“Skewed Equilibrium”: Mitt Romney Is Wrong About The Wage Gap
Asked about the gender wage gap last night, Mitt Romney changed the subject. “What we can do to help young women and women of all ages is to have a strong economy, so strong that employers are looking to find good employees and bringing them into their workforce and adapting to a — a flexible work schedule that gives women the opportunities that — that they would otherwise not be able to — to afford,” he said. Sensing that he was going to be forced to actually answer the question, Romney added, “I’m going to help women in America get — get good work by getting a stronger economy and by supporting women in the workforce.”
There are so many half-formed assumptions and pseudo-promises here that it’s hard to know where to start, but let’s go to the basic premise: That the wage gap narrows when the economy is strong. That premise, so far as we can see from the data, is wrong.
“In good economic times, bonus payments, overtime hours and merit pay increase,” says Ariane Hegewisch, a study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. “Women are under-represented in the top echelons,” where compensation has soared in good times. “Women are less likely to work overtime,” she adds, and “research suggests that merit and performance-related pay still is a key area for gender discrimination.” There’s also research suggesting that “salary increases related to promotions might differ by gender.”
In fact, the recent economic woes actually narrowed the wage gap, because while both men and women suffered, men lost more ground, according to a 2011 IWPR analysis: “Real earnings for both men and women have fallen since 2010, by 0.9 percent for women and 2.1 percent for men.” That’s likely because male-dominated sectors like construction were hard hit in the recession. Since then, the majority of job gains in the recovery have gone to men, suggesting that (skewed) equilibrium will likely be restored.
By: Irin Carmon, Salon, October 17, 2012
“A Very Sketchy Deal”: Mitt Romney’s Grab Bag Of Right-Wing Disasterous Bush Policies
Mitt Romney’s entire presidential campaign is premised on the idea that—as a former businessman—he is best qualified to fix the economy. It went unnoticed, but while talking tax reform, President Obama pushed against that with an effective attack on the shaky numbers behind Romney’s tax plan:
Now, Governor Romney was a very successful investor. If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t take such a sketchy deal and neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.
Since then, “sketchy deal” has become something of a catchphrase for the president; to wit, in an Iowa speech yesterday, he used it to contrast Romney’s plan with “deals” of the past:
Romney still benefits from a presumption of competence, and Obama would be well-served by hammering on the essential vapidness of Romney’s economic plan. It’s not just that his tax promises don’t add up—even with a $25,000 limit on deductions, there’s not enough revenue raised to pay for an across-the-board cut and cuts to taxes on capital gains and investment income—but that his five point plan to create 12 million jobs does nothing of the sort.
The definitive debunking was done by The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, who found that Romney’s numbers just don’t add up. On his website, Romney’s economic advisors say that “History shows that a recovery rooted in policies contained in the Romney plan will create about 12 million jobs in the first term of a Romney presidency.” Team Romney even goes as far as to cite exact job-creation numbers for each plank of the plan: 3 million from Romney’s energy policies, 7 million from his tax policies, and 2 million from cracking down on China.
But as Kessler shows, the Romney campaign has little evidence for any of its claims. There’s no study showing that the Romney energy plan would create 3 million jobs—at most, there’s a Citigroup report that predicts that rate of job growth over the next eight years as a result of policies already adopted (and opposed by Romney). The 7 million jobs number? It comes from a ten-year estimate of what might happen with Romney’s policies. And the 2 million jobs claim comes from a 2011 International Trade Commission report which estimates gains if China stopped infringing on American intellectual property. The problem is that the study was highly contingent on last year’s job market, which was far worse than the current one.
Perhaps the most damning indictment of Romney’s claim is the simple fact that “12 million jobs” is the current projection for job growth over the next four years under the current policies. In essence, Romney’s promise is to take credit for the results of Obama’s policies if he’s elected president.
“Sketchy deal” is the right way to describe Romney’s offer to the American public. Rather than put forth a plan to deal with our short-term economic problems, he’s offered a grab bag of right-wing proposals that are indistinguishable from the disasterous policies of the Bush administration. He’s betting that better packaging is all it takes to sell the public the same bill of goods. And judging from the close polls, he might be right.
By: Jamelle Bouie, The American Prospect,October 18, 2012
“A More Extreme Place”: Mitt Romney Is Not George W. Bush, He’s Worse
Much to Democrats’ chagrin, George W. Bush hasn’t played much of a role in larger 2012 political conversation. His name was rarely uttered during the Republican presidential primaries; the failed former president hid during the party’s national convention; and Mitt Romney did his level best to ignore the news when Bush endorsed him.
It came as a pleasant surprise, then, when a voter broached the subject last night. She noted she’s been “disappointed with the lack of progress” over the last four years, but she’s afraid of going back to Bush-era policies and wanted Romney to explain how they’re different.
Romney responded by answering a previous question about contraception. When he got around to responding, Romney stressed oil drilling and trade as examples of why “President Bush had a very different path for a very different time” — despite the fact that Romney and Bush have the same positions on oil drilling and trade.
What struck me as interesting was Obama making a counter-intuitive point — he said Romney and Bush are different, but Romney is worse:
“You know, there are some things where Governor Romney’s different from George Bush. George Bush didn’t propose turning Medicare into a voucher. George Bush embraced comprehensive immigration reform; he didn’t call for ‘self-deportation.’ George Bush never suggested that we eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood.
“So there are differences between Governor Romney and George Bush, but they’re not on economic policy. In some ways, he’s gone to a more extreme place when it comes to social policy, and I think that’s a mistake.”
Now, when I heard the question, my first thoughts turned to the fact that Romney has surrounded himself with former Bush/Cheney aides who are shaping a Bush/Cheney platform. Obama didn’t mention this.
But in some ways, the president’s response was even more effective: if you loved Bush’s economic policies, but didn’t think he was right-wing enough on Medicare, immigration, and women’s health, then Mitt Romney’s the candidate for you.
I have a hunch the woman in the audience who posed the question wasn’t reassured.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 17, 2012
“Loose Leaf Binders”: What Does Mitt Romney Really Want For Women?
Women watching the debate last night let out a collective “hallelujah”: issues of direct importance to our lives finally merited a mention. We got equal pay, contraception, Planned Parenthood, poverty and bizarre discussions of single mothers.
Mitt Romney tried hard to pretend he’ll come down on women’s side in these issues. But as is classic Mitt, his positions send mixed messages. What does Mitt Romney really want for women? What would he do to improve their economic outlook? It depends on which talking point you listen to.
Romney took a few opportunities last night to discuss the ways in which he wants more women in the workforce. When asked a direct question about equal pay, he sidestepped to talk about how few women tend to be represented in top political posts, bringing out his now infamous “binders full of women” story to describe how he asked aides to find qualified women to fill his cabinet as governor. He also talked about wanting women to have more flexible work hours and brought up the fact that women have lost a huge number of jobs in the recovery. All signs point to: Mitt wants to help women get to work.
But does he? First, there’s the debunk now being widely circulated claiming that the binders Mitt asked for were actually put together before he even asked for them—not to mention that a study found the percentage of senior-level positions he appointed to women actually declined during his administration. But these statements clash heavily with some other comments he’s made. When discussing early childhood education recently, he commented, “It’s an advantage to have two parents, but to have one parent to stay closely connected and at home during those early years of education can be very, very important.” Which gender tends to be that “parent” who stays out of the workforce to be home? It is overwhelmingly mothers.
There’s also a big question as to how much he really wants to help unemployed women get back to work. He may cite the statistic that 580,000 women lost their jobs in the last four years, but he rarely makes mention of why. I’ll fill in that blank: mostly because of public sector layoffs. Women have lost 383,000 government jobs since the beginning of the recovery, wiping out more than a third of their private sector job gains. Yet Romney has repeatedly said he wants to see fewer workers on the government payrolls, including teachers, who are overwhelmingly women. He’s yet to explain how those two viewpoints can coexist.
Mitt would also have you believe he wants fewer women living in poverty. When talking about rising poverty rates, he rightly pointed out that the majority are women. “There are three and a half million more women living in poverty today than when the president took office,” he said. “We don’t have to live like this.”
It’s true, Mitt, we don’t. Because we could be doing far more to support people who fall below the poverty line, particularly women, by shoring up programs that are failing them such as TANF (formally known as welfare) and child care assistance. Yet that’s not what he would do once in office. His running mate’s budget, which Romney has said he’d sign if it made it to his desk, would focus 62 percent of its spending cuts on programs that support the poor, such as food stamps, Medicaid and Pell Grants. There’s reason to believe Romney would go even further: he’s calling for about $2 trillion more spending on defense over the next decade than Ryan is, which would mean drastic cuts—about 40 percent across the board—in all other programs.
And then there are his feelings about single mothers. When asked a question about gun control, he inexplicably ended up talking about single mothers and how they are apparently at fault for gun violence. (Never mind studies that show no correlation between the two.) In his wandering response, he said, “We need moms and dads helping raise kids. Wherever possible, the—the benefit of having two parents in the home—and that’s not always possible. A lot of great single moms, single dads. But gosh, to tell our kids that before they have babies, they ought to think about getting married to someone—that’s a great idea because if there’s a two-parent family, the prospect of living in poverty goes down dramatically.” (Emphasis mine.) That sounds quite a lot like family planning to me. How does one plan a family? By using contraception to control fertility and have children when and with whom one wants.
And contraception did come up. Romney decided that last night to be on the pro side, stating unequivocally, “Every woman in America should have access to contraceptives.” Unfortunately that’s not always his position. First, there are those around him who don’t share this view. The GOP platform, for example, calls for a personhood amendment, which would endanger some forms of contraception. Then there’s Paul Ryan’s statement that he and Romney would do away with co-pay-free birth control access as provided by the Affordable Care Act on “day one.” And, oh yeah, Romney has previously condemned that very provision himself, even supporting Senator Roy Blunt’s bizarre proposal to allow employers to refuse birth control coverage in their insurance policies if they feel icky about it.
For his part, President Obama pointed out that contraception is an economic issue for the women who need and want access to it. He also made a case for the Lilly Ledbetter Act, a bill that takes a step toward closing the gender wage gap (even though there is much more that needs to be done) while Romney offered up no policy solutions. Obama has previously proposed spending money to hire back some of the teachers who have been laid off in the crisis. He would expand Medicaid to cover more people living in poverty and has expanded Pell Grants and job training programs to help those living in poverty. Clearly there are ways Obama can be pushed to do more for women. But it’s not even clear which side Romney is on.
By: Bryce Covert, The Nation, October 17, 2012
“Populist Mitt”: Does Romney Want to Raise Taxes On The Wealthy?
At last night’s debate, the mathematical impossibility of the Romney tax plan came up, just as it did during the first Obama-Romney debate, and just as it surely will in the second Obama-Romney debate on Tuesday. The real problem with Romney’s proposal, though, isn’t just that it’s mathematically impossible, but that it’s logically strange in one important way nobody seems to have noticed yet, namely that Romney seems to be proposing big tax increases for the wealthy. I’ll get to why that is in a minute, but before I do let’s review the problem. Since Kevin Drum gave a nice explanation, I’ll just steal it:
Romney has promised a 20 percent across-the-board rate cut, which includes people making over $200,000 per year. This would reduce tax revenues by about $251 billion per year.
But wait! What about the economic growth this will unleash? That’s mostly mythical, but let’s bend over backwards here. If you incorporate the growth estimate of one of Romney’s advisors, Greg Mankiw, Romney’s rate cuts would only cost about $215 billion per year.
Next, try to pick out a set of deductions and loopholes that can be closed to make up for this revenue loss.
But wait! Romney hasn’t said exactly which deductions he would target. So it’s not fair to pick and choose specific deductions. Fine. Instead, let’s assume that Romney completely eliminates every single deduction for high earners. All of them. It turns out this would make up $165 billion per year.
So even under the best possible assumptions, Romney’s plan would cut taxes on the rich by $50 billion per year.
But Romney says he won’t cut taxes on the rich.
If you want a lengthier explanation of all this, Josh Barro gives it here. To sum up: Romney’s now-emphatic promise that he won’t cut taxes for the wealthy (“I cannot reduce the burden paid by high-income Americans,” he said during his debate with Obama, “So any — any language to the contrary is simply not accurate”) is just impossible to keep if he’s actually going to also reduce their taxes by 20 percent. And that’s where we get to the crazy part. Here’s what I would ask Mitt Romney if I had the chance:
You say you want to cut income tax rates for everyone, and pay for every penny by eliminating rich people’s deductions and loopholes. So if you’re paying for it by getting more money from the rich, that means the rich’s taxes are going up. If rich people’s taxes were staying the same under your plan, we wouldn’t be getting the money to pay for the across-the board rate cut for everyone. You keep saying wealthy people won’t see a tax cut, but what you’re actually proposing is a tax increase on the wealthy. That being the case, why go through this double bank-shot of cutting the rich’s income tax rates, then going after their deductions? If what you’re proposing is to raise taxes on the rich, why not just raise taxes on the rich, say by raising their income tax rates?
I suppose if somebody asked Romney this, he’d deliver some convoluted explanation involving tax simplification (a reasonable goal in itself, but beside the point) and the explosion of growth that will come from a tax cut. But that wouldn’t make sense either—if all those “job creators” are getting their taxes increased, won’t that hamper their ability to do their divine job-creating work? Because as Republicans never tire of telling us, if you raise taxes on job creators, the economy inevitably goes down the toilet.
So how do we account for the logical conundrum of Mitt Romney’s tax plan? Someone would have to go back and check, but I’m guessing the whole thing evolved piecemeal, in a combination of actual proposals somebody sat down and worked out, and rhetorical moves Romney made in both planned and extemporaneous contexts. After proposing the 20 percent rate cut, at some point he started promising not to cut taxes for the wealthy because he didn’t want to seem like the plutocrat the Obama campaign is making him out to be, and that backed him into a corner he now can’t get out of. I haven’t seen anybody ask him about the fact that he’s actually proposing raising taxes on the rich, even though that’s what he’s doing. Maybe when someone does, he’ll embrace his new populist self.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 12, 2012
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