in the areas of personnel, acquisition, and force
structure.”
It is unconscionable that
the men and women of
America’s military must fly in airplanes that are old and unreliable,
must sail in ships that have cracked hulls, or must ride in vehicles
that are urgently in need of replacement — all because their government
has had neither the vision to plan for their needs or the simple common
sense to manage its own budget.
As Commander-in-Chief, Mitt Romney will keep
faith with the men and women who defend us just as he will ensure that
our military capabilities are matched to the interests we need to
protect.
Romney will put our Navy on the path to increase its shipbuilding
rate from nine per year to approximately fifteen per year. He will also
modernize and replace the aging inventories of the Air Force, Army, and
Marines, and selectively strengthen our force structure. And he will
fully commit to a robust, multi-layered national ballistic-missile
defense system to deter and defend against nuclear attacks on our
homeland and our allies.
Romney believes we cannot rebuild our military
strength without paying for it. Mitt will begin by reversing Obama-era
defense cuts and return to the budget baseline established by Secretary
Robert Gates in 2010, with the goal of setting core defense spending —
meaning funds devoted to the fundamental military components of
personnel, operations and maintenance, procurement, and research and
development — at a floor of 4 percent of GDP.
Mitt will also find efficiencies throughout the Department of Defense
budget that can be reinvested into the force. The Department’s
bureaucracy is bloated to the point of dysfunction and is ripe for being
pared. In the years since 2000, the Pentagon’s civilian staff grew by
20 percent while our active duty fighting force grew by only 3.4
percent. That imbalance needs to be rectified.
During World War II the
United States built 1,000 ships per year with 1,000 people employed in
the Bureau of Ships, as the purchasing department of the Department of
the Navy was then called. By the 1980s, we were building seventeen ships
per year, with 4,000 people in purchasing. Today, when we are building
only nine ships a year, the Pentagon manages the shipbuilding process
with some 25,000 people. That kind of excess must be brought to an end
along with the byzantine rules and wasteful practices that riddle the
military procurement process.
The measures Mitt Romney will
take include establishing clear lines of authority and accountability
for each weapons system so they remain on time and on budget. He will
institute shorter design and delivery cycles for weapons systems to
eliminate the current practice of relying on yet-to-be-developed
technologies, which creates delays and cost overruns. This will foster
more realistic planning, get equipment into the field at a faster pace,
and save the cost of having to keep older weapons systems in
circulation.
Romney will institute greater competition at all levels of the
procurement process. And he will work with Congress to pass budgets on
time — something the Obama administration has habitually failed to do —
to allow the Department of Defense and defense contractors to properly
plan multi-year projects without delay and disruption. These and other
reforms will ensure a functioning procurement system that redirects
savings into the defense of our nation
Mitt Romney called the decision to bring our troops home from Iraq “tragic.”
Mitt Romney has no plan to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan.
Mitt Romney once said, “It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.”
Mitt Romney has made reckless, unfounded claims but has not outlined any detailed policies for these issues.
On a foreign trip, Mitt Romney insulted one of our closest
allies—the British—right before their Olympics. And he’s spent months on
the campaign trail criticizing our allies and partners around the
world.
Conclusion
So in summary, Obama wants to use more diplomacy and less force to increase stability, while Romney wants to shift military spending from support personnel to front line hardware.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James
For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Taxes and the Budget. Once again, all information
and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
President
Obama has cut taxes for every working American, saving the typical
middle-class family $3,600 in taxes over his first term.
President Obama believes no household making more than $1 million each year should pay a
smaller share of their income in taxes than a middle-class family pays.
President Obama knows we can’t simply cut our way to
prosperity. His budget includes investments in education, manufacturing,
and infrastructure, while brining discretionary spending to its lowest level as a share of the economy in more than 50 years .
President Obama has put forward a specific, balanced plan of spending cuts and revenue increases that reduce the deficit by more than $4 trillion
over the next decade, including $1 trillion in spending cuts he signed
into law last summer as part of a deal with congressional Republicans.
President Obama has repeatedly called for a “balanced
approach,” by which we believe he means cutting spending but also raising taxes, which may sound appealing, but before President Obama exploded the size of the federal government, our
existing tax rates were more or less adequate to pay for the government
we needed under President Bush.
President Obama claims he is offering a compromise by permanently increasing the size of the government, increasing the things government does, and increasing the tax burden on the American people.
President Obama’s proclivity for fostering uncertainty about the
long-term shape of the tax code is particularly troublesome. He has
embraced one temporary solution after the next while rejecting permanent
adjustments that would bring some predictability and stability to
investment decision-making. The result is a business climate marked by
hesitation.
No discussion of President Obama’s tax policies would be complete
without a reference to Obamacare and its $500 billion in tax increases.
Whenever President Obama discusses the need for more tax revenues,
Americans should remember that he already got them and spent them on a
health care scheme that is itself proving to be hugely disruptive to the
economy.
Reducing and stabilizing federal spending is
essential, but breathing life into the present anemic recovery will also
require fixing the nation’s tax code to focus on jobs and growth. To
repair the nation’s tax code, marginal rates must be brought down to
stimulate entrepreneurship, job creation, and investment, while still
raising the revenue needed to fund a smaller, smarter, simpler
government. The principle of fairness must be preserved in federal tax
and spending policy.
America’s individual tax code applies relatively high marginal tax
rates on a narrow tax base. Those high rates discourage work and
entrepreneurship, as well as savings and investment. With 54 percent of
private sector workers employed outside of corporations, individual
rates also define the incentives for job-creating businesses. Lower
marginal tax rates secure for all Americans the economic gains from tax
reform.
Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains
Eliminate the Death Tax
Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
The U.S. economy’s 35 percent corporate tax rate is among the highest
in the industrial world, reducing the ability of our nation’s
businesses to compete in the global economy and to invest and create
jobs at home. By limiting investment and growth, the high rate of
corporate tax also hurts U.S. wages.
Cut the corporate rate to 25 percent
Strengthen and make permanent the R&D tax credit
Switch to a territorial tax system
Repeal the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
Mitt Romney
would have to raise taxes on middle-class families in order to pay for
tax cuts for millionaires, costing the typical American family with kids
$2,000 more each year.
Mitt Romney wants to preserve loopholes that allow millionaires like himself to pay a lower tax rate than working families.
Mitt Romney would slash investments in the middle class while providing one of the largest tax cuts in history to the wealthy.
Mitt Romney has refused to detail any plan for how he would
reduce the deficit. Instead, he has called for $5 trillion in new tax
cuts weighted towards the wealthy and a massive defense build-up with no
strategic rationale, along with deep cuts to investments in the middle
class.
Conclusion
So in summary, Obama is cutting taxes on the poor and middle-class, increase taxes on the upper class and invest in more of America, while Romney wants to reduce government spending and reduce taxes for businesses and upper-class.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James
For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' platforms on Equal Rights and Women's Health. Once again, all information
and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act to help
women fight back against pay discrimination. He understands that when
women are paid less than men for the same work, it hurts the entire
family.
President Obama was the first sitting president to publicly
announce his support for marriage for same-sex couples, and has always
believed LGBT Americans should be treated fairly and equally
President Obama repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” so that gay
and lesbian service members no longer have to lie about who they are to
serve the country they love.
President Obama endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act, signed
the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, and
extended hospital visitation and medical decision-making rights to LGBT
couples.
President Obama has enacted policies that promote the hiring
of people with disabilities, increased funding for students with
disabilities, provide Americans with access to affordable health care,
and improve accessibility standards.
President Obama is putting an end to the health insurance
company practice of charging women more than men for the same coverage.
Thanks to Obamacare, many insurance plans are beginning to
fully cover birth control without co-pays or deductibles as part of
women's preventive care—potentially saving women hundreds of dollars
every year.
President Obama believes a woman’s health care choices are
personal decisions, best made with her doctor—without interference from
politicians.
President Obama fought back against Republican attempts to
defund Planned Parenthood, one of the largest providers of women’s
health services, including breast and cervical cancer screenings, and
birth control. Under Obamacare, health insurance companies now cover
recommended preventive care like mammograms and cancer screenings, and
are beginning to cover birth control without co-pays or deductibles.
Romney's Rebuttal
Romney offers no rebuttal to Obama's Equal Rights or Women's Health
platforms on his website, so here an small interview by Romney from May,
2012 for as close a rebuttal by Romney on Obama's Equal Rights Platform I could find. I couldn't not find anything from Romney specifically addressing Obama's Women's Health platform, so if anyone knows of anything let me know and I'll update this article.
Mitt Romney
Romney offers no opinion about Equal Rights or Women's Health on his website, so here are some videos of Mitt Romney on the subjects. Apologies for the lack of straight up Romney-only debates
speech, his lack of any official releases makes that difficult to do, but his position should still be made clear.
Mitt Romney refused to say whether or not he would have signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law.
Mitt Romney would enshrine discrimination into the Constitution with an amendment to ban marriage for same-sex couples.
Mitt Romney refused to support the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and would have left the policy in place.
As governor, Mitt Romney cut funding for hate crimes prevention and abolished a hate crimes task force.
Mitt Romney would repeal the Affordable Care Act and slash Medicaid, which many Americans with disabilities rely on.
Mitt Romney would let employers, insurance companies, and politicians limit women’s health choices.
Mitt Romney would repeal Obamacare, and give employers the authority to limit women’s access to common forms of birth control.
Mitt Romney believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned,
and backed an extreme proposal to outlaw abortions even in the case of
incest and rape.
Mitt Romney would eliminate all federal funding for Planned Parenthood, and roll back all the benefits of health reform.
Conclusion
So in summary, Obama has been giving women more rights, in both the work place and with their medical needs and equal rights for LGTB people, while Romney literally supports making discrimination against women and LGTB people legal. That kinda sickens me...
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions. I don't think there will be any question which way the heroes side on this one though...
~James
For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' Plans for Education. Once again, all information
and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
President Obama has made education a national priority, as he understands America has to out-educate the rest of the world to be competitive in the global economy, and so he has doubled America's investment in scholarships and financial aid so students from working- and middle-class families can access and
complete the college education they need to get the good jobs of the
future, Obama has worked to raise K-12 standards, invest in teachers, save the jobs of hundreds of thousands of educators across the country, and turn around low performing schools so that children are prepared for college and careers.
President Obama signed a new law that makes it easier for students to pay back their federal college loans so that new borrowers would not have to pay more than 10% of their disposable income and that any remaining debt be forgiven after 20 years. Those in public service professions like teachers, nurses or members of the armed forces, will have any remaining debt forgiven after 10 years, provided they make their payments on time.
President Obama made college more affordable by doubling funding for
Pell Grants, increasing the number of recipients from 6 million to 9
million since 2008. He achieved this in part by eliminating the
middlemen from the college-loan program, taking away billions of
taxpayer dollars that were going to the banks instead of students. The President also created and extended the American Opportunity Tax
Credit, worth as much as $10,000 over four years of school, and is estimated to have helped 9.4 million students
and families in 2011.
In his State of the Union address, President Obama challenged
schools and states to keep good teachers on the job and keep students
in school until they graduate or turn 18. The Obama administration has also fought to save the jobs of hundreds
of thousands of educators across the country, with the Recovery Act saving roughly 300,000 education jobs, and in 2010 President Obama
helped school districts prevent 161,000 teacher and school staff
layoffs.
To give states the flexibility to use local solutions to improve
their schools, and in the face of congressional inaction, President
Obama acted to offer states relief from No Child Left Behind mandates.
Obama's administration implemented the Race to the Top program, which rewards states for making
tough reforms—raising standards, helping teachers improve, and turning
around struggling schools. Since 2010, the administration has awarded Race to the Top
grants, including Early Learning Challenge grants, to 21 states and the
District of Columbia, which serve 65 percent of the nation’s children
and 59 percent of all low-income students in the country. Overall, the
Race to the Top competition has encouraged states to adopt a
high-quality framework of educational standards—and 46 states have
already adopted the reforms.
President Obama is investing in competitive grants to reform
community colleges, supporting partnerships between community colleges
and employers to provide pathways to good jobs. As a candidate, Barack Obama proposed the creation of a community
college partnership program to support institutions that provide a
stepping stone to better jobs for millions of Americans, and as President
he kept his word and created a new Community College to Career Fund to build on that progress.
President Obama
signed into law an update to the post-9/11 G.I. Bill, which makes it
easier for National Guard members who performed active service to
qualify for benefits, and allows for education benefits to be
transferred to family members.
Along with
proposing other common-sense immigration reforms, President Obama is
committed to giving the hundreds of thousands of hardworking students
who aren’t yet American citizens a chance to earn their citizenship.
Mitt Romney believes that the long-term strategy for getting
America’s economy back on track is ensuring a world class education for
American students. Global competitiveness begins in the classroom. In
order to achieve this goal, students must have the skills to succeed in
the workforce, ensuring that the promise of opportunity in this country
remains strong.
As governor of Massachusetts, Mitt saw what a state can do with a
culture of high expectations, accountability for results, and increased
parental choice. During the third year of his term, the state’s fourth
and eighth grade students ranked first in the nation in both reading and
math. Massachusetts was the first state to achieve this goal and has
remained the nation’s educational leader to this day. Mitt’s experience
in Massachusetts reinforced the importance of innovating and
duplicating, taking the best ideas from states that are succeeding and
replicating them across the country.
Mitt also expanded access to high-quality public charter schools.
When the 85% Democratic legislature passed a bill putting a moratorium
on any new charter, Mitt vetoed the bill. He believes that no parent
should be forced to send their child to a failing school and that
increased choice translates into better outcomes for all students. He
also realizes that teacher quality is integral to student success.
States should recruit the best and brightest into the classroom and
reward them for a job well done.
During his time in Massachusetts, Mitt promoted access to higher
education for students. He proposed the John and Abigail Adams
Scholarship, providing a four-year tuition-free scholarship to any state
institution for any Massachusetts students that scored among the top 25
percent in their school. Mitt also defended the requirement that high
school students pass a rigorous test to graduate and saw students and
educators respond to heightened accountability with dramatically
improved performance.
Part of an opportunity society is rewarding hard work and success.
Mitt believes education is a key to the American dream, and students
must be encouraged to pursue that dream and work hard to achieve it.
Post-secondary education cannot become a luxury for the few; instead,
all students should have the opportunity to attend a college that best
suits their needs. Whether it is public or private, traditional or
online, college must be available and affordable.
Improving education in America is a priority for Mitt. He knows what
can be accomplished when governors are empowered to reform their
education systems, when education entrepreneurs are given the freedom to
innovate, when teachers are rewarded for boosting student achievement,
and when students are empowered to select a school or education program
that meets their needs. Americans have long been known for their
creativity, ingenuity, and bold vision for our country, and this
attitude must apply to our education system.
Mitt Romney's current advice to students is that they "shop around" for more affordable tuition or borrow money from their parents, a stark contrast to President Obama's belief that government investment in education is key to a strong and growing economy.
Romney would let the American Opportunity Tax Credit
expire, hurting more than 9 million hardworking families trying to send
their children to college.
In Romney's first year as governor of Massachusetts, K-12
public schools saw the second-largest percentage cuts per student in the
country. Under Romney, state college costs skyrocketed, and when he
left office, Massachusetts' state colleges were among the most expensive
in the country. Today, he's proposing a national school voucher program
with no plan to fix failing schools.
Romney has refused to stand by teachers in calling for more
manageable class sizes, writing that the effort to keep class sizes
down "may actually hurt education more than it helps.
Mitt Romney has publically stated that if elected "The Department of Education, I will either consolidate with another agency, or perhaps make it a heck of a lot smaller."
Conclusion
So in summary, Obama wants to continue government investment in American education, while Romney wants to let schools fend for themselves and be as hands off as possible, which sounds a lot like the candidates' healthcare plans.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
For this week's issue, we'll look at candidates' Healthcare
Plans. Once again, all information
and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
Before health reform, insurance
premiums were skyrocketing, and the shared cost of caring for the
uninsured added $1,000 to the typical family’s policy. President Obama passed the Affordable Care Act to restore healthcare as a basic cornerstone of middle-class security in America. The Affordable Care Act will make healthcare more affordable for families and small businesses and brings much needed transparency to the insurance industry. When fully implemented, the Affordable Care Act will keep insurance companies from taking advantage of consumers, including denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and cancelling coverage when someone gets sick. Because of the new law, 34 million more Americans will gain coverage, many of which will be able to afford insurance for the first time. Once the law is fully implemented, about 95 percent of Americans under age 65 will have insurance.
Under the new act, working families are
protected from losing their health care or being forced into bankruptcy
when a family member gets sick or is in an accident. Families have the
security of knowing their health insurance will be there when they need
it most. Insurance companies are now required to justify rate hikes and
provide rebates if they don’t spend at least 80 percent of premiums on
care instead of overhead, marketing, and profits, and
consumers have the ability to appeal to an independent third party when
insurance companies refuse to cover services or care. As many as 9 million
consumers are expected to get up to $1.4 billion in rebates because the
President passed the Affordable Care Act.
Starting in 2014, all Americans will have access to affordable
health insurance no matter their circumstances—whether they change jobs,
lose their job, decide to start a business, or retire early. Purchasing
private insurance in the new state-based health insurance exchanges
could save middle-class families who can’t get employer-provided
insurance thousands of dollars. Once fully implemented, the law will slow health care premium growth rates, adding another $2,000 to family savings by 2019, and the law is expected to reduce the deficit by $127 billion from 2012 to 2021.
Fact: The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan
(PCIP) provides insurance to people with health conditions who have been
uninsured for six months, helping those with cancer or other serious
conditions to get the treatment they need.
Before the Affordable Care Act, more than half of all private
insurance plans included a lifetime limit on coverage, and nearly 20,000
people hit a lifetime cap each year. The Affordable Care Act banned
these caps, and those who had already hit a lifetime limit will be
eligible for unlimited coverage. Also, young adults are now eligible to stay on their parents’ health
insurance plans as they enter the workforce, until they turn 26. Since
the health care law passed, 3.1 million young adults, traditionally the
group least likely to be insured, gained insurance because of the
Affordable Care Act.
More than 47 million Medicare beneficiaries
now have access to free health services, including an annual wellness
visit, mammograms, and other health screenings, to help detect and treat
medical conditions early. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, nearly 3.6
million seniors who fell into the Medicare “doughnut hole” last year
saved an average of $604 on prescription drugs.
Before the
Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could deny coverage to children
with medical conditions. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, as many as
17 million children with pre-existing conditions can no longer be denied
health insurance. Also, all new insurance plans are required to cover certain preventive services without charging a co-pay or deductible.
Millions of small businesses are now
eligible for a tax credit to help pay for their health care premiums.
The credit will increase to cover 50 percent of premium costs in 2014. Under the Affordable Care Act, help for small businesses—including
the new insurance exchanges—will reduce small business health care
spending by nearly 9 percent, according to independent estimates.
The transformation in
American health care set in motion by Obamacare will take us in
precisely the wrong direction. The bill, itself more than 2,400 pages
long, relies on a dense web of regulations, fees, subsidies, excise
taxes, exchanges, and rule-setting boards to give the federal government
extraordinary control over every corner of the health care system. The
costs are commensurate: Obamacare added a trillion dollars in new health
care spending. To pay for it, the law raised taxes by $500 billion on
everyone from middle-class families to innovative medical device makers,
and then slashed $500 billion from Medicare.
While Obamacare may create a new health insurance
entitlement, it will only worsen the system’s existing problems. When
was the last time a massive government program lowered cost, improved
efficiency, or raised the consistency of service? Obamacare will
violate that crucial first principle of medicine: “do no harm.” It will
make America a less attractive place to practice medicine, discourage
innovators from investing in life-saving technology, and restrict
consumer choice.
In short, President Obama’s trillion dollar federal takeover of the
U.S. health care system is a disaster for the federal budget, a disaster
for the constitutional principles of federalism, and a disaster for the
American people.
On his first day in office, Mitt Romney will
issue an executive order that paves the way for the federal government
to issue Obamacare waivers to all fifty states. He will then work with
Congress to repeal the full legislation as quickly as possible. In place of Obamacare, Mitt will pursue policies that give each state
the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own
citizens. The federal government’s role will be to help markets work by
creating a level playing field for competition.
Mitt will begin by returning states to their proper place in charge
of regulating local insurance markets and caring for the poor,
uninsured, and chronically ill. States will have both the incentive and
the flexibility to experiment, learn from one another, and craft the
approaches best suited to their own citizens. Mitt will also block grant Medicaid and other payments to states, limit federal standards and requirements on both private insurance and Medicaid coverage, ensure flexibility to help the uninsured, including public-private partnerships, exchanges, subsidies, the chronically ill, including high-risk pools, reinsurance, and risk adjustment, and offer innovation grants to explore non-litigation alternatives to dispute resolution.
Competition drives improvements in efficiency and effectiveness,
offering consumers higher quality goods and services at lower cost. It
can have the same effect in the health care system, if given the chance
to work. Mitt would cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits, empower individuals and small businesses to form purchasing pools, prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage, and facilitate IT interoperability.
For markets to work, consumers must have the information and the
power to make decisions about their own care. Letting the patient determine everything about their process will drive quality up and cost down while
ensuring that services are designed to provide what Americans actually
want. Mitt would end tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance, allow consumers to purchase insurance across state lines, unshackle HSAs by allowing funds to be used for insurance premiums, promote "co-insurance" products, promote alternatives to "fee for service", and encourage "Consumer Reports"-type ratings of alternative insurance plans.
Mitt Romney is trying to convince the American people that he does
not support a federal individual health care mandate, even though an
individual mandate was a fundamental component of his own 2006 Massachusetts
health care law, which he praised as a model for the nation.. That law was one of the models for the Affordable Care Act, but Romney insists that he has “opposed the idea of a federal mandate
from the beginning” and that “the last thing” he’d ever do would be “to
take what we had done for one state and impose it on the entire
nation.” As is often the case with Romney, he had the opposite
view just a few years ago.
Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are attempting to hide their plan to end
Medicare behind false attacks on President Obama. Obamacare
protects benefits for the elderly, but the Romney-Ryan budget would put
millionaires before seniors’ health care.
Dedicated to repealing health reform, Mitt Romney said he doesn’t
think all uninsured people with pre-existing conditions should be able
to get coverage: “If they are 45 years old and they show up and say I want
insurance because I have heart disease, it’s like, ‘Hey guys. We can’t
play the game like that.’ You’ve got to get insurance when you are
well.”
If Romney repealed Obamacare, he would hurt millions of Americans in at least these five ways:
Millions of Americans could lose access to preventive
services, including cancer screenings, blood pressure tests, and flu
shots. [Source: HHS]
Insurance companies could continue to deny coverage to as many as
129 million people with a pre-existing condition if they try to buy
insurance on their own. [Source: HealthCare.gov]
Young people could be kicked off their parents’ insurance when
they turn 18 or graduate from college, instead of being covered until
they are 26. [Source: HHS]
Americans who fall into the Medicare “doughnut hole” would lose crucial discounts on prescriptions. [Source: HHS]
Insurance companies could go back to spending as much as 40% of
premiums on administrative overhead like CEO salaries and marketing.
[Source: Healthcare.gov]
With Mitt Romney at the helm, the GOP has
been steadily chipping away at women’s health and women’s rights. They
oppose abortion rights and have pledged to “get rid of” Planned
Parenthood funding. Even worse, Rep. Todd Akin—in explaining his
opposition to abortion even in cases of rape—said victims of “legitimate
rape” don’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try and
shut that whole thing down.” Akin’s egregious, false, and deeply disturbing view only exemplifies how extreme the Republican Party—led by Romney and Ryan—has become on
issues important to women. Take a look at where the GOP ticket stands on
women’s health:
Redefine rape: Ryan co-sponsored a bill that, among other things, narrowed the definition of rape to “forcible rape.” As the National Women’s Law Center explained,
the proposal “speaks to a distinction between rape where there must be
some element of force in order to rise to the standard, and rape where
this is not ... it takes us back to a time where just saying no was not
enough.”
Ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest: Romney backed a proposal to outlaw all abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. He also supports the Republican Party platform, which includes a Human Life Amendment that bans abortion without those exceptions. Ryan co-sponsored a personhood bill
that defines life as beginning at conception—a definition that would
mean “abortion and some forms of birth control could be construed as
murder.”
Employer control over birth control coverage:
Romney said “of course” he supports a bill that would’ve allowed any
employer to deny women coverage for birth control. Ryan co-sponsored a
similar proposal in the House and called the Obamacare rule that provides access to contraception without out-of-pocket costs “an affront to religious liberty.”
Defund Planned Parenthood: Romney pledged to “get rid of”
funding for Planned Parenthood. Ryan repeatedly voted to eliminate
federal funding for Planned Parenthood, an organization that provides
crucial health services to women across the country. All federal funding
goes towards medical services like reproductive health services, birth
control, cancer screenings—but not abortion services.
Every day, women across American grapple with extremely difficult and
deeply personal health decisions that should be made between a woman
and her doctor, not dictated by politicians. While President Obama is
committed to protecting a woman’s right to make her own health
decisions, the Romney-Ryan ticket would “take us back to the policies
more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.”
At a press conference with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Jan
Schakowsky, Sandra Fluke cited the Republican Party's attitudes and actions
toward Planned Parenthood as indicative of how extreme the party has
become—and just how dangerous their agenda is for women. "I just find it
astonishing that the first bill that this House of Representatives
chose to pass was a bill to defund Planned Parenthood. When they chose
to defund Planned Parenthood, that was literally the choice to take away
breast cancer screenings, cervical cancer screenings, and access to
contraception. I don't understand the mindset that says that's the most
important, critical thing to do. Day one, we need to take away breast
cancer screenings for women? Mr. Ryan was part of that decision. Mr. Romney has endorsed that decision."
Conclusion
In summary, Obama has robust and inclusive plan to help get the same healthcare services to as many Americans as possible, while Romney wants to leave healthcare to individual states by removing as much federal involvement and funding as possible.
Turn in Friday for the Superhero opinions.
~James
For this week's issue, we look at candidates' Energy and Environmental Plans, and since the VPs are in support of their running mate's policies, I've omitted their sections, which I'll do for future posts unless they have some significant contribution. Again, all information and videos are taken directly from the candidates'
websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with
minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information.
President Obama has made protecting the environment a priority, moving America toward energy independence and cleaner air and water, all of which has helped create hundreds of thousands of jobs in the clean energy industry.
President Obama has enacted the largest expansion of land and water conservation and protected wilderness in a generation in addition to creating the America's Great Outdoors initiative to develop a community-led conservation and recreation agenda for the 21st century
President Obama is committed to putting an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy in place to develop every available source of energy in America while ensuring Americans never have to choose between protecting the environment and strengthening the economy.
President Obama has announced the opening of public lands for investments in clean energy and has committed his administration to approve projects by the end of 2012 that will increase renewable generation capacity to power 3 million homes as well as have taken major steps to develop offshore wind resources, including the approving country's first ever offshore wind farm which will provide clean electricity to power more than 200,000 homes and taken steps to streamline future offshore wind projects. Obama's administration has also approved the construction of 16 commercial-scale solar facilities, five wind and eight geothermal projects on public lands that are expected to power a further 1.3 million homes and support 12,500 jobs.
President Obama has made an agreement with auto manufacturers to improve the overall fuel economy of America's automobiles to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, almost double the 27.5 miles per gallon standard that was in place when Obama took office. The Obama administration's groundbreaking standards for cars and light trucks will save American families an average of $8,200 in gas costs per vehicle by 2025, and the standards will also cut vehicles' greenhouse gas pollution in half, reducing a major cause of climate change.
President Obama has set a 10-year goal for America to develop and deploy cost-effective clean coal technology and to have several commercial demonstration projects running within four years. The Recovery Act invested substantially in carbon capture and sequestration research, including 22 projects across four different areas of carbon capture-and-storage research and development. Under President Obama, America has implemented numerous initiatives to improve miner health and safety, and 2011 saw the second-fewest miner deaths on record.
Under President Obama's direction, the Environmental Protection Agency has issued the first-ever national standards for mercury emissions and other dangerous toxins from coal- and oil-fired power plants. These new safeguards are helping to clear our skies, preventing 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 new cases of asthma each year.
Obama's New Energy for America plan will help create five million new jobs by strategically investing $150 billion over the next ten years to catalyze private efforts to build a clean energy future, save more oil than America currently import the Middle East and Venezulea combined within 10 years, put 1 million plug-in hybrid cars that can get up to 150 miles per gallon on the road by 2015 that we will work to make sure are built in America, create a new $7,000 Tax Credit for purchasing Advanced Vehicles, ensure 25 percent of our electricity comes from renewable sources by 2025 and implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
The most active regulation group in the federal government is the
Environmental Protection Agency, with Obama's war on carbon dioxide, the
most far-reaching environmental regulatory scheme in American history
is the highest-profile effort by the EPA, who continue to issue new
regulations touching on countless things that continue to drive up
costs, hinder business investments and destroy jobs. In August 2011 Cass
Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and
Regulatory Affairs, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal announced
the results of an "unprecedentedly ambitious government-wide review" of
regulations that if implemented would result in a total annual savings
of approximately $2 billion, small compared to the over $9 billion in
new regulatory costs proposed or implemented by the Obama
administration.
The first three years of
the Obama administration have witnessed energy and environmental
policies that have stifled the domestic energy sector. President Obama
and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit
energy exploration and restrict development in sectors like oil and
coal in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill
jobs. As the Obama administration wages war against oil and coal, it has
been spending billions of dollars on alternative energy forms and
touting its creation of “green” jobs. But these “green” technologies are
typically far too expensive to compete in the marketplace since they
generate little profit, which unsurprisingly has failed to create an
economic boom.
Romney will make efforts to safeguard the environment, but not at the
cost of American jobs. The first step will be to stream line regulations
to facilitate rapid progress in the development of our domestic
reserves of oil and natural gas and allow for further investment in
nuclear power. Other steps include creating one-stop shop to streamline
permitting process for approval of common activities, implement
fast-track procedures for companies with establish safety records to
conduct pre-approved activities in pre-approved ares with minimal
oversight, ensure environmental laws properly account for cost in
regulatory process, edit the Clean Air Act to remove all oversight on
carbon dioxide production, Expand NRC capabilities for the approval of
alternate nuclear reactor designs and streamline the process to ensure
that licensing decisions for reactors on or adjacent to approved sites,
using newly approved designs, are complete within two years.
According
to Romney, America has been blessed with a cornucopia of carbon-based
energy resources, an development of them has been a pathway to
prosperity in the past and should be in the future, so he'll conduct a
comprehensive survey of America's energy reserves, start using America's
energy reserves, expand opportunities for resource developers to forge
partnerships with neighboring countries, support the construction and
fast tracking of pipelines to bring Canadian oil to America, reduce
regulation of shale gas development and extraction trough processes like
hydraulic fracturing. The failure of windmills and solar plants to turn
significant profits also requires the need to move alternative energy
funding to basic research utilizing long term, apolitical funding
mechanisms like ARPA-E.
Romney's rhetoric that he wants to make America energy independent by 2020 doesn't match his actual policies, which would do nothing to help America achieve that goal. Romney is calling for more drilling and fracking with fewer safeguards. Romney wants to maintain the $4 billion in taxpayer subsidies for oil and gas companies that are making near-record profits, while eliminating a clean energy tax credit that supports tens of thousands of jobs. Romney's plan to "drill, baby, drill" while cutting critical investments in wind, solar and biofuels will do nothing to reduce America's dependence foreign oil and end thousands of jobs across the country. Romney has made it clear
that he opposes the wind production tax credit and all incentives for
clean energy, which would pull the rug out from under our growing clean
energy sector, which supports thousands of jobs across the
country.
Conclusion
In summary, Obama wants to back green technologies and reduce America's use of oil, while Romney wants to get as much business going as possible with as few restrictions as possible. Well, maybe this time we'll see a less one-sided result from the superheroes on Friday.
~James
And now it's time to get down to business. And we're starting with the big issue, the economy. So, let's start with the candidates' positions. All information and videos are taken directly from the candidates' websites, either in part or in whole, unless otherwise noted, with minimal alteration to clarify and streamline information. Barack Obama Summarized from Obama's Website
At the time Obama took office, the economy was losing more than 700,000 jobs per month. He quickly passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which cut taxes for small businesses and 95% of working families and included emergency funding to support about 300,000 educator jobs, over 4,600 law enforcement positions and investments in the clean energy sector that supported 224,500 jobs through 2010. Through May 2012 the economy has added 4.4 million private sector jobs over 28 consecutive months of job growth.
Obama wants to grow high-technology US manufacturing capacity and supply clean energy projects with American-made parts and equipment, which is why he's provided tax incentives to and made investments in clean energy technologies like wind turbines and advanced car batteries
Obama launched the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, a national effort to invest in technologies that will create high-quality manufacturing jobs and enhance America's global competitiveness.
Obama signed the America Invents Act, historic patent reform legislation that will help American entrepreneurs bring inventions to market sooner, helping to create new businesses and new jobs by cutting wait times by two-thirds and help small business innovators move ideas from lab to market.
Obama made the tough and politically unpopular decision to extend emergency rescue loans to the American auto industry, saving more than 1 million jobs and preventing the loss of over $96 billion in personal income - and the collapse of manufacturing in the Midwest. GM and Chrysler were required to cut labor costs and overhaul their business models in exchange for emergency loans, guaranteeing their accountability to taxpayers - and both repaid their outstanding loans years ahead of schedule. Today, Chrysler, GM and Ford are all profitable for the first time in years, adding shifts and facilities across the country. The industry has added 230,000 jobs since June 2009, and GM is once again the top-selling automaker in the world, posting it's largest-ever annual profit in 2011.
Obama passed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to hold Wall Street accountable, prevent future financial crises, and end the era of "too big to fail". Wall Street reform ensures that if a financial company fails, it will be Wall Street that pays the price and not the American people, and sets ground rules for the riskiest financial speculation. Obama also enacted a Credit Card Bill of Rights to Protect consumers from unfair and deceptive practices, like over-the-limit charges and hidden costs.
President Obama has repeatedly called to cut spending and raising taxes. But before President Obama increased the size of the federal government by increasing things like regulation, our existing tax rates were more or less adequate to pay for the smaller government we had, while President Obama seeks to make his changes permanent, which would increase the tax burden for everyone. Obama's desire to foster long-term changes to the tax code is particularly troublesome. When President Obama complains about banks refusing to lend and businesses refusing to hire, he should consider the impact of his own policies on that state of affairs. No discussion of President Obama's tax policies would be complete without a reference to Obamacare and its $500 billion in tax increases. Whenever President Obama discusses the need for more tax revenues that Obamacare is reason as it proves to be a major shake up to the economy.
The most active regulation group in the federal government is the Environmental Protection Agency, with Obama's war on carbon dioxide, the most far-reaching environmental regulatory scheme in American history is the highest-profile effort by the EPA, who continue to issue new regulations touching on countless things that continue to drive up costs, hinder business investments and destroy jobs. In August 2011 Cass Sunstein, Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal announced the results of an "unprecedentedly ambitious government-wide review" of regulations that if implemented would result in a total annual savings of approximately $2 billion, small compared to the over $9 billion in new regulatory costs proposed or implemented by the Obama administration.
President Obama has sat on the sidelines while America's major trading competitors have been moving forward. The European Union has successfully signed agreements with nine countries and pursued negotiations with sixteen others. China has signed agreements with four countries and pursued negotiations with fifteen others. In August 2011, a group of Asian nations, including many with whom President Obama has stalled progress on trade, announced their goal to create the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement, which would include China but not the United States. President Obama has also failed in commercial relations with China, which has adopted a deliberate policy of building up its own economy by misappropriating western technology, blocking access to its market and manipulating its currency. The Chinese government facilitates this behavior by forcing American companies to share proprietary technology as a condition of doing business in China. Instead of responding forcefully, the Obama administration has acted like a supplicant.
The first three years of
the Obama administration have witnessed energy and environmental
policies that have stifled the domestic energy sector. President Obama and the regulatory bodies under his control have taken measures to limit energy exploration and restrict development in sectors like oil and coal in ways that sap economic performance, curtail growth, and kill jobs. As the Obama administration wages war against oil and coal, it has been spending billions of dollars on alternative energy forms and touting its creation of “green” jobs. But these “green” technologies are typically far too expensive to compete in the marketplace since they generate little profit, which unsurprisingly has failed to create an economic boom.
President Obama's approach to human capital is to let government take the lead, with the government pouring money into retraining programs, $18 billion in 2009 for 47 programs administered by nine different federal agencies and while seven programs account for three-fourths of the spending, 44 of the programs all have some sort of overlap with one another. Only 5 programs have had their results thoroughly evaluated since 2004, and we know little about the effectiveness, and one of the 47 programs, the Workforce Investment Act Adult and Dislocated Workers program, produced only “small to nonexistent”
results. This is the kind of government waste, political horse-trading, and
administrative chaos that has brought discredit on the federal
government. We cannot afford to squander taxpayer money in this way.
President Obama’s job retraining record is a live, ongoing demonstration
of why federal spending in so many areas needs to be scaled back.
Since President Obama assumed office federal spending has accelerated at an unprecedented pace compared to recent history, from $3.5 trillion in federal spending in 2010 to a possible $5.6 trillion in a decade. This is entirely based on Obama's choice. One way to gauge if a government is living within its means is spending as a percentage of GDP. Since the 1950s, federal spending as a percentage of GDP has averaged 20%. When President Obama took office, it shot up to 25%, a level not seen since World War II. President Obama's insistence on a "balanced approach", a combination of spending cuts and taxes increases, would create a baseline level of spending higher than when he took office. Obama wants to move America in the direction of more taxes and more spending at a time when both are smothering the economy.
Joe Biden
Biden is a vocal supporter of Obama's economic plan, and a key member in helping Obama build it, so much so that it is called The Obama-Biden Plan on Change.gov. (From this article by Steve Clemons for the Atlantic)
Romney seeks to reduce taxes, spending, regulation and government programs while increasing trade, energy production, human capital and labor flexibility. Romney wants to relinquish power to states instead of trying to come up with a solution to every problem.
Romney is calling for fundamental changes to how the federal government believes economic growth and prosperity are achieved, how jobs are created, and the government's role in these endeavors. It is a deeply conservative policy and major departure from the policies of the current administration.
Romney says he wants to change the tax code to focus on jobs and growth by bringing down marginal rates in an effort to stimulate entrepreneurship, job creation and investment while still raising enough revenue for a smaller, smarter, simpler government where less people have more power to bring about faster change for the things they want. The Principle of fairness must be preserved in federal tax and spending policy and not single out anyone no matter how much they earn.
Romney believes America's individual tax code applies relatively high marginal tax rates on a narrow tax base, which discourage people from working and being entrepreneurial, as well as building savings and investments, and with 54% of private sector workers employed outside corporations, individual rates also define the incentives for job-creating businesses. Romney wants to implement lower marginal tax rates that he hopes will secure economic gains from tax reform for all Americans, make a 20% cut in marginal rates across the board, maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends and capital gains, eliminate taxes for taxpayers with Annual Gross Incomes below $200,000 on interest, dividends and capital gains, eliminate the Inheritance Tax and repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax.
Romney says the US's 35% corporate tax rate, which is among the highest of such taxes in the industrial world, is reducing the ability of America's businesses to compete in the global economy and to invest and create jobs at home, which hurt US wages, so Romney intends to cut corporate taxes to 25%, strengthen and make permanent the Research & Experimentation Tax Credit, switch to a territorial tax system and repeal the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax.
Romney believes that regulations are a hidden tax on Americans, with the Small Business Administration giving an estimate of the administration of America costing $1.75 trillion annually, and that this is because federal agencies can issue whatever regulations they desire, and that most operate with little to no presidential oversight, resulting in an economy subject to the whims bureaucrats pursuing their own agendas who cannot be held accountable. A new regulation can suddenly transform a profitable investment into an unprofitable one by raising safety standards or minimum wages, or render employees unproductive due to things like federally mandated safety seminars, all of which produces uncertainty.
Romney will treat regulatory costs like other costs and will establish firm limits for them and will act quickly to tear down the vast edifice of regulations on the economy and also seek to make structural changes to the federal bureaucracy that ensure economic growth and maximizing revenue remains front and center when regulatory decisions are made. Romney will also repeal and eliminate many existing laws, including Obamacare, the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, the Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act, and all other Obama-era regulations. Romney will also ensure environmental laws properly account for cost in regulatory process and that companies will be given longer lead times to comply with any environmental regulations. Romney says that moving forward might sound like a great idea, but regulatory costs need to treated like the real costs they are, and that he'll impose a regulatory cap of zero dollars on all federal agencies, require congressional approval of all new "major" regulations and reform the legal liability system to prevent spurious litigation.
Romney believes that free trade is essential to restoring economic growth, and that there is a need to open new markets beyond American borders on terms that work for America. As such, Romney will reinstate the president's Trade Promotion Authority, complete negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, pursue new trade agreements with nations committed to free enterprise and open markets and create the "Reagan Economic Zone" which would codify the principles of free trade at the international level and
provide a way to punish countries that violate free trade policies. Romney also sees China as a major player, and that his first priority must be to put on the table all
unilateral actions within American power to ensure that the Chinese adhere to
existing agreements, and that if America wants to see the Chinese play by the rules then Americans must be willing to say "no more" to China. Romney also wants to increase CBP resources to prevent the illegal entry of goods into our market, increase USTR resources to pursue and support litigation against unfair trade practices, use unilateral and multilateral punitive measures to deter unfair Chinese practices, designate China a currency manipulator and impose countervailing duties and discontinue US government procurement from China until China commits to GPA.
Romney will make efforts to safeguard the environment, but not at the cost of American jobs. The first step will be to stream line regulations to facilitate rapid progress in the development of our domestic reserves of oil and natural gas and allow for further investment in nuclear power. Other steps include creating one-stop shop to streamline permitting process for approval of common activities, implement fast-track procedures for companies with establish safety records to conduct pre-approved activities in pre-approved ares with minimal oversight, ensure environmental laws properly account for cost in regulatory process, edit the Clean Air Act to remove all oversight on carbon dioxide production, Expand NRC capabilities for the approval of alternate nuclear reactor designs and streamline the process to ensure that licensing decisions for reactors on or adjacent to approved sites, using newly approved designs, are complete within two years. According to Romney, America has been blessed with a cornucopia of carbon-based energy resources, an development of them has been a pathway to prosperity in the past and should be in the future, so he'll conduct a comprehensive survey of America's energy reserves, start using America's energy reserves, expand opportunities for resource developers to forge partnerships with neighboring countries, support the construction and fast tracking of pipelines to bring Canadian oil to America, reduce regulation of shale gas development and extraction trough processes like hydraulic fracturing. The failure of windmills and solar plants to turn significant profits also requires the need to move alternative energy funding to basic research utilizing long term, apolitical funding mechanisms like ARPA-E.
Romney extensive experience in
both business and government, has a keen understanding of labor
relations. He recognizes, as he himself has written, that “[a]t their
best, labor unions have always fought for the rights of workers, and
generations of Americans have been better off for it.” But he also
recognizes that the interests of union management can diverge from those
of the very workers they purport to serve. Romney's first step to improving labor policy will be to ensure that labor laws create a stable and level playing field on which businesses can operate by doing things like removing government hand outs. As businesses hire, they should not have to worry that any federal agencies will rewrite laws without warning, and as such Romney will appoint experienced individuals with respect for the rule of law that he can personally vouch for to NLRB, amend NLRA to explicitly protect the right of business owners to do with their capital as they see fit without government intervention, and reverse all executive orders issued by President Obama that worked in favor of organized labor instead of business owners. But Romney believes in the right of workers to join a union or to
not join a union, which means hearing from both the union about the potential benefits and
from management about potential costs, and being able to
act on that decision in the privacy of the ballot booth. Romney will amend NLRA to guarantee the secret ballot in every union certification election, amend NLRA to guarantee that all pre-election campaigns last at least one month to ensure both sides are able to organize themselves, and support states in pursuing Right-to-Work and other "pro-choice" laws. Currently unions can use their funds to pay for lobbyist, with each election cycle unions spend hundreds of millions of dollars. In non-Right-to-Work states individual workers have little choice in what their dues fund, even if they do not support the
union and its political agenda, which might create an enormously powerful interest group whose influence and priorities differ from those of the businesses - and thus with the needs of the economy, and so Romney will stop Unions from using dues to fund political actions.
Romney sees two important objectives that America can pursue immediately to build on its workforce. The first is retraining American workers to ensure that they have education and skills to match the jobs of today's economy. The second is to attract the best and the brightest from around the world to work in America. Romney doesn't believe the government is well equipped to retrain workers, and so he will dismantle the federal network of retraining and call for private businesses to handle retraining through education centers and on the job training while encouraging states to pursue a system of Personal Reemployment Accounts for unemployed individuals, similar to the program Romney created in Massachusetts when he was governor. To ensure that America continues to lead the world in innovation and
economic dynamism, a Romney administration would press for an
immigration policy designed to maximize America’s economic potential.
The United States needs to attract and retain "job creators" from wherever
they come. While lawful immigrants comprise about 8 percent of the population,
immigrants start 16 percent of our top-performing, high-technology
companies, hold the position of CEO or lead engineer in 25 percent of
high-tech firms, and produce over 25 percent of all patent applications
filed from the United States. As such, Romney will raise visa caps for highly skilled workers and grant permanent residency to eligible graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering.
After three years of President Obama, many now
question whether we can ever return to fiscal sanity, let alone fiscal
strength. A point of no return may well be approaching — a decade of
huge deficits could drive our principal payments and interest rates
beyond our reach while starving the economy of the capital it needs to
grow. Mitt Romney has
spent his career executing turnarounds in the private sector, the
Olympics, and state government. He will bring to Washington the
turnaround philosophy it so badly needs with clear and realistic goals because optimistic projections cannot wish a problem away, they can only make it worse. Romney's goal will be to bring federal spending below 20% of GDP by the end of his first term, in line with the historical trend, close to the tax revenue generated by the economy when healthy, and require spending cuts of approximately $500 billion per year in 2016 assuming a robust economic recovery with 4% annual growth, the reversal of the Obama-era defense cut, return non-security discretionary spending to below 2008 levels with a Day One bill that cuts non-security discretionary spending by 5% across the board and pass the House Republican Budget proposal created by Paul Ryan, "The Path to Prosperity" that would roll back President Obama's government expansion. Romney will build a simpler, smaller, more single-minded, easier to control government by repealing Obamacare, selling Amtrak, reduce and remove subsidies for The National Endowment For The Arts And Humanities, The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, The Legal Service Corporations, Title X Family Planning Funding and reduce Foreign Aid in all forms. By implementing Block Grants states and organizations would have more autonomy to spend the money they receive from the federal government as they desire, which would promote, innovation is areas such as Medicaid and Worker Retraining. Romney also wants to improve government efficiency and effectiveness by creating stricter enforcement and harsher penalties for improper payments, reducing federal employee compensation by up to 40% to match the private sector, reduce the federal workforce by 10% using attrition to make many federal employees to the work of 2 people, repeal the Davis-Bacon Act, and consolidate agencies and streamline processes to cut cost and improve results in everything from energy permitting to worker retraining to trade negotiation.
Obama's Rebuttal (Summarized from Obama's Website)
Mitt Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts promising more jobs,
less debt, and smaller government. Here’s what Massachusetts got
instead:
As the nation’s economy grew and the median income rose, under Romney, Massachusetts plummeted from 36th to 47th out of 50 states in job creation, and the median income declined.
Romney increased taxes and fees by $750 million per year, primarily on hospitals, nursing homes, motor vehicles, buying a house, people with disabilities and marriage, which saw an average increase of $1,227 per person, while cutting taxes for the wealthy by over $75 million.
Romney increased Massachusetts' debt by more than $2.6 billion, resulting in more debt per person than any other state, and attempted to hide a $1 billion deficit, all of which resulted in the state's debt liability increasing every year Romney was in power.
Romney outsourced state jobs overseas, calling companies who did so "pioneers". Romney advocate eliminating all taxes on companies' foreign profits, which would encourage companies to send jobs overseas. Romney has vetoed bills that would ban state contractors from outsourcing state work overseas, and has outsource jobs in child support enforcement, food stamps, and unemployment insurance overseas.
In the Manufacturing sector, jobs declined at twice the national rate and was the third worst overall in the country, loosing more than 40,000 manufacturing jobs. Massachusetts' economic growth trailed the rest of the country every year Romney was governor, all while Romney vetoed more than $100 million in funding for economic development projects and the promotion of manufacturing. When Romney took office the unemployment rate in Massachusetts had been below the national average for almost a decade, but by the time he left unemployment was higher than the national average for the first time since 1995.
Paul Ryan
Paul Ryan played a key role in creating and promoting the "Path to Prosperity" republican budget proposal, and the majority of Romney's economic plan is taken directly from the proposal. (From this article by Steve Clemons for the Atlantic) Democratic opponents say that some of the items in Ryan's austere budget plan that Romney has declined to elaborate on that include items that would
carve into social programs that protect the poor, such as food stamps and
Medicaid health insurance, is uncompromisingly cruel and based on an
ideology of tax cuts and reduced regulation that, under former President
George W. Bush, caused America's current economic woes. (From this article by Nick Carey for Reuters)
Conclusion
Okay, so it looks like the Presidential and VP candidates for both parties are together on the economy, divide will purely be down party lines. From the looks of things, Obama wants to keep the government focused on creating jobs, keep Wall Street from being able to manipulate the markets to make themselves rich off the backs of other and keep Americans goal oriented, While Romney wants to reduce taxes, spending, regulations, oversight and general government involvement in addition to repealing just about every bill passed under the Obama administration to set government policy back to pre-2008 statue. Given the stark difference between the two plans I don't see any fence sitting on this issue, so tune in this Friday to see the superheroes responses.
~James
