“Twisted Minds, Politics Edition”: Mitt Romney’s Remarkable Work of Staggering Dishonesty
As Greg Sargent, Steve Benen, and others have amply demonstrated, Mitt Romney has a problem with the truth. Throughout his campaign, he has openly lied about his previous positions, his beliefs, and the records of his opponents, Republican or otherwise. In a speech today on economic freedom at the University of Chicago, Romney continued the trend, building a mostly substanceless case against President Obama on the basis of half-truths and falsehoods. You can read the whole speech if you’d like. For now, I’d like to highlight a few passages that sum up Romney’s case against Obama in fact-free aplomb. First, there’s this:
For three years, President Obama has expanded government instead of empowering the American people. He’s put us deeper in debt. He’s slowed the recovery and harmed our economy.
There are a few things missing from this account. First is the fact that the Great Recession began in 2008 and was already on its way to reach its nadir by the time Obama took office. By the time the stimulus began to take effect, the economy was well on its way to the bottom, and independent analyses agree that the administration’s policies kept the country out of a depression, even if it wasn’t enough to juice the recovery.
What’s more, neither the stimulus nor the administration’s later policies were responsible for the deficit explosion of 2009 and 2010. The recession—and the drastically reduced tax revenues it produced—was responsible for a good portion of the deficit. The rest was the result of Bush-era policies like tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As economist Mark Thomas points out, government spending under Obama has increased at a lower rate than under Reagan, George H.W. Bush, or George W. Bush. The only president to have a lower rate of spending was, you guessed it, Bill Clinton.
On to the next passage, which is brazen in its disregard for the truth:
President Obama has proposed raising the marginal tax rate from 35% to 40%. He has proposed special breaks for his favorite industries, further increases for businesses he dislikes, and endless credits and subsidies intended to shape our behavior in this society. […]
If you invest your savings in a new business and are one of the fortunate few who see success – and make a profit – President Obama wants to take 40% of it.
President Obama wants to restore marginal tax rates on the rich to where they were before George W. Bush took office. While the American public might not understand marginal tax rates, it’s almost certainly true that Mitt Romney has a handle on the concept. Which means that the former Massachusetts governor is lying to his audience when he says that “President Obama wants to take 40 percent” of your income. An increase in marginal tax rates, or even a millionaire’s surtax, would only apply to income over a certain point. If the Bush tax cuts were repealed, and the top marginal rate went up to Clinton-era levels for income over $250,000, then it’s only the $250,001st dollar that would be affected.
Beyond that, the claim that Obama has proposed tax increases for “businesses he dislikes” only makes sense if you include policies designed to lower rates and broaden the tax base. “You could portray the president’s call to remove subsidies for oil and gas companies that way, and also his call to end the carried-interest loophole, which benefits hedge funds and investment companies,” says Michael Linden, director for tax and budget policy at the Center for American Progress. You might disagree with those policies, but Obama isn’t playing favoritism.
On that note, here is how Romney concludes his speech:
But, now, after spending three years attacking business, President Obama hopes to erase his record with a speech. In a recent address, he said that, “We are inventors. We are builders. We are makers of things. We are Thomas Edison. We are the Wright Brothers. We are Bill Gates. We are Steve Jobs.”
The only thing that’s true here are the quotes from Obama. The rest? False. Here are some excerpts from speeches the president has given over the last three years (all emphasis mine).
All across America, even today, on a Saturday, millions of Americans are hard at work. … They are the more than half of all Americans who work at a small business or own a small business. And they embody the spirit of possibility, the relentless work ethic, and the hope for something better that is at the heart of the American Dream.
Government can’t guarantee success, but it can knock down barriers that keep entrepreneurs from opening or expanding. […] This is as American as apple pie. Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. They are central to our identity as a nation. They are going to lead this recovery. The folks standing beside me are going to lead this recovery.
As part of the bipartisan tax deal we negotiated, with the support of the Chamber, businesses can immediately expense 100 percent of their capital investments. And as all of you know, it’s investments made now that will pay off as the economy rebounds. And as you hire, you know that more Americans working will mean more sales for your companies. It will mean more demand for your products and services. It will mean higher profits for your companies. We can create a virtuous circle.
[I]f you’re an American manufacturer, you should get a bigger tax cut. If you’re a high-tech manufacturer, we should double the tax deduction you get for making your products here. And if you want to relocate in a community that was hit hard when a factory left town, you should get help financing a new plant, equipment, or training for new workers.
The point is simply to say that the only Barack Obama who has spent his presidency criticizing business is the Barack Obama that exists in Mitt Romney’s head. Indeed, the same goes for this speech, and his entire campaign—Romney is running against policies that haven’t happened and an Obama that doesn’t exist. Exaggeration is normal in politics, but this goes beyond garden-variety embellishment—Romney’s speech, along with much of his rhetoric, is a remarkable work of staggering dishonesty. So far, he hasn’t really suffered for it.
By: Jamie Bouie, The American Prospect, March 19. 2012
“Operating On The Fringe”: Are Conservatives Getting Crazier?
Every four years, presidential candidates from both parties say, “This is the most important election of our lifetimes.” Reporters predict that this will be the most negative campaign in history. Partisans say that if their side loses, the disaster will echo through decades, and we believe that our opponents are more dastardly than they’ve ever been. And over the last couple of years, we liberals have looked at conservatives and thought that they have reached levels of craziness unseen before.
So historian/author/smart guy Rick Perlstein, who knows more about the conservative movement of the last half-century than pretty much anyone, warns us that what we’re seeing now is really nothing new:
Over fifteen years of studying the American right professionally — especially in their communications with each other, in their own memos and media since the 1950s — I have yet to find a truly novel development, a real innovation, in far-right “thought.” Right-wing radio hosts fingering liberal billionaires like George Soros, who use their gigantic fortunes – built by virtue of private enterprise under the Constitution – out to “socialize” the United States? 1954: Here’s a right-wing radio host fingering “gigantic fortunes, built by virtue of private enterprise under the Constitution … being used to ‘socialize’ the United States.” Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, “fed up with elitist judges” arrogantly imposing their “radically un-American views” — including judges on the Supreme Court, whose rulings he’s pledged to defy? 1958: Nine Men Against America: The Supreme Court and its Attack on American Liberties, still on sale at sovereignstates.org.
Although Perlstein acknowledges that “What’s changed is that loony conservatives are now the Republican mainstream, the dominant force in the GOP,” this is what makes all the difference. You can still make the case that conservatives are crazier now, because the key factor isn’t the craziness of the craziest idea circulating among them—say, that Barack Obama was born in Kenya and successfully engineered a massive conspiracy to cover it up, as opposed to the idea that Dwight Eisenhower was a communist agent—it’s how widely those ideas are held, and by whom. The conspiracy theories and hate-driven beliefs find purchase not just on the fringe, but among elected lawmakers, influential media figures, and in many cases, a majority of Republican voters.
So when they gain power, real people’s lives are affected. For example, many conservatives never stopped believing that women who make their own sexual decisions are dirty sluts, but since so many Republicans won office in 2010, that belief translated into a torrent of legislation. In 2011, a record 92 pieces of state legislation restricting abortion rights were enacted, along with measures to restrict access to contraception and renew the failure that is abstinence-only sex education.
And in the Republican party of today, looniness practically operates on a ratchet, moving only in one direction. That’s because there are almost no moderates left in the party to push back. In order for a party to undergo an ideological shift, it needs an internal force willing to champion that shift. Let’s say the GOP suffers a big defeat in this year’s elections. Who is going to successfully argue that the party needs to turn its back on its nuttiest elements? All the moderates who have retired in disgust or been purged in primaries? They’re gone, and the Republicans who are left couldn’t care less what they have to say. No, if the Republicans lose, everyone in the party will agree that they only lost because they weren’t conservative enough, that they didn’t take on the hated Barack Obama with sufficient venom and fury. And the center of gravity within the party will move even farther to the fringe.
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, March 19, 2012
“Meet The Republicans”: If It’s Sunday, It’s John McCain
Not long ago, I stopped watching the network Sunday shows. After all, who needs to spend an hour or two of valuable weekend time listening to elected officials and party hacks regurgitating the same tired talking points you’ve been hearing all week? But there’s no denying that Meet the Press, This Week, Face the Nation, and to a lesser extent Fox News Sunday are enormously influential. They confer status on the people who appear, they define the limits of official debate, and they help set the agenda for the rest of the media. So while they are often tiresome to sit through, they can’t be completely ignored. That’s why I couldn’t stay silent after seeing this celebratory tweet from Betsy Fischer, the longtime executive producer of Meet the Press:
Yay!
If you watch the Sunday shows, the only thing you’ll be surprised about is that McCain hadn’t passed Dole (or anyone else) already. In fact, I wrote a column three whole years ago asking why the hell anyone still cares what John McCain thinks, and the question has become even more relevant in the time since. He’s a member of the minority party in the Senate who is not part of the leadership and has virtually no influence over his fellow senators. In 29 years in Congress, he has managed to produce exactly one significant piece of legislation (the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law), which got gutted by the Supreme Court. His knowledge of and ideas about policy are notoriously shallow and self-indulgent, running more toward phony moralism about tiny earmarks than the search for actual solutions to thorny problems. In his supposed area of expertise, national security, he can be relied on to offer the most simple-minded and uninformed opinions possible (Of course we should use military force! Which country were we talking about again?). So the public needs to hear his sage words in about the same measure as they need to hear those of other presidential losers. Why isn’t Michael Dukakis getting on Meet the Press? I’ll bet he’d be a more interesting guest than McCain.
Yet all the Sunday shows call McCain, again, and again, and again. Why? There are a few reasons, but what they all come down to is that people in the DC media just love, love, love them some John McCain (God help me, I wrote a whole book about it). He spent a couple of decades massaging their egos and convincing them that he was their best buddy, an investment that paid off splendidly. They love his alleged mavericky maverickness (don’t get me started on what a crock the whole “maverick” thing is). On the Sunday shows, McCain is what passes for “unpredictable.” So they’ll keep inviting him on. I wouldn’t be surprised if one day Betsy Fischer tweets, “Congratulations to John McCain on his 100th appearance on Meet the Press!”
By: Paul Waldman, The American Prospect, March 18. 2012
“You Can’t Fix Stupid”: Birth Control Is Different Than Starbucks
The controversy over contraception has faded a bit. Congressional Republicans are rethinking efforts to overturn a requirement that would make birth control coverage a mandatory part of health insurance. Rush Limbaugh has stopped talking about the issue, at least for the moment.
But the issue hasn’t gone away entirely. The administration is still working on ways to accommodate the wishes of some large religious institutions opposed, for reasons of faith, to sponsoring employee benefits that cover contraception. (On Friday, it unveiled a few options and announced it was seeking public comment on them.) Conservatives, meanwhile, continue to press their case.
With that in mind, let’s talk about a conservative argument that isn’t simply about religion or the morality of birth control. It’s the suggestion that birth control coverage simply doesn’t belong in health insurance, because it’s not an expense that all of us should be subsidizing.
Among those making that argument recently was syndicated columnist Mona Charen. After arguing that contraception costs “less than the cost of a weekly trip to Starbucks” and that a variety of programs, public and private, make free contraception available to the poor, Charen draws a distinction between birth control and other types of drugs:
Contraceptives are not a matter of life and death. But even if they were, such as cancer drugs are, is that an argument for forcing insurance companies to provide them free? Why not force free distribution of all medicines? The mandate makes no economic, social or moral sense.
Actually, it makes economic, social and moral sense.
Let’s put aside the question of whether contraception coverage should be “free,” because that’s not really the issue anymore. Republican Senators Roy Blunt and Marco Rubio, along with the Conference of Catholic Bishops, have said they oppose any requirement that forces employers to cover contraception, regardless of whether such coverage requires out-of-pocket expenses.
And, one more time, let’s dispense with this notion that every woman can get birth control for less than the weekly cost of Starbucks. As noted here previously, the cheap drugs at Target, Walmart, and the other big chains are great if you take the standard combination hormonal pills, which combine estrogen and progestin. But some people cannot or should not take those pills. They’re not good for postpartum women who are breast-feeding, for example, and they cause side effects for many others. They may not be as effective, for some women, as methods like intrauterine devices, depo-provera, or surgical sterilization.
How many women fall into those categories? It’s a minority of the population, to be sure. But that’s always the story with health care and health insurance. At any one time, most people don’t require expensive medical care. Only a small number of people do. It’s precisely for the sake of that group – the ones who face high expenses, and could face financial or medical turmoil without assistance – that insurance exists.
Keep in mind that, at some point or another, pretty much everybody falls into that category. Maybe you’re not a woman who needs expensive birth control. You might still be a woman, or a man, who ends up with heart disease. Or allergies. Or a chronic gastro-intestinal problem. Or cancer. Insurance is there to take care of you, so why shouldn’t insurance be there to take care of a woman who needs more expensive forms of contraception?
No, birth control isn’t treatment for an acute condition. It’s routine, preventative care. But that hardly undermines the case for coverage. Think about eye exams for a moment. Or blood pressure checks. Both of these are widely available, for very low cost. In fact, if you do the math, over the course of a year either one would cost less than a year’s supply of even generic hormonal contraception. But insurance typically covers those costs and, under the Affordable Care Act, insurance must cover those costs – because this sort of care keeps people from getting serious medical conditions and, quite possibly, saves money in the long run.
The very same things are true of birth control. Pregnancy is a wonderful thing, but it’s also a serious medical condition that requires serious medical attention. (Those of you unfamiliar with what pregnancy entails might want to consult this page from the American Academy of Family Physicians – or ask a woman who has been pregnant.) Don’t forget, too, that some women take contraception to control their menstrual cycles or for reasons that aren’t really related to avoiding pregnancy.
Some critics insist there’s a difference between screening for hypertension or vision problems, on the one hand, and controlling the timing of pregnancy, on the other. Non-procreative sex, they say, is a purely voluntary act, for which others should not have to pay. “No one is touching your birth control, ladies,” conservative writer Amanda Carpenter tweeted on Friday. “We just don’t want to be forced to pay for it.” But, according to statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, 99 percent of women use birth control at times during their reproductive years. Based on that, I think it’s safe to assume that non-procreative sex is an activity in which virtually everybody engages, at some point or another, and for which a large majority will need birth control.
And so we’re back to the question that’s always been at the very heart of our health insurance debate: Do we think responsibility for medical expenses should lie primarily with individuals, even if that means some won’t be able to afford it? Or is it a burden we wish to spread more broadly, across society, so that everybody can get the care they need, at a price they can afford?
You know where I stand on that question.
P.S. When the administration announced its options for accommodating religious institutions on Friday, it also released a rule about health plans for college students – and, in so doing, revealed that, for legal reasons, it does not have the authority to regulate all the plans. Sarah Kliff has the story. It doesn’t sound like a huge deal, but, as she notes, it’s yet another reminder of how complex insurance regulation is in the U.S.
By: Jonathan Cohn, The New Republic, March 16, 2012
Hurray For Health Reform: “Protecting Those Who Are Falling Through The Cracks”
It’s said that you can judge a man by the quality of his enemies. If the same principle applies to legislation, the Affordable Care Act — which was signed into law two years ago, but for the most part has yet to take effect — sits in a place of high honor.
Now, the act — known to its foes as Obamacare, and to the cognoscenti as ObamaRomneycare — isn’t easy to love, since it’s very much a compromise, dictated by the perceived political need to change existing coverage and challenge entrenched interests as little as possible. But the perfect is the enemy of the good; for all its imperfections, this reform would do an enormous amount of good. And one indicator of just how good it is comes from the apparent inability of its opponents to make an honest case against it.
To understand the lies, you first have to understand the truth. How would ObamaRomneycare change American health care?
For most people the answer is, not at all. In particular, those receiving good health benefits from employers would keep them. The act is aimed, instead, at Americans who fall through the cracks, either going without coverage or relying on the miserably malfunctioning individual, “non-group” insurance market.
The fact is that individual health insurance, as currently constituted, just doesn’t work. If insurers are left free to deny coverage at will — as they are in, say, California — they offer cheap policies to the young and healthy (and try to yank coverage if you get sick) but refuse to cover anyone likely to need expensive care. Yet simply requiring that insurers cover people with pre-existing conditions, as in New York, doesn’t work either: premiums are sky-high because only the sick buy insurance.
The solution — originally proposed, believe it or not, by analysts at the ultra-right-wing Heritage Foundation — is a three-legged stool of regulation and subsidies. As in New York, insurers are required to cover everyone; in return, everyone is required to buy insurance, so that healthy as well as sick people are in the risk pool. Finally, subsidies make those mandated insurance purchases affordable for lower-income families.
Can such a system work? It’s already working! Massachusetts enacted a very similar reform six years ago — yes, while Mitt Romney was governor. Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who played a key role in developing both the local and the national reforms (and has published an illustrated guide to reform) has surveyed the results — and finds that Romneycare is working pretty much as advertised. The number of people without insurance has dropped sharply, the quality of care hasn’t suffered, and the program’s cost has been very close to initial projections.
Oh, and the budgetary cost per newly insured resident of Massachusetts was actually lower than the projected cost per American insured by the Affordable Care Act.
Given this evidence, what’s a virulent opponent of reform to do? The answer is, make stuff up.
We all know how the act’s proposal that Medicare evaluate medical procedures for effectiveness became, in the fevered imagination of the right, an evil plan to create death panels. And rest assured, this lie will be back in force once the general election campaign is in full swing.
For now, however, most of the disinformation involves claims about costs. Each new report from the Congressional Budget Office is touted as proof that the true cost of Obamacare is exploding, even when — as was the case with the latest report — the document says on its very first page that projected costs have actually fallen slightly. Nor are we talking about random pundits making these false claims. We are, instead, talking about people like the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, who issued a completely fraudulent press release after the latest budget office report.
Because the truth does not, sad to say, always prevail, there is a real chance that these lies will succeed in killing health reform before it really gets started. And that would be an immense tragedy for America, because this health reform is coming just in time.
As I said, the reform is mainly aimed at Americans who fall through the cracks in our current system — an important goal in its own right. But what makes reform truly urgent is the fact that the cracks are rapidly getting wider, because fewer and fewer jobs come with health benefits; employment-based coverage actually declined even during the “Bush boom” of 2003 to 2007, and has plunged since.
What this means is that the Affordable Care Act is the only thing protecting us from an imminent surge in the number of Americans who can’t afford essential care. So this reform had better survive — because if it doesn’t, many Americans who need health care won’t.
By: Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, March 18, 2012
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