Mitt Romney Loves Cutting

The challenge of raising taxes is that it depresses growth. And so like a dog chasing its tail, you can’t get to a balanced budget by simply raising taxes. As a matter of fact, it is ultimately counterproductive. So my plan is based upon reducing spending and putting in place a program of policies that put more people to work and raise wages. So specifically, places that I would reduce spending: First, I will eliminate programs that are not absolutely essential. Obamacare is one of the easiest to eliminate from my standpoint and that saves approximately $100 billion a year. There are also programs I would return to the states where their growth can be managed and where they will be carried out with less fraud, inefficiency, and abuse. So for example, Medicaid, housing vouchers, food stamps, and other programs of that nature, I believe, can best be administered by the states. And finally I will cut the number of federal employees through attrition by at least 10 percent, and I will link their compensation with that which exists in the private sector. The plan that my team and I put in place achieves a balanced budget within eight years and does so without raising taxes.

Mitt Romney signed Grover Norquist’s pledge to veto any tax increase if he were to become president, and in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek, says his plan to balance the budget is to basically get rid of a bunch of stuff, and ask individual states to take on additional programs, because, you know, states are just so much more efficient at balancing their budgets and running programs. And, yeah, the economy is going to do a swell job at absorbing all those federal employees he’s planning on laying off. But, hey, the cover of the magazine looks great this week!

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