Former President Bill Clinton delivered a scathing indictment of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s economic and tax plans to an enthusiastic crowd at the Democratic National Convention, exhorting the crowd to re-elect President Barack Obama.
“I think the President's plan is better than the Romney plan, because the Romney plan fails the first test of fiscal responsibility: The numbers don't add up,” said Clinton in a rousing 48-minute speech Wednesday night in Charlotte, N.C. “It's supposed to be a debt reduction plan, but it begins with $5 trillion in tax cuts over a 10-year period. That makes the debt hole bigger before they even start to dig out. They say they'll make it up by eliminating loopholes in the Tax Code. When you ask, ‘Which loopholes and how much?’ they say, ‘See me after the election on that.’”
Clinton pointed out that Obama had cut taxes for the majority of Americans. “The Recovery Act saved and created millions of jobs and cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people,” he said. “In the last 29 months the economy has produced about 4.5 million private sector jobs. But last year, the Republicans blocked the President's jobs plan costing the economy more than a million new jobs. So here's another jobs score: President Obama plus 4.5 million, congressional Republicans zero.”
Clinton criticized the lack of policy details on display at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., last week. “In order to look like an acceptable alternative to President Obama, they couldn’t say much about the ideas they have offered over the last two years,” he said. “You see they want to go back to the same old policies that got us into trouble in the first place: to cut taxes for high-income Americans even more than President Bush did; to get rid of those pesky financial regulations designed to prevent another crash and prohibit future bailouts; to increase defense spending $2 trillion more than the Pentagon has requested without saying what they'll spend the money on; to make enormous cuts in the rest of the budget, especially programs that help the middle class and poor kids. As another President once said, ‘There they go again.’”
Clinton pointed out that the “numbers don’t add up” in the Romney and Ryan plan for reducing the deficit with large tax cuts for upper-income taxpayers combined with steep spending cuts. He compared that to his own administration’s success at balancing the budget. “People ask me all the time how we delivered four surplus budgets,” he said. “What new ideas did we bring? I always give a one-word answer: arithmetic. If they stay with a $5 trillion tax cut in a debt reduction plan, the arithmetic tells us that one of three things will happen: 1) they’ll have to eliminate so many deductions like the ones for home mortgages and charitable giving that middle-class families will see their tax bill go up $2,000 year while people making over $3 million a year will still get a $250,000 tax cut; or 2) they’ll have to cut so much spending that they'll obliterate the budget for our national parks, for ensuring clean air, clean water, safe food, safe air travel; or they’ll cut way back on Pell Grants, college loans, early childhood education and other programs that help middle class families and poor children, not to mention cutting investments in roads, bridges, science, technology and medical research; or 3) they’ll do what they’ve been doing for 30-plus years now—cut taxes more than they cut spending, explode the debt, and weaken the economy. Remember, Republican economic policies quadrupled the debt before I took office and doubled it after I left. We simply can’t afford to double-down on trickle-down. President Obama’s plan cuts the debt, honors our values, and brightens the future for our children, our families and our nation.”
7 Comments
Would be nice if just ONE of our national political personalities could get the numbers correct and represent the people, not the party.
Posted by: QualityCounts | September 7, 2012 7:01 PM
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Bill Clinton gets credit for the Housing boom (bubble), stock market returns (irrational exuberance) and the tech boom which resulted in huge taxable gains from stock option exercises. All of this while the Republicans had control of both houses of Congress. The Prez, much like an NFL quarterback, gets too much credit and too much blame. We need someone that can behave in a fiscally responsible manner and get things done with both parties. That doesn't appear to be the current president. Let's give another guy a chance. He seems to have more actual executive experience prior to running for America's CEO.
Posted by: pmurray29 | September 6, 2012 7:17 PM
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Bill Clinton is correct, after all he is the ONLY president to balance the budget and pay down the national debt for the past 50 years, by growign from the middle out not from the top down.
Milton Friedman is wrong, so were Reagan, Bush I and Bush Jr; Dubya was clueless in additon to being dead wrong. It was he and Cheney that stabbed our economy to the point of almost killing it. Now that we are out of intensive care, in our way to recovery, the same new gang with the same mantra want a chance to finish the job! Ae you going to help them?
Posted by: jeromanix | September 6, 2012 4:02 PM
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Everyone knows that the ultimate oxymoron is: "Government Efficiency". In spite of this too many people are suckered by the arguments that you are against education, children, the elderly, etc if we don't raise taxes to put more into programs supposedly for them. Government corruption and inefficiency are beyond epidemic in the USA and the most patriotic thing we can do is cut taxes anywhere and everywhere possible to reduce this corruption. As the Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman wrote in his numerous writings, "Government is the problem, not the solution"!
Posted by: efhcpa | September 6, 2012 12:59 PM
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There are only 2 thing wrong with the political process. First politicians and second the press. You can't believe either one. As far as the current administrations efforts. They claim that they just need more time. If someone was stabbing me with a knife and twisting the blade and told me that all they needed was a little more time to stab me and that everything would be okay I would have a little trouble believing that. It doesn't matter who is in power. As long as we continue to allow those we elect to waste our tax money or even worse squander it on those who will not contribute. Those of us who have been treading water all these years just trying to keep from drowning are being pulled under the water by those hanging on our backs. I'm tired of being told that I have to provide "this" & "that" to the poor and even the illegal and that they have no responsibility in the matter. Want to balance the budget start there. We need a leader not a smooth tongued politician.
Posted by: takingcare | September 6, 2012 11:16 AM
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Leaving aside the partisan politics, the Romney Ryan plan, by their own admission will not balance budget for years. The tax breaks are immediate whereas the spending cuts, if they are ever enacted into law, will not kick in for several years. When recovery becomes robust, the revenue stream will increase but the growth assumptions used by them are so rosy that they are unlikely to produce enough revenue to even make a dent in the deficits. Ryan wanted to reform Medicare but his boss now says that they will not "hurt" the seniors so no significant changes will take place in reforming the programs. I am afraid a trillion dollar budget deficits are likely to become a norm for several years no matter who is elected in November.
Posted by: G Chokshi | September 6, 2012 10:43 AM
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I think I remember that Math was fuzzy to George W...
Posted by: Unknown | September 6, 2012 8:14 AM
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