Points Obama might have made (but didn't)

Mr. Romney, I must admit I am surprised that you now claim to have no intention of actually implementing the 20% across-the-board income tax cuts your campaign has been trumpeting for the past three months. I suppose I made the mistake of believing you were telling the truth when you and your running mate outlined that intention. As I recall, this 20% tax cut was at the heart of your plan to, as you say, “grow the economy.” If in fact you really didn’t mean it, then you’re left with so-called de-regulation as the only arrow left in your quiver.

              Of course, you knew this, so now you say you really do plan to cut taxes by 20% but only if it can be implemented in a way that would not impact the national debt. By this I guess you mean that the tax cuts, if they’re implemented, will be revenue-neutral, as Mr. Ryan has been claiming. That delightful outcome can only be realized if you can close enough loopholes to equal the amount of the 20% tax cut. If you actually can do this – and I doubt it – then the net effect of your tax cut will actually be nothing. The amount of taxes paid by the American people would remain exactly the same as they are now. I ask you: How can that sort of so-called tax plan lead to growth? Well, it couldn’t. Growth might be brought about by tax cuts, but if and only if they put more money in the pockets of consumers. A so-called revenue-neutral plan doesn’t do that. So your tax plan is simply a legislative exercise. Its only benefit, if you could call it that, would be that tax payers wouldn’t have to be worried about keeping track of their charitable contributions, the money paid in home mortgage interest, child care expenses, and a score or so of other deductions tax payers currently enjoy.

              But there’s a hidden danger in this. I’m sure you’re as aware as I am that almost 99% of the Republicans serving in the Senate and House have signed away to Grover Norquist their constitutional right to levy taxes. If those senators and congressmen remain faithful to Mr. Norquist, and not to the American people, taxes can never go in any direction but down. Every cut would work kike a ratchet; once cut, taxes could never be increased. As wonderful as this may seem to some of your supporters on the fringes of the right, this ratcheting effect would effectively deny tax increases even if the nation’s life were in danger. And I assure you, when I took office; the nation’s very life was on the brink of death.

Those Republican politicians who have pledged allegiance to Grover Norquist have, in effect, signed away one of the two means available to balance the budget: (1) raise taxes, and/or (2) cut spending. But as you have no doubt discovered in trying to find a way to justify your 5 trillion dollar tax cut, there’s a limit to how much spending can be reduced without cutting the throats of many American people or endangering the nation’s defenses and infrastructure. When that limit is reached, when spending can be cut no further, and when the inevitable economic downturn reduces the government’s income (as has happened after the disastrous recession of 2008 and 9) there remains only one way to balance the budget: tax increases. But as any sophomore knows, in an economic slowdown the last thing you want to do is raise taxes. That’s why I cut taxes on the middle class, and it explains why, in this unbalanced recovery where the majority still suffers and the wealthy have prospered, I want and intend to raise taxes on those who can afford it.  I know the objection that any tax increase in a stagnant economy is a bad thing, but if we still aim to turn the tables on deficit spending we have to take that painful step.

Which brings up another surprise: You continue to repeat the falsehood that I have proposed a 716 billion cut in Medicare. I honestly thought you understood what was going on. Your running mate certainly does because in his infamous budget proposal he “cut” Medicare by exactly the same amount. Now I confess, I haven’t yet been able to figure out where his 716 billion is coming from, but I know precisely where mine originates. I’m not reducing the services delivered by Medicare; I’m only reducing the cost of those services. Take this example: if every day you bought, say, a can of soup for $1.00, in ten years you would have bought roughly 3,650 cans of soup at a total cost of $3650. But if by some policy or market force the average price of soup were reduced to 90 cents, those same 3650 cans of soup would have cost you $365 less. Now a politician trying to make hay might say, “You’ve cut the soup program by $365;” but as Bill Clinton might say in reply, “Mitt, you still have the same amount of soup. Are you complaining that soup is just less expensive now than before?” Your answer was that, when such savings occur in Medicare, some hospitals and doctors would refuse to take Medicare patients. That might happen, also might not. That’s a problem for the hospitals and doctors to work out in their consciences. But one thing is certain: your continued characterization of that savings as a “cut in Medicare” is purely false. And here’s the disgusting part: I think you know it’s false, but continue to pretend that you don’t know, otherwise you would be compelled to give up on that particular criticism. That’s something you should have worked out in your conscience . . . but apparently your conscience lost.

Which brings me to the most disturbing fact that has come up in your campaign: the fact that you believe that 47% of the people who will not vote for you are moochers who consider themselves as victims, who desire noting but handouts – free food, free housing, free health care, free everything – and who it is not in your power to convince that they should take responsibility for their lives and for whom you therefore do not care about. That’s, of course, a statement you wish had not been made public. But in a way, you might find an excuse by claiming that by saying that your lack of caring meant only that you would not waste campaign dollars seeking their votes. Politicians – all of us – have to make hard decisions of that sort. But that excuse will not forgive you of feeling about those people the way you do. It’s certainly not a political necessity that you think these people are all moochers, not a political necessity that you think of them as people who will not take responsibility for their lives. Those are personal feelings that have meaning only if they are sincerely felt. Those words tell us about Mitt Romney. “Oh but,” you might say, “I was doing something most politicians do at one time or another. I was just telling that audience what they wanted to hear.” Well, Mitt let me tell you: that’s absolutely the least politically brilliant statement you might make. When you made your 47% remark you were speaking to what might symbolically be referred to as the heart and soul of your party – the fat cats who finance it. If you were simply telling them what they wanted to hear, then you have politically crucified your entire party. You have said, in effect, that the moral imperative driving the Republican Party bears no relationship whatsoever to the ethics preached by Jesus of Nazareth. Your party would reduce Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan to a mere fairy tale, not intended to taken seriously as a guide to moral behavior. Better, Mitt, that you should simply apologize for your unchristian remark and let the chips fall where they may. That’s what a noble man would have done . . . if in fact he had made such an ignoble statement.

I wish I had said these things to you last Wednesday evening. I thought to, but didn’t. Forgive me. In remaining less than forthright on these issues I have rendered you a disservice: I’ve left you the man you were when you walked onto the stage, when I could have, by moral conviction,  perhaps opened your eyes to a nobler self within and to a new way to live your life. By remaining relatively silent on these matters, I left you in a make-believe world where, if someone doesn’t soon set you right, your mental health will surely deteriorate.