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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRomney says he won't cut spending
Apologies if this is old news -- quick search didn't look like it's been posted.
In an interview with Time's Mark Halperin
Interview link
Halperin: I want to get to a lot of those, and lets go to spending, which is a big thing for you, one of the bases of comparison you say youd cut spending a lot more than the President has. And like most governors I know, you can get down in the detail. A lot of people dont know that about you; you can really get your arms around a policy issue and go deep, so lets talk about spending. You have a plan, as you said, over a number of years, to reduce spending dramatically. Why not in the first year, if youre elected why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that youd like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?
Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So Im not going to do that, of course. What you do is you make adjustments on a basis that show, in the first year, actions that over time get you to a balanced budget. So Im not saying Im going to come up with ideas five or ten years from now that get us to a balanced budget. Instead Im going to take action immediately by eliminating programs like Obamacare, which become more and more expensive down the road by eliminating them, we get to a balanced budget. And Id do it in a way that does not have a huge reduction in the first year, but instead has an increasing reduction as time goes on, and given the growth of the economy, you dont have a reduction in the overall scale of the GDP. I dont want to have us go into a recession in order to balance the budget. Id like to have us have high rates of growth at the same time we bring down federal spending, on, if you will, a ramp thats affordable, but that does not cause us to enter into a economic decline.
A huffpost blogger notes this sounds more like Obama than Boehner.
Blog link
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Yet he has endorsed that budget.
The rest of the interview is more of what we're used to from Romney - lies.
"When the President is making it harder to mine coal, to use coal, to take advantage of our gas resources, to make it harder to get our oil resources..." is pure falsehood.
"And its very clear, by virtue of the Presidents record, that he does not, and he is struggling. Look at him right now. He just doesnt have a clue what to do to get this economy going." Um, except that it is going, and despite the House Republicans efforts to undermine it.
and then there's "Nixon's secret plan to end the war"...
Romney: Are there going to be any other things we havent thought of yet? That well have to look at down the road? Yes.
Halperin: And you dont plan to lay those out before the election.
Romney: Well, I dont have all of them in line at this stage. As we get inside government and look item by item, we can find places where there is waste and inefficiency. The government, the GAO, has taken a look at various programs I think they said there were some 34 programs that were ineffective, duplicative. Well look at those. It will be some programs that are, as the GAO indicated, not highly effective well take a close look at those. Some of those, well decide to eliminate.
Good post, thanks. And welcome to DU.
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)"Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%."
Wow... no Republican in congress would admit that publicly.
So government spending is contributing significantly to GDP and that is what is keeping us out of recession???
Somebody call Krugman. He'll be relieved to know he was right about everything.
Scuba
(53,475 posts)Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,010 posts)The man's got more positions than a contortionist.