By: Richard Cohen, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, February 27, 2012
“Deficit-Exploding”: Mitt Romney’s Fantasy Tax Cuts
Let’s take a trip back to 1992. Then-Gov. Bill Clinton, in his campaign manifesto, said: “Middle-class taxpayers will have a choice between a children’s tax credit or a significant reduction in their income tax rate.”
By February 1993, President Clinton’s position on a middle class tax cut had morphed into this:
Before I ask the middle class to pay, I’m going to ask the wealthiest Americans and companies, who made money in the ’80s and had their taxes cut, to pay their fair share. And I’m going to cut more government spending. But I cannot tell you that I won’t ask you to make any contribution to the changes we have to make.
To justify the reversal, Clinton cited a budget deficit that was $50 billion larger than what he thought it was before the election. Fast forward to today.
Former Gov. Mitt Romney has pledged to cut income tax rates by 20 percent for every American, not just the middle class. He has also embraced Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan, which would convert the program from a defined benefit to a defined contribution scheme.
Romney emerges from Michigan committed not only to the Ryan plan, but also to a 20 percent cut in tax rates, above and beyond his prior commitment to making the Bush tax cuts permanent. …That’s not the race I’m sure Romney intended to run. But it will be hard to change now.
Yes, hard to change now—and impossible to realize once in office.
Such deficit-exploding tax cuts will never become law. Romney—a sane man—already knows this. There will be no need for Clintonian “evolution.” And, especially if the Senate remains under Democratic control, the odds for which increased with Sen. Olympia Snowe’s surprise retirement announcement, the Ryan plan stands little chance of even reaching President Romney’s desk.
To review: Mitt Romney has set himself up to (ahem) severely disappoint conservatives who already suspect his ideological convictions.
As I see it, Romney could blunt this backlash-in-the-making by picking up the pieces of last year’s aborted Grand Bargain. There is a solid left-right consensus on raising badly-needed federal revenue by reigning in the billions we spend through the tax code. Pair reduction in tax expenditures with modest entitlement reforms and you can see at least the lineaments of restored budget sanity.
This is probably the best outcome our political system can manage these days.
The question is, as president, would Mitt Romney be able to sell it to conservatives who don’t trust him?
By: Scott Galupo, U. S. News and World Report, February 29, 2012
“Mullah Rick”: Enough Of Rick Santorum’s Sermons
Mullah Rick has spoken.
He wants religion returned to “the public square,” is opposed to contraception, premarital sex and abortion under any circumstances, wants children educated in what amounts to little red schoolhouses and called President Obama a “snob” for extolling college or some other kind of post-high school education. This is not a political platform. It’s a fatwa.
But that’s not all. On the Sunday shows he even lit into John F. Kennedy’s famous 1960 speech to Protestant ministers in Houston, in which he called for the strict separation of church and state. Santorum said the speech sickened him.
“What kind of country do we live in that says only people of non-faith can come into the public square and make their case?” Santorum asked George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” “That makes me throw up.”
Earlier, he said, “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” not noticing that he was speaking from what amounts to the public square.
Kennedy’s speech is actually a sad document, a necessary attempt to combat the bigoted and ignorant notion that a Catholic president might take orders from the Vatican. He told the ministers in attendance that he believed “in a president whose views on religion are his own private affair, neither imposed upon him by the nation, nor imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”
Oddly, the assurances that Kennedy offered that day are ones that I would like to hear from Santorum. He, too, is a Catholic, although not of the Kennedy variety. Santorum is severe and unamusing about his faith, and that is his prerogative. But he has shoved his beliefs in our faces, leaving no doubt that his presidency would be informed by his extremely conservative Catholicism. Santorum’s views are too conservative even for most Catholics.
This is a perilous and divisive approach. We have all of world history to warn us about what happens when religion takes too prominent a role. The public square gets used for beheadings and the like. While that is not likely to happen now — zoning rules and such forbid it — we do know that layering religion over politics is dangerous. Santorum cannot impose — and should not argue — that his political beliefs come from God. That closes all debate and often infuriates those who differ.
This belief that religion has been banished from public discussion is a conservative trope without foundation. New York City is now recovering from a frenzy of celebratory publicity regarding the elevation of Timothy Dolan to cardinal. We have applauded the feats of Tim Tebow, the so-called praying quarterback, who seems unintimidated in publicly expressing his religious convictions. And, of course, we have the prattling of Newt Gingrich, who believes in belief and believes you and I ain’t got any — certainly not if we vote Democratic. As any European can attest, the American public square is soaked in religion or religion-speak.
Santorum’s views on the place of religion and his quaint ideas about education are so anachronistic they would be laughable. But whenever I start to giggle a bit, I find that some absurd statement resonates with Republican primary voters. On the other hand, when Rick Perry said it was fine to help the children of undocumented immigrants go to college, he got pilloried for it. When Gingrich balked at deporting literally millions of people, he was excoriated. Every time some Republican says something sensible, the roof falls in on him.
But for nutty ideas, Santorum is a one-man band. His intellectually abhorrent defense of what might be called blue-collar culture — no education past high school — is a prescription for failure. What he calls their “desires and dreams” is a sucker’s game: Welcome to an economy that can provide few, if any, jobs for the minimally educated. And his jibe at Obama for wanting to do something about it is not politics as usual — it’s just plain irresponsible.
Rick Santorum is not, as some would have it, the Republican Party’s problem. The GOP is half the political equation, and so its inability to offer candidates of sound views and judgments is everyone’s problem. We have to vote for someone after all. But when I mull Santorum’s views on contraception, the role of women, the proper place for religion and what he thinks about education, I think he’s either running for president of the wrong country or marooned in the wrong century. The man is lost.
“Coat Hanger Legislation”: Virginia Passes Sonogram Bill After All
Protests and national attention couldn’t stop legislators from ushering ultrasound legislation through the statehouse.
In the end, even Jon Stewart couldn’t kill the Virginia ultrasound bill. After more than a week of protests and national attention, the state Senate passed an amended version of the measure Tuesday afternoon which will require women seeking an abortion to get an ultrasound 24 hours ahead of the procedure. The Senate did unanimously pass an exemption for victims of rape and incest, but other amendments fell flat, including one to mandate insurance coverage of the sonograms. The House has already passed a version of the bill and it appears now to be headed for law.
Much of the protesting focused on “transvaginal” ultrasounds, highly invasive procedures that would be required to get a clear image of a fetus in the very early stages of pregnancy. Opponents called the bill a “state rape” mandate. The Daily Show even had a bit on it. Public support for the measure tanked and, under pressure, the state’s socially conservative Governor Bob McDonnell announced he opposed requiring transvaginal sonograms for women. It looked like a victory, until Republicans came back with a revised version of the bill, mandating transabdominal ultrasounds for women seeking abortions. The governor has said he’d support an amendment bill.
The new requirement may be less invasive, but the bill lacks basic logic: if a woman gets an ultrasound early in her pregnancy, the transabdominal ultrasound won’t show anything. “I might as well put the ultrasound probe on this bottle of Gatorade—I’d see just as much,” said Democrat state Senator Ralph Northam.
As the only doctor in the chamber, Northam was particularly vehement in criticizing the measure. “It’s telling me, it’s telling my colleagues how to practice medicine,” he said. “And it’s coming from nonphysicians.
“Nobody in this room would choose or like to have a woman have an abortion,” Northam continued. To actually decrease abortion rates, “we need to talk about things like education, promoting abstinence amongst our children before marriage, about access to healthcare, and contraception for our young women.”
Democrat Louise Lucas gave the most impassioned speech against the measure. “This is a veiled effort to guilt women, ” she said. “Women who want to have abortions will go to back alleys. Women will die.”
The bill’s sponsor and those supporting the measure didn’t say much to defend the bill. They just passed it.
By: Abby Rapoport, The American Prospect, February 28, 2012
GOP’s Sexist “Mad Men” Worldview Threatens Women’s Health
The new season of Mad Men is upon us, but my mother, a fan of PBS and quality television, still can’t bring herself watch it. Mad Men brings back too many bad memories for her of a time when women were second-class citizens, belittled on a daily basis. Many Republicans, on the other hand, seem to view Mad Men and its ritual humiliation of women as an instructive documentary. The Republican presidential field is in a race to the bottom on who can most obnoxiously turn back the clock to the pre-Griswold 1965. House Republicans don’t think women are qualified to testify on their own healthcare.
This week brings us the Senate hearings on the Blunt Amendment, which would allow any employer to deny healthcare coverage because of “moral objections.” There’s some question as to whether women will actually get to testify this time, or just patted on the head and allowed to fetch coffee. And if the amendment actually goes anywhere, I can’t wait for the first meeting of Women CEOs Against Viagra.
And in the states, it’s even worse. Utah House Republicans just passed a bill allowing state schools to opt out of sex ed and mandating those that keep it refrain from any mention of contraception. Nationwide, state legislators have introduced a slew of “personhood” measures that would ban hormonal contraception and ultrasound bills designed to shame women into changing their mind. And let’s be clear: these bills aren’t designed to “inform” women. They’re designed to punish them.
The tide of public opinion— or perhaps his own political ambitions—finally persuaded Gov. Bob McDonnell that Virginia’s internal ultrasound bill was a bad idea. But this month, the threat in Virginia became reality in Texas when its ultrasound law took effect. Furthermore, Texas just threw 130,000 poor women off of a healthcare program and the state is 50th in women getting prenatal care in the first trimester. So the only “healthcare” poor women get in Texas is a medically unnecessary procedure and a lecture from a complete stranger if they choose to get an abortion because they couldn’t get contraception or prenatal care.
Here in Colorado, Attorney General John Suthers has signed on to a letter with 11 other Republican AGs objecting to the contraception coverage requirement under the Affordable Care Act, even though state law already requires insurers cover birth control. Apparently Suthers doesn’t think the opinions of thousands of Colorado women who voted no with more than 70 percent margins on two anticontraception ‘personhood’ measures count for much.
And Republicans wonder why they’re losing the women’s vote. Much of the Republican argument seems predicated on the same judgmental discrimination at the root of the Komen debacle, as noted by my U.S. News colleague Susan Milligan: good girl healthcare vs. bad girl healthcare. Good girls get breast cancer. Bad girls get birth control.
Here’s a clue: Reproductive healthcare is healthcare, and contraception is an economic issue, especially when you’re usually the one determining what to use and how to pay for it. There is no more basic financial decision than determining the size of your own family. And no amount of public humiliation will alter a woman’s decision—in the words of the sage Lyle Lovett, “There’s nothing as resolute as a woman when she’s already made up her mind.”
I’m still able to fit into one of my mother’s beautiful vintage dresses from the Mad Men era and in fact have worn it to several costume parties. But much as I love the clothes, I have no desire to return to raw sexism of that era, and neither do most women—a concept Republicans increasingly seem unable to grasp.
BY: Laura Chapin, U. S. News and World Report, February 28, 2012
Romney Offers False Explanation Of Cross-Party Primary Vote In 1992
In 1992, Republican Mitt Romney voted in a Democratic primary, backing former Massachusetts Sen. Paul Tsongas for the Democratic presidential nomination. He said he did so because he wanted to “vote for the person who I thought would be the weakest opponentfor the Republican.”
Romney is now railing against the Santorum campaign for trying to get traditional Democratic voters to cross-over and vote in the Republican primary. Romney has called this a “terrible dirty trick” and an “attempt to kidnap the primary process.”
In a press conference in Livonia, Michigan, moments ago, Romney was asked how we squared this criticism with his earlier admission that his 1992 primary vote had been a “vote for the person who [he] thought would be the weakest opponent for the Republican.”
Romney responded with a new explanation:
In my case, I was certainly voting against the Democrat who I thought was the person I thought would be the worst leader of our nation. In this case, as I recall, it was Bill Clinton. I wanted someone other than Bill Clinton. I voted against Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, and Bill Clinton. Seemed like a good group to be against.
Watch the video:
While to conservatives, that trio would indeed seem a “good group to be against,” there is no way Romney could have voted against all three that year.
While then-Governor Clinton was indeed on the primary ballot in 1992, Sen. Ted Kennedy was not up for re-election until 1994. Romney should know that, given he ran against Kennedy that year and often brags about the fact that he forced the late Democrat to “take a mortgage out on his house.”
And House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr.? His final campaign for the U.S. House had been eight years earlier, in 1984.
It’s odd that Romney claims to remember events that happened nine months before his birth, but cannot seem remember the 1990s.
By: Josh Israel, Think Progress, February 28, 2012
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