Mitt Romney Supported Everything The GOP Hates About Energy, And Then Some
Stop me if you’ve heard this attack: There’s a presidential candidate out there who wants high gas prices to force the government to finally increase regulations on cars, persuade Americans to stop driving those beastly SUVs, nudge people toward clean electric cars — all with the goal of combating climate change. And don’t even think about lowering gas taxes to help car owners out at the pump: That’s just a gimmick. Take a moment and guess which politician is behind these positions.
If you guessed Mitt Romney, you are correct. And his long history of enviro-friendly rhetoric during past surges in gas prices is proving awkward as he slams the White House for taking similar positions today.
The best example yet is probably an audio clip dug up by Buzzfeed’s Andrew Kaczynski, purportedly from a 2007 town hall, that contains in just two minutes just about everything Republicans hate about Democrats on energy.
In it, Romney is asked how he feels about requiring higher fuel-efficiency standards from car companies. He says he would consider them, explaining that the government has not required high enough efficiency standards in recent years and that loopholes encourage people to drive SUVs. Not only that, he’s rooting for high gas prices to help get the job done.
“The CAFE requirements have not worked terribly well over the last 20 years in part because they haven’t applied to trucks, so America has moved more and more to trucks and SUVs,” Romney said. “So the average fuel economy over the last, I think it’s 20 years, has been almost flat. I’m hopeful that with $3 gasoline being charged by Hugo Chavez and Ahmadinejad and Putin and others that you’re going to see Americans slowly but surely move to vehicles that are far more fuel efficient and you’ll see our manufacturers start competing on the basis of fuel efficiency.”
Today Romney proudly touts his opposition to fuel efficiency standards on his website, telling one conservative radio host that car companies’ woes came after “the government put in place CAFE requirements that were disadvantageous for domestic manufacturers.”
There’s more from that town hall. Romney specifically praised hybrid cars and electric car technology — now widely mocked on the right — as a potential solution. Romney himself has called the plug-in Chevy Volt “an idea whose time has not come” on the campaign trail and joked this month that “you can’t drive a car with a windmill on it.”
But back in 2007: “I sure hope that you’re going to see more and more hybrids and much better fuel economy,” Romney said. “Plug-in cars, electric cars with better battery technology, might be a way of reducing our emissions.”
This was in line with other past Romney statements that surfaced this week in which he urged Americans to channel the reality of high gas prices into support for alternative energy and conservation. The New Republic noted that Romney specifically opposed cutting the gas tax in his state in 2006 during a spike in oil prices for that very reason.
“I don’t think that now is the time, and I’m not sure there will be the right time, for us to encourage the use of more gasoline,” Romney said then. “I’m very much in favor of people recognizing that these high gasoline prices are probably here to stay.”
Today Romney insists that gas prices are the White House’s fault, even as the overwhelming consensus among experts is that it’s out of the government’s hands, and says that more drilling will help fix the problem. And he wants Obama to fire anyone in his administration who thinks that there are benefits to higher gas prices.
“This ‘gas-hike trio’ has been doing the job over the last three and a half years and gas prices are up,” Romney said last week, referring to Cabinet members Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. “The right course is they ought to be fired.”
Even Romney’s own energy advisers are reluctant to back him up on his claims this week. Two of them, Glenn Hubbard and Greg Mankiw, have supported taxing energy in order to decrease emissions that contribute to climate change. In other words: increasing gas prices for the sake of the environment. That’s to the left of the Obama administration.
Romney surrogate John Sununu defended Romney’s 2006 and 2007 positions to TPM on Monday, suggesting that the governor was merely putting an optimistic spin on a lousy time for gas prices.
“I think if you look at those interviews what he was saying is we ought to take advantage of the terrible situation,” he said. He added that Romney, then and now, supports both “the production side of energy, where the governor is absolutely committed, and the conservation side” as part of the solution to America’s energy problems.
But add it all up, and Romney and his advisers are on record minimizing the government’s ability to influence gas prices and supporting many of the same goals and policies espoused by Democrats to help promote energy efficiency and combat climate change. Just as his health care bill’s similarities to the Affordable Care Act have made him vulnerable to attacks, Romney’s latest energy offensive might open him up to more of the same charges he’s faced throughout his campaign — that he’ll say and do anything to get elected.
By: Benjy Sarlin, Talking Points Memo, March 26, 2012
“Looking Past The Spin”: The Right’s ‘Etch a Sketch’ Imperative
Clarifying moments are rare in politics. They are the times when previously muddled issues are cast into sharp relief and citizens get a chance to look past the spin and obfuscation.
Americans were blessed with three such moments last week.
Rep. Paul Ryan made absolutely clear that he is not now and never was interested in deficit reduction. After a couple of years of being lauded by deficit hawks as the man prepared to make hard choices, he proposed a budget that would not end deficits until 2040 but would cut taxes by $4.6 trillion over a decade while also extending all of the Bush tax cuts, adding an additional $5.4 trillion to the deficit. Ryan would increase military expenditures and then eviscerate the rest of the federal government.
Oh yes, Ryan claims he’d make up for the losses from his new tax cuts with “tax reform” but offered not a single detail. A “plan” with a hole this big is not a plan at all. Ryan’s main interest is in cutting the top income tax rate to 25 percent from the current 35 percent. His message: Solving the deficit problem isn’t nearly as important as (1) continuing and expanding benefits for the wealthy and (2) disabling the federal government.
Robert Greenstein, president of the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is tough on deficits, careful in his use of numbers, and measured in his choice of words. These traits make his assessment of Ryan’s proposal all the more instructive.
“It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history),” Greenstein wrote.
“Specifically, the Ryan budget would impose extraordinary cuts in programs that serve as a lifeline for our nation’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens, and over time would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance or become underinsured.”
Thanks to Ryan, we now know that this election is not about deficits at all. It is about whether we will respond to growing inequalities of wealth and income by creating even larger inequalities of wealth and income.
Last week the nation also focused seriously on the “Stand Your Ground” laws that the National Rifle Association has pushed through in state after state. These statutes came to wide attention because of the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager.
George Zimmerman, the man who pulled the trigger, was not under serious investigation until there was a national outcry because under the Florida law, a citizen has a right to use “force, including deadly force, if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.”
These laws perfectly reflect the NRA’s utopia. No longer will we count on law enforcement to preserve the peace. Instead, we will build a society where all citizens are armed and encouraged to take the law into their own hands. If you feel threatened, just shoot.
Since when did conservatives start believing that laws should be based on “feelings” and subjective judgments? What kind of civilization does this create? Surely this moment should inspire the peaceable majority to challenge the entire gun lobby worldview — and that most certainly includes the legions of timid Democrats who have been cowed by the NRA.
There was, finally, that toy metaphor from Eric Fehrnstrom, a top aide to Mitt Romney. Asked on CNN if the primary campaign had forced Romney “to tack so far to the right it would hurt him with moderate voters in the general election,” Fehrnstrom replied that “everything changes” after the primaries. “It’s almost like an Etch a Sketch,” he added, “you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”
The context matters because Romney later said Fehrnstrom was talking about post-primary changes that would be made “organizationally,” a claim that is plainly untrue. Ironically, the semi-denial reinforced the lesson Fehrnstrom taught: To win, Romney is willing to change not only his own positions but also reality itself.
Conservatives will need an exceptionally powerful Etch a Sketch to wipe the nation’s memory clean of the education it received during the 2012 campaign’s most enlightening week so far.
By: E. J. Dionne, Jr., Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, March 25, 2012
“An Irreducibly Tangible Question”: What Happens To The Uninsured If Health-Care Reform Is Dismantled?
When the Republican presidential candidates talk about health care, the discussion usually moves quickly toward the philosophical and the abstract.
Take Rick Santorum’s appearance at the Christian Liberty Academy last weekend in this Chicago suburb. Before a raucous crowd, the former senator from Pennsylvania portrayed President Obama’s health-care-reform law as an “affront to freedom.” In Santorum’s telling, the plan is not so much an attempt to reshape the health care system as the worm on a line meant to hook Americans on Big Government. “What tribute won’t you pay to the government if they can promise that if you give them more they will … take care of you?” he asked dramatically.
There’s no question that an ideological chasm over Washington’s proper role in health care separates Democrats and Republicans. And there’s no doubt that some Democratic strategists believe that average Americans will grow more tolerant of activist government if they see it providing them more direct benefits, such as health insurance.
But the debate over health care reform — which will intensify again next week as the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on challenges to the law’s mandate on individuals to buy insurance — involves more than competing philosophies or political strategies. At its core, it raises an irreducibly tangible question: what, if anything, to do about the nearly 50 million Americans who today lack health insurance.
Those millions of uninsured rarely intrude into the promises from GOP congressional leaders and the party’s presidential field to defend liberty by repealing Obama’s plan. But ignoring them doesn’t make them go away. If the 2012 election rewards Republicans with enough leverage in Washington to erase Obama’s initiative, they will face the choice of finding an alternative means to expand coverage or allowing the number of those without insurance to grow, with far-reaching consequences not only for the uninsured but for those with insurance as well.
Without some policy intervention, there’s little question that access to health insurance will continue to decline. Since 2000, the number of the uninsured has jumped from 36.6 million to 49.9 million, about one-sixth of all Americans.
That number would have been even higher if an additional 20 million people over that period had not obtained coverage through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. This growth partially offset the unrelenting erosion in employer-based care: The share of Americans obtaining coverage from their employer has declined every year since 2000, in good times and bad.
Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that, absent the new health-care law, the number of uninsured would rise to 60 million by 2020. That large a pool of uncovered Americans would create enormous strain for the health-care system.
The uninsured themselves would feel the most immediate effect, of course — studies show they are much more likely than those with coverage to defer or entirely forego needed care. But such an increase would also produce upward pressure on premiums for the insured as providers, especially hospitals, raise prices for those with coverage to offset the cost of uncompensated care to those without it. “The idea that repeal [of health-care reform] is somehow going to lower your premium is folly,” says Len Nichols, director of George Mason University’s Center for Health Policy Research and Ethics. More likely, he argues, repeal would increase premiums.
Obama’s health-care law, whatever its other virtues or flaws, represents a serious effort to break this cycle. CBO, echoing earlier projections, estimated last week that it would cover 33 million of the uninsured. No Republican has offered a plan to cover anywhere near so many. In 2009, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the principal House Republican alternative to Obama’s proposal would cover only 3 million of the uninsured.
Both Santorum and Mitt Romney have proposed unspecified tax credits to cover some of those without coverage. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the center-right American Action Forum, notes that Republicans believe that allowing interstate sale of insurance plans that offer more bare-bones coverage will reduce premium costs and expand access. Even so, he acknowledges, because so many of the uninsured have meager incomes, any tax credit big enough to meaningfully expand coverage still requires “a lot of money.”
But Republicans are proposing to shrink, not increase, federal health-care spending. Both Romney and House Republicans want to convert Medicaid into a block grant and cut federal spending on the program about in half by 2030. Even if those cuts provoked greater efficiency, the Urban Institute has estimated they could swell the number of uninsured by 14 million to 27 million beyond the effect of repealing Obama’s coverage expansion.
Leading Republicans almost all portray the health-care debate as a philosophical turning point between a limited central government and one they see as overweening and even tyrannical. But the debate also represents a much more practical turning point, between a society that attempts to approach universal health coverage and one that accepts millions of people living without insurance — with unavoidable costs for the uninsured and the insured alike.
By: Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic, March 23, 2012
“This Really Isn’t Complicated”: Mitt Romney Should Read Paul Ryan’s Budget Plan
Mitt Romney’s allergy to honesty has come into sharper focus this week, but even by his standards, the comments Romney made on a Wisconsin radio show this morning were astounding.
Romney said the plan introduced by House Budget Committee chairman Ryan (R-Janesville) “does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly … It instead preserves Medicare and preserves Social Security.”
Look, this really isn’t complicated. Paul Ryan’s budget plan is simply brutal towards the poor and working families. Romney doesn’t have to like it, but he really shouldn’t lie about it.
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget plan would get at least 62 percent of its $5.3 trillion in nondefense budget cuts over ten years (relative to a continuation of current policies) from programs that serve people of limited means. This stands a core principle of President Obama’s fiscal commission on its head and violates basic principles of fairness.
While giving a massive tax break to the wealthy, the Ryan budget plan Romney is so fond of slashes funding for Medicaid, food stamps, and other for low-income programs, nearly all of which Ryan’s plan would eliminate over the next couple of decades.
As the CBPP’s Robert Greenstein put it, “[T]he Ryan budget would impose extraordinary cuts in programs that serve as a lifeline for our nation’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens, and over time would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose their health insurance or become underinsured.” He added that Ryan’s plan “would cast tens of millions of less fortunate Americans into the ranks of the uninsured, take food from poor children, make it harder for low-income students to get a college degree, and squeeze funding for research, education, and infrastructure.”
If this doesn’t “balance the budget on the backs of the poor,” for crying out loud, what exactly would such a budget plan look like?
As for “preserving” Medicare, the Ryan plan that Romney supports would turn Medicare into a voucher program, scrapping the guaranteed benefit altogether; weaken Medicare solvency; and bring back the Medicare Part D prescription drug “donut-hole.”
So, what are we to make of Romney’s comments this morning? He’s either lying or he hasn’t read the budget plan he’s endorsed. It’s one or the other.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 23, 2012
“Newt In The Playpen”: Gingrich Just Wants To Help TV Networks
Even with his own sense of grandiosity, I doubt even Newt Gingrich truly believes a brokered convention is on the horizon. Mitt Romney, while still a weak candidate for the general election, is working his way steadily up to the required delegate count, and the leaders of the Republican Party—such as possible White Knight Jeb Bush—are throwing their lot behind Romney.
But Gingrich isn’t quite ready to drop the line, and his reasoning for why a brokered convention would help his party has become specious to a hilarious degree. Yesterday he suggested that it’d help Republicans because a brokered convention would just be so much darn fun to watch. Via GOP12, here’s what Gingrich said on CNN:
“That would be the most exciting 60 days of civic participation in the age of Facebook and Youtube. … the convention would be the most exciting convention in modern times, and whoever became the nominee would have the highest attendance, the highest viewership in history for their acceptance speech.”
As a political observer who will spend the last days of August searching for a good story in Tampa, I certainly share Gingrich’s desire for a convention with a bit of fun and uncertainty. But it’s hard to imagine how that would help the Republicans. Conventions are droll affairs of little interest except for the most diehard political junkies. Sometimes a young politician is introduced to the national spotlight with a great speech—such as Obama in 2004—but real drama doesn’t tend to help the hosting party. The Chicago Democratic convention in 1968 wasn’t lacking in excitement, but that didn’t work out so well for Humphrey in the general election. Or take 1976 and 1980, when an intra-party primary challenge against an incumbent president added extra intrigue, deflating the standing of the incumbent in both instances.
A brokered convention this year would attract viewers who might typically tune it out, and would create have a host of viral-ready clips to be spread across YouTube and Twitter. It wouldn’t be the harmonious kumbaya moments that would get passed around, it’d be clips of a discordant party at war with itself, not exactly the best posture for entering a general election against a sitting president.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, March 23, 2012
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