What Will America Look Like in 2016 Under Mitt Romney?
It is clear that the contrast between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for the future of America could not be exaggerated. Mitt Romney has a clear desire and plan to rebuild the American economy and to unleash the recovery power of the principles of free enterprise system that made America strong, competitive and innovative. His goal is to reduce taxes, to cut spending, to greatly reduce regulations that stifle economic and industrial growth and end overlapping and wasteful government programs that are accomplishing nothing but squandering America’s treasure. Romney wants to fight hard to increase trade and allow America to use her own energy resources that will greatly reduce America’s dependence on foreign sources of energy that mainly comes to our shores from countries that hate us. Romney is very visionary in his desire to help displaced workers become retrained and retooled to fit into the future changing job market and to allow states the flexibility they need to once again exercise their constitutionally granted power to find the solutions to their people’s unique situations and not to act like the Federal Government has a solution to every problem.
Americans who are currently enduring the economic crisis that President Obama has failed to end know that there is an absolute need of an immediate and radical change of course from the Obama years of never-ending spending on wasteful programs and of an end to regulations on industry and small business recognize that continues to cripple the Unite States’ economy and our future. Such radical change from the socialist policies of the Obama Administration is exactly what Mitt Romney has called for in his campaign for the Presidency of the Untied States of America. If elected president, Washington’s bloated government will be seriously downsized and economic growth and prosperity will become far more achievable. Mitt Romney’s views and proposed policies will represent a return to the conservative policies that served the nation well and again, the contrast with Obama’s policies could not be greater. Let’s take a look at the highly ambitious and policies that Mitt Romney has proposed that, if enacted, will do a great deal to restore America’s prestige and power in the world and will get America back to work.
Romney’s View on Taxation:
I find it hard to fathom, after having followed and studied American politics for over four decades, how today a party can call for higher taxes and gain votes. I recall the Reagan and George H.W. Bush campaigns and they both were won, to a great extent, on a presidential candidate’s pledge to cut taxes. In fact, the first President Bush lost his bid for reelection primarily because after reading his lips that he would not raise taxes, he broke his pledge did so anyway. To call for increased taxes on anyone in those campaigns was to nail one’s own coffin shut. As back then, so also today, there is an American debate taking place about taxes, and it is as sensitive and controversial as ever, especially since Barack Obama has played the game of class warfare to such a great extent. Also, like in the 80’s, the future of the American economy and the American people’s future is at stake.
We have to ask ourselves how this great powerhouse of economic productivity can continue to grow with the tax hikes, which Barack Obama has promised to put in place. The other question is how America will find the right amount of tax revenue to balance our budget without further depressing economic growth, and can it be done in a manner that will ensure that the tax burden is equitably and fairly distributed throughout the economy for all Americans?
Nothing affects how people and businesses participate in the economy more than tax policy. Badly and unfairly designed tax policy accomplishes nothing but the downturn of a once thriving economy, as we have witnessed over the past four years. With good design and thoughtfulness for the welfare of the American people, nothing can cause the economy to thrive more than good tax policy. Individual taxpayers are bewildered by their misunderstanding of the current tax code and are forced to pay hundreds of dollars to have their tax returns prepared by a professional who understands the mishmash of rules and loopholes. Business has to use its energy to find ways to get around paying high taxes due to the rules and regulations that discourages reinvestment in the American economy.
Obama’s Folly
President Obama has said often that he proposes “balanced approach,” by which he means cutting spending along with increasing taxes. In reality, before President Obama quadrupled the size of the federal government, the nation’s tax rate that had been put in place by George W. Bush was basically right to cover the nation’s needs. Obama actually offering no compromise at all and over the past four years, and has permanently grown the size of government and the tax burden on the American people to the point of collapsing the economy. The result has been cause business to pause long and hard before investing in future growth, and the businesses that have tried to expand have been met with banks that are very hesitant to extend credit in the Obama economy. President Obama must take the blame for the nation’s banks refusing to lend and businesses refusing to hire and to invest in what appears to be a no-win situation. It is the President’s policies and their impact on the economy that has caused the dangerous economic condition of the country.
You can be sure that every time President Obama says he has not raised taxes on middle-class workers, he is lying. The Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is indeed a tax, and that bill will represent the single largest tax increase on the American people in history to the tune of $500 billion. Mitt Romney said it best himself, “Whenever President Obama discusses the need for more tax revenues, Americans should remember that he already got them and spent them on a health care scheme that is itself proving to be hugely disruptive to the economy.”
Mitt Romney’s Plan
“Reducing and stabilizing federal spending is essential, but breathing life into the present anemic recovery will also require fixing the nation’s tax code to focus on jobs and growth. To repair the nation’s tax code, marginal rates must be brought down to stimulate entrepreneurship, job creation, and investment, while still raising the revenue needed to fund a smaller, smarter, simpler government. The principle of fairness must be preserved in federal tax and spending policy.” - Mitt Romney
Individual Taxes
America’s individual tax code forces high marginal tax rates on a slim base of tax payers. High rates of taxation cause work and entrepreneurship, savings and investment to all suffer and to remain weak. Today, 54 percent of middle-class workers are employed in small businesses, and the individual rates of taxation determine how jobs will be created and the motivation to create jobs by small businesses. If rates can be lowered, all Americans will experience economic gains as a result of good and fair tax reform.
Practical points from Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan:
- Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
- Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
- Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends, and capital gains
- Eliminate the Death Tax
- Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
At 35 percent, the U.S. has one of the highest rates of taxation on business in the world. This high rate reduces the nation’s business’ ability to compete in the global economy and to invest and create jobs at home. Because this limits investment and growth, the high rate of corporate taxation causes U.S. middle-class wages to remain stagnant and below what is needed to maintain America’s standard of living. Romney wants to cut the corporate rate to 25 percent from the current 35%, while Obama has already threatened to regard a victory in November 2012 as his mandate to raise them from 35% to 39.6%.
If Romney achieved just this alone, it would boast the nation’s productivity and growth to a massive extent and would cause increased hiring and job creation that would lift the nation to new heights. In contrast, if Obama succeeds and wins reelection and does raise corporate taxes as he has threatened to do, the nation will sink further into debt because unemployment will increase and there will be more unemployed workers taking from the treasury rather than contributing to the needed revenue to pay for Obama’s folly. The choice could not be starker in contrast.
Energy
An affordable, reliable energy supply is fundamental to a prosperous and growing economy is what allows us to get up every morning and drive our vehicles to work and to spend our time at the job with the lights working and the machinery running. Though we may take it all for granted, one of the gravest dangers facing America is our dependence on foreign and most often adversarial sources of energy. Such fears and danger has created an illusion that America does not have enough of its own reserves of oil and natural gas to fuel the engine of freedom that America has become. Nothing could be further from the truth. American reserves of oil and coal and natural gas are enormous and enough to end our dependence completely, but like other liberal administration, the Obama administration refuses to allow America to tap into its reserves because of false, ridiculous and treacherous fears of harming the environment.
Mitt Romney’s Ideas
With the right policies in place, America can become the energy superpower of the foreseeable future. It is not only possible but required that we end our expensive and dangerous dependence on OPEC, which is made up mostly of enemy oil-producing nations. Until recently, this would have been unthinkable. In the past it was almost impossible to conceive of a way to logically, environmentally safely and economically soundly use our own resources deep in the United States own soil and off our own coasts. Yet, because of the unique American ability to be innovative and by the hard work of American workers and businesses, great strides have been made that will allow us to safely and economically exploit our own reserves that will lower prices at the pump and in our homes and will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs for the middle-class workers.
While Barack Obama’s government has thrown billions of taxpayer dollars away at failed political enterprises like Solyndra, who were given paybacks for supporting him financially in his first run for the White House, Mitt Romney wants to employ new technologies that have been developed in the private sector to unleashed an energy revolution in America that will create massive numbers of jobs and save the middle-class billions in reduced energy costs.
From Mitt Romney’s Pen
“A successful national energy strategy will have a fundamental influence on the well-being of the nation. Dramatically increasing domestic energy production can bolster the competitiveness of virtually every industry in the country, creating millions of new jobs from coast to coast. With fewer energy imports and more exports of manufactured goods, America’s trade deficit will decline and the dollar will strengthen. The benefits even extend beyond immediate economic growth. The lease payments, royalties, and taxes paid to the American people in return for the development of our resources will yield more than a trillion of dollars in new government revenue over time. And all Americans can rest assured that the nation’s security is no longer beholden to unstable but oil-rich regions half way around the world.” -Mitt Romney
Obama’s Folly
The Obama administration is financing offshore drilling off the coast of Brazil. According to the Wall Street Journal, The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near Rio de Janeiro. Brazil’s planning minister confirmed that White House National Security Adviser James Jones met this month with Brazilian officials to talk about the loan. This loan to Brazil will make the South American nation’s Tupi oil field one of the world’s top oil exporters. In the U.S., however, domestic companies are denied access to rich oil reserves in Alaska and off the East and West Coasts. This leaves one to wonder: why is Obama in favor of drilling off Brazil’s coast, but not our own? And if drilling is so wrong, why in the world are we paying for it?
Even more confusing is that President Obama has vetoed the Keystone pipeline that will cause all middle-class Americans to pay higher prices at the pump and the heat and cool our homes. The cruelest thing of all is that while such ridiculous and treasonous policy eats away at the middle-class, it actually increases the bottom lines of such Obama cronies as George Soros and Warren Buffet, who are supposed to be the ‘Fat-cats” Obama hates but who bankroll his campaign for reelection. They are sure to benefit very significantly from higher energy costs.
It does not take someone with a great memory to recall how Obama botched up the BP oil explosion in the Gulf of Mexico. He imposed a moratorium on digging in the deep waters off of the US coast that has left digging down by 88% today since the moratorium was finally lifted, only after Obama’s Administration was held in contempt of federal court for illegally imposing a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. So, when Obama says he’s for making America energy independent, it is a total lie. Still today, under the Obama Administration, leasing and permitting on federal lands and offshore are down by half. Last year, oil and gas production on federal lands was at an all-time low.
As a result of Obama’s desire to bankrupt the energy sectors of the American economy, today, the Gulf of Mexico is producing hundreds of thousands fewer barrels per day than was estimated and than is possible if the stringent regulations, which Obama himself imposed, were removed. The Environmental Protection Agency predicts that another coal power plant will never be built in this country. That will certainly be true if Barack Obama is reelected in November, 2012. So, it is clear that Obama now wants to make Americans dependent on Brazilian oil, and is more than willing to let the people of Brazil find the great numbers of jobs and reduced prices at their pumps that he thinks are OK for Brazilians, while letting middle-class Americans languish in high prices at the pump and high rates of unemployment.
President Obama’s self-described energy policy is, as he put it, a “hodgepodge.” He has paid out billions of wasted taxpayer dollars to “Green energy” projects that were set up and run by his own political cronies. He has rejected the Keystone XL Pipeline and said it was not in “the national interest,” and has set up roadblocks continuously to stop the development of America’s domestic energy resources.
It would seem logical by just taking a look at the fuel pumps across America that this president would feel the pain of the American middle-class he so energetically seeks votes from and embrace the nation’s abundant energy resources. Instead, the President has ignored our financial plight and created endless delays, studies, legal maneuvers, and overregulation to both slow and even stop the nation’s energy resources development and has invested and wasted billions of dollars trying to elevate his chosen “green” alternatives.
President Obama has kept his word from 2008 when he said his Cap and trade policies would impose regulations that he himself had designed to “bankrupt” the coal industry. He has personally sent thousands of coal workers into the unemployment lines simply to end one of America’s most important industries that have kept American factories and businesses thriving for years.
In 2008 and after taking office in 2009, President Obama promised that he would create “five million” green jobs. His words simply did not materialize and his promised translated into only a few thousand, and he invested terribly in companies like Solyndra that finally went bankrupt. And yet, rather than embrace the revolutionary innovation in the private sector that could pave the way for energy independence and an economic resurgence across the nation, President Obama’s plan for a second term is to not change his failed energy policies but to even increase such dangerous and wasteful use of American resources. It is clear, President Obama does not care what is hitting the middle-class workers of America between the eyes and he will further weaken America’s future economy by continuing his dangerous failed policies of his first term in office.
Mitt Romney’s Plan
Mitt Romney desires to make America an energy superpower. He wants to rapidly and responsibly increase America’s own production and to form workable partnerships with friendly allies such as Canada and Mexico, instead for continuing to import our needed supplies from nations who are virtually our enemies. Romney’s objective is to achieve energy independence on this continent by 2020. To do this, America will require genuine support for increased energy production, a more rational approach to regulation. A second Obama Administration and Government will never support what is needed to accomplish what it will take to free up and facilitate the private-sector to lead the way in the development of new energy technologies. Romney wants to focus on funding research and removing Obama’s current stagnating barriers and let American economic ingenuity take a leading role, once again.
Romney’s goals as he outlined them himself
- Empower states to control onshore energy development
- States will be empowered to control all forms of energy production on all lands within their borders, excluding only those that are specifically designated off-limits. Federal agencies will certify, but the states will lead.
- Open offshore areas for energy development
- Mitt will establish the most robust five-year offshore lease plan in history, that opens new areas for resource development – including off the coasts of Virginia and the Carolinas – and sets minimum production targets to increase accountability.
- Pursue a North American Energy Partnership
- Mitt will approve the Keystone XL pipeline, establish a new regional agreement to facilitate cross-border energy investment, promote and expand regulatory cooperation with Canada and Mexico and institute fast-track regulatory approval processes for cross-border pipelines and other infrastructure.
- Ensure accurate assessment of energy resources
- Instead of relying on decades-old surveys developed with decades-old technologies, Mitt’s plan facilitates new energy assessments to determine the true extent of our resource endowment.
- Restore transparency and fairness to permitting and regulation
- Mitt will pursue measured reforms of our environmental laws and regulations to strengthen environmental protection without destroying jobs or paralyzing industries. Mitt’s plan will also streamline the gauntlet of reviews, processes, administrative procedures, and lawsuits that mire so many new projects in red tape.
- Facilitate private-sector-led development of new energy technologies
- Mitt will promote innovation by focusing the federal government on the job it does best – research and development – and will eliminate any barriers that might prevent new energy technologies from succeeding on their own merits. Strengthening and streamlining regulations and permitting processes will benefit the development of both traditional and alternative energy sources, and encourage the use of a diverse range of fuels including natural gas in transportation.
Romney has set very high objectives and goals for himself, as the nation’s next president. He has pledged to create more than three million new jobs, including over one million in manufacturing. His tax policy and his energy goals would be able to do this easily if he has a congress that is willing to let him enact his policies. He is confident that an economic resurgence will take place with less regulation and more industrial freedom can be achieved and that he can add more than $500 billion to the nation’s GDP.
Remember that since Barack Obama has been president, the nation’s credit rating has been lowered twice in only four years. That reduces America’s ability to barrow and to plan for the future. By cutting spending and increasing productivity, America will have a stronger dollar and a reduced trade deficit. Romney has pledged increase revenue of more than $1 trillion for federal, state, and local governments that will help shore up the nation’s crumbling infrastructure.
By lowering energy costs and by cutting taxes and the corporate rates of taxation, Romney will help small business, the real job creators in America, to have more of their own money to create real jobs that will help the middle-class families that are struggling so much right now in Obama’s America to be find jobs that can rebuild the middle class in America. Finally, it is only a logical conclusion that when America depends less on foreign energy supplies, it only strengthens our national. America needs clear-headed and rational American ideas like Mitt Romney is promising. Another Obama Administration will only deepen the malaise now gripping the nation and further erode our national hope and safety and perhaps, take us, once and for all, right over the cliff of national disaster.
Spending
America must get our fiscal house in order and we must begin to spend within our means. This is much more than just a euphemism. It has become more than just an economic issue. With a looming 16 trillion dollar national debt, it has become a point of national survival. Think about it in layman’s terms, every dollar of the 16 trillion dollar deficit that is spent must be borrowed, with the bill being put off and sent to our children to pay back. It is now estimated that at the current rate of spending, if Obama is reelected tot a second term, the national debt will continue to grow to an unthinkable 24 trillion dollars by 2016. No nation can continue to exist as we have known the United States of America under the weight of such colossal debt. In addition, if Obamacare is allowed to roll out completely as national policy, the debt that will be incurred by that monstrous piece of socialist policy will most certainly break the back of the nation.
As a candidate for president, Mitt Romney asks the American people a simple question about every federal program: is it so important, so critical, that it is worth borrowing money from China to pay for it? That is a question that is imperative that we answer. Excessive government spending harms the economy weakening the US market place and creates high levels of uncertainty for the future.
As federal funds instead of private-sector money flows through the economy, some business and industries are shored up, while others that are just as important are left to die on the vine. The Obama Administration’s current approach is for the government to pick winners and losers. Obama has invested huge sums in projects of questionable value, such as Solyndra. He chose to destroy the coal industry and to give millions of dollars to that company that ended up going bankrupt. They decided which enterprises were too big to fail and shored up business that should have been allowed to fail and to let the natural forces of the free market to absorb their losses and let new, more innovative companies replace the dying ones.
If private entrepreneurs across the economy cannot have confidence that their own investments will pay off, funds like venture capital and investments from those who choose to place their fortunes in winners will certainly dry up. Smart investors are keenly aware that spending levels, as we are seeing today, cannot continue indefinitely. Business owners need also have an easier time predicting how demand will shift from year to year and how to invest in line with the current economic demands and shifts. That gives us a clear and sure maxim that the only way to achieve fiscal health and a thriving private economy is for the government to spend within its means.
Obama's Folly
Since President Obama took office almost four years ago, federal spending has increased enormously that took us from an already precarious $3.5 trillion in federal spending in 2010 to a projected suicidal $5.6 trillion within the next decade. This sharp rise has not been because of outlays of policies from the former George W. Bush Administration, as many Obama supporters like to say. In fact, this crazy expanse in spending is the result of an unconstitutional and uncontrolled invasion of a government out of control and a government that has been grown to a size that the constitution never allowed nor envisioned. It has not come about by ineptitude not policies gone awry. Barack Obama’s policies are socialist in nature and it has been his plan to make the government so big and massive in its all-consuming power that it has broken the back of free enterprise. It has all been entirely a matter of choice and right out of the socialist, dare I say, the Communist manifesto. It can be reigned in and can be controlled, but shall never be if Obama wins as second term in office. Washington is spending money in an out-of-control fashion; Mitt Romney aims to stop it.
Mitt Romney's Plan
After almost four years of President Obama and his socialist agenda, the question of if the nation will ever be able to pull out of its economic quicksand is not just on economists minds? The fear and grave concern is also deeply on the minds of rank and file middle-class households who are losing their homes, have lost their long-term jobs across the nation. Can America ever rectify the disastrous course on which the nation has embarked under President Barack Obama to once again find and live under fiscal sanity? It can only logically be concluded that a tipping point of no return may well be looming on the horizon.
Can you imagine how another decade of huge deficits that will only continue to amass could drive our principal payments and interest rates? Such a scenario will most certainly put a secure economic future beyond our reach and deprive the economy of the capital it needs to grow. The American economy may well have one more chance to correct course, and that will be this most important election in November, 2012.
Mitt Romney is well known for taking failing business and injecting the needed financial medicine, however painful it may have been to turn around failing ventures. He is the man who is best suited to correct the ship of state’s course and point the nation in the right direction. He is determined to help the private sector, as he did the Olympics, and to let state governments again exercise their constitutional power to correct the nation’s failing direction. Romney offers just what will bring to Washington the turnaround and the infusion of confidence the nation so direly needs.
Take a look at his proposals below and I am sure you’ll realize that this election can be the point of repair for America if Obama is beaten and Romney is elected President of the United States.
Set Honest Goals: Cap Spending At 20 Percent of GDP
Any turnaround must begin with clear and realistic goals. Optimistic projections cannot wish a problem away, they can only make it worse. As president, Mitt’s goal will be to bring federal spending below 20 percent of GDP by the end of his first term:
- Reduced from 24.3 percent last year; in line with the historical trend between 18 and 20 percent
- Close to the tax revenue generated by the economy when healthy
- Requires spending cuts of approximately $500 billion per year in 2016 assuming robust economic recovery with 4% annual growth, and reversal of irresponsible Obama-era defense cuts
Any turnaround must also stop the bleeding and reverse the most recent and dramatic damage:
- Send Congress a bill on Day One that cuts non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent across the board
- Pass the House Republican Budget proposal, rolling back President Obama’s government expansion by capping non-security discretionary spending below 2008 levels
Most importantly, any turnaround must have a thoughtful, structured approach to achieving its goals. Mitt will attack the bloated budget from three angles:
- The Federal Government Should Stop Doing Things The American People Can’t Afford, For Instance:
- Repeal Obamacare — Savings: $95 Billion. President Obama’s costly takeover of the health care system imposes an enormous and unaffordable obligation on the federal government while intervening in a matter that should be left to the states. Mitt will begin his efforts to repeal this legislation on Day One.
- Privatize Amtrak — Savings: $1.6 Billion. Despite requirement that Amtrak operate on a for-profit basis, it continues to receive about $1.6 billion in taxpayer funds each year. Forty-one of Amtrak’s 44 routes lost money in 2008 with losses ranging from $5 to $462 per passenger.
- Reduce Subsidies for the National Endowments For The Arts And Humanities, The Corporation For Public Broadcasting, And The Legal Services Corporation — Savings: $600 Million. NEA, NEH, and CPB provide grants to supplement other sources of funding. LSC funds services mostly duplicative of those already offered by states, localities, bar associations and private organizations.
- Eliminate Title X Family Planning Funding — Savings: $300 Million. Title X subsidizes family planning programs that benefit abortion groups like Planned Parenthood.
- Reduce Foreign Aid — Savings: $100 Million. Stop borrowing money from countries that oppose America’s interests in order to give it back to them in the form of foreign aid.
Health Care
Health care is more than just one-sixth of the American economy. It is an essential source of well-being for individuals and families.
Our health care system is blessed with much extraordinary strength. It produces and attracts the best and the brightest across all fields of medicine, and provides unparalleled innovation, choice, and quality of care. But it also faces significant challenges: high cost, inefficiency, inconsistency, and tens of millions of Americans lacking insurance coverage. We can fix these problems.
Obama's Folly
The transformation in the American health care system that was put in place by Oamacare is leading the nation down the road of financial disaster and towards a system of socialist ruin that will destroy the nation’s liberty. The 2400 page bill if rampant with regulations, fees, subsidies, excise taxes, exchanges, and sets rules by invisible boards to give the federal government extraordinary control over every facet of Americans’ live and every piece of the health care system. Obamacare added a trillion dollars in new health care spending to the already over-burdened economy. To pay for it, the law raised taxes by $500 billion on everyone from middle-class families to innovative medical device makers, and then slashed $500 billion from Medicare.
The American people recognize that Obamacare represents a total government takeover of the nation’s healthcare system that has produced the best health care in the history of the world. Obamacare simply created a new health insurance entitlement at a time when the current entitlements that the nation already had were bloating the nation’s deficit. Massive government programs never lower costs, never improve efficiency and always reduce service and efficiency of service. Obamacare violates the crucial first principle of medicine and the very oath that Doctors take to be a physician, “Do no harm.” It will make America’s doctors less apt to stay in practice and will cause a great shortage into the future of excellent medical practitioners. It will certainly discourage innovation and investing in life-saving technology and is already restricting consumer choice. It is totally un-American and must be dismantled.
“In short, President Obama’s trillion dollar federal takeover of the U.S. health care system is a disaster for the federal budget, a disaster for the constitutional principles of federalism, and a disaster for the American people.” - Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney's Plan
Mitt Romney has repeated promised that on his first day in office, he will issue an executive order to start the process for the federal government to issue Obamacare waivers to all fifty states. This is an excellent first step to ultimately destroy this Marxist law. As president, Romney has said he challenge and insist that Congress to repeal the full legislation as quickly as possible.
Romney plans to replace Obamacare with policies that give each state the power to craft a health care reform plan that is best for its own citizens. This is certainly the most constitutional way to reform health care in America. The constitution prescribes certain well-defined powers of the federal government and left all other duties to the states. By passing Obamacare, Obama and the Democrats turned the constitution on its head and took America down the road that leads to toaly control and a super-powerful federal government that will have the right to determine what we eat, how we eat and eventually, how long we should live. Under Romney’s vision of health care, the federal government’s role will be to help markets work by creating a level playing field for competition and preserve consumer choice not government mandates.
Below is what Mitt Romney’s plan will bring to America’s now sick health-care system. Take a look at his sensible and well-thought-out ideas and I am sure that you’ll see that Mitt Romney’s view of health care for the middle-class is what America needs.
Restore State Leadership and Flexibility
Mitt Romney will begin by returning states to their proper place in charge of regulating local insurance markets and caring for the poor, uninsured, and chronically ill. States will have both the incentive and the flexibility to experiment, learn from one another, and craft the approaches best suited to their own citizens.
- Block grant Medicaid and other payments to states
- Limit federal standards and requirements on both private insurance and Medicaid coverage
- Ensure flexibility to help the uninsured, including public-private partnerships, exchanges, and subsidies
- Ensure flexibility to help the chronically ill, including high-risk pools, reinsurance, and risk adjustment
- Offer innovation grants to explore non-litigation alternatives to dispute resolution
Competition drives improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, offering consumers higher quality goods and services at lower cost. It can have the same effect in the health care system, if given the chance to work.
- Cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice lawsuits
- Empower individuals and small businesses to form purchasing pools
- Prevent discrimination against individuals with pre-existing conditions who maintain continuous coverage
- Facilitate IT interoperability
For markets to work, consumers must have the information and the power to make decisions about their own care. Placing the patient at the center of the process will drive quality up and cost down while ensuring that services are designed to provide what Americans actually want.
- End tax discrimination against the individual purchase of insurance
- Allow consumers to purchase insurance across state lines
- Unshackle HSAs by allowing funds to be used for insurance premiums
- Promote "co-insurance" products
- Promote alternatives to "fee for service"
- Encourage "Consumer Reports"-type ratings of alternative insurance plans
While President Obama ripped 500 billion dollars out of the seniors’ safety net known as MEDICARE, Mitt Romney has laid out the approach he would take to modernizing America’s entitlement programs, guaranteeing their continued vitality for future generations. Mitt’s proposals would not affect today’s seniors or those nearing retirement, and they would not raise taxes. But he proposes that tomorrow’s Medicare should give beneficiaries a generous defined contribution, or “premium support,” and allow them to choose between private plans and traditional Medicare.
Romney’s plan honors commitments to current seniors while giving the next generation an improved program that offers a lot more choice in what each individual senior American’s coverage under Medicare should be. Instead of paying providers directly for medical services, the government’s role will be to help future seniors pay for an insurance option that provides coverage at least as good as today’s Medicare, and to offer traditional Medicare as one of the insurance options that seniors can choose. Competition always drives down prices and drives up quality. So, under Romney’s plan, individual insurers will need to offer the best policies and coverage to gain the maximum number of customers. This will improve efficiency and quality will improve and costs will decline. Seniors will be allowed to keep the savings from less expensive options or choose to pay more for costlier plans.
Key Elements of Mitt’s Plan
- Nothing changes for current seniors or those nearing retirement
- Medicare is reformed as a premium support system, meaning that existing spending is repackaged as a fixed-amount benefit to each senior that he or she can use to purchase an insurance plan
- All insurance plans must offer coverage at least comparable to what Medicare provides today
- If seniors choose more expensive plans, they will have to pay the difference between the support amount and the premium price; if they choose less expensive plans, they can use any leftover support to pay other medical expenses like co-pays and deductibles
- “Traditional” fee-for-service Medicare will be offered by the government as an insurance plan, meaning that seniors can purchase that form of coverage if they prefer it; however, if it costs the government more to provide that service than it costs private plans to offer their versions, then the premiums charged by the government will have to be higher and seniors will have to pay the difference to enroll in the traditional Medicare option
- Lower income seniors will receive more generous support to ensure that they can afford coverage; wealthier seniors will receive less support
- Competition among plans to provide high quality service while charging low premiums will hold costs down while also improving the quality of coverage enjoyed by seniors
As a staunch pro-life American, I cannot say that I am totally satisfied with Mitt Romney’s stand on this most important of issues. Many are also concerned about his changed view on the subject from a supporter of Roe v Wade to a supporter of life. Nevertheless, I do believe Romney has had a real change of heart and does believe that there are two lives involved. He has stated,
“There are cultures where life is cheap, but thankfully, ours is not one of them. We have long respected life, at its beginning and at its end. In part, this is the product of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The debate over abortion puts two of our fundamental values in conflict: our respect for life and our love of personal freedom. Arguments in support of abortion generally revolve around the right of a mother to make decisions about her own body. But in any decision about whether to end a pregnancy, we must remember that two lives are involved, and own this point, courts have been long and conspicuously silent. Because the fact is that two lives, not one, is involved. I am apologetically pro-life. Both mother and child are human beings, but only one does not yet have a voice to defend itself.” No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p.264-265 , Mar 2, 2010
Though I am in favor of having no reasons for the life of the unborn being terminated, I can support Romney’s view that abortion should be allowed only in cases where the mother’s life is in grave danger or for rape and incest. I will add that I strongly feel that exact and predetermined rules of what the term, “Life of the mother” means. This same statement was the base of the warren Court’s ruling in the Row v Wade, and the term, “Life of the Mother” was later interpreted and accepted into law that this could be interpreted as almost any situation that a mother thought a child was causing her danger, such as mental illness or stress. Real, clear and limited definitions must be developed that would seriously limit abortions when the life of the mother is used as a reason to perform an abortion.
I will add here that, though many of us who completely oppose abortion will not be satisfied with this stand, it is far and away a major correction over what the current Obama Administration has practiced in the past four years. During Obama’s first term in office, he has allowed abortion on demand and encouraged using American funding to pay for abortion services in other nations, which both Reagan, George HW Bush and George W. Both all refused to fund. It would be ridiculous for pro-life supporters to refuse to support Romney though we may not think his views go far enough in defending the lives of the unborn.
Gay Marriage
Mitt Romney signed a pledge that was sponsored by the National Organization for Marriage promising to support a federal constitutional amendment "defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman." The pledge also included promises to vigorously defend the Defense of Marriage Act in the courts, which Barack Obama decided not to do. Romney also promised to nominate Supreme Court and federal judges who reject the idea our Founding Fathers inserted a right to gay marriage into our Constitution. Romney also promised to establish a presidential commission on "religious liberty" that would investigate harassment or threats against those who have taken positions against same-sex marriage. These are all very good measures and I feel very comfortable voting for Romney with these views and pledges. Of course, we need to insist that he uphold his word, if he is elected.
Yet, compared to Barack Obama, the choice is clear. Obama sat in Saddle-back Church in a debate and promised the American people that he believed that marriage was between a man and a woman only and that he’d never support gay marriage. Yet, earlier this year, he broke his pledge and sided with gay activists and now calls for the legalization of gay marriage. It is easy to decide who will ensure that America remains free and morally sane. Romney is the clear choice.
As I stated at the beginning of this document, it is clear that the contrast between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney for the future of America could not be exaggerated. There are many more issues, a lot more information and an abundance of examples that I could add to show that Americans who love the nation as it was conceived in the United States Constitution should vote against Barack Obama and for Mitt Romney.
The choice comes down to a clear and evident choice. If you want a nation of innovation, job creation, free enterprise and individual liberty with a future that will not be limited because of our of sight financial crisis, the only person who will be determined to preserve protect and defend the constitution of the United States is Mitt Romney. In contrast, if you desire a nation where your government will determine you future and where your choices will be limited by a monster state that will control how you live, what you eat, how long you live and who will succeed and fail, then Barack Obama is your man for another four years.
This election cannot be minimized in its importance. The American people are charged with an awesome task. It is a mission that will determine what kind of country your children will grow up in. It may well also decide if there will be a United States of America after all of us have breathed our last and those we have engendered take the reins of life into their hands. Nothing can be more important than deciding what kind of nation you want to bequeath to your children and grandchildren. This year, on the 6th of November, 2012, you must decide what America will look like in 2016. - Author Steven Clark Bradley
Revealing Quotes
Mitt Romney on America
And this President (Obama) wakes up every morning, looks out across America and is proud to announce, 'It could be worse.' It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American? It could be worse? Of course not. What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better.
Mitt Romney
Barack Obama on America
I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we've struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We've made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney on Federal Spending
Government is taking 40 percent of the GDP. And that's at the state, local and federal level. President Obama has taken government spending at the federal level from 20 percent to 25 percent. Look, at some point, you cease being a free economy, and you become a government economy. And we've got to stop that.
Mitt Romney
Barack Obama on Federal Spending
What do you think a stimulus is? It's spending - that's the whole point! Seriously.
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney on Gay marriage in 2008 and 2012
My view is that marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman. That's the position I've had for some time, and I don't intend to make any adjustments at this point... Or ever, by the way.
Mitt Romney
Barack Obama on Gay Marriage in 2008
I believe marriage is between a man and a woman. I am not in favor of gay marriage. But when you start playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that's not what America's about. Usually, our constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them.
Barack Obama
Barack Obama on Gay Marriage in 2012
(May 9, 2012 at 2:51 pm)
I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.
Mitt Romney on Conservatism
Conservatism has had from its inception vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda and thinking. That agenda should have in my three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.
Mitt Romney
Barack Obama on Liberalism
I think when you spread the wealth around its good for everybody.
Barack Obama
Mitt Romney on Abortion
There are cultures where life is cheap, but thankfully, ours is not one of them. We have long respected life, at its beginning and at its end. In part, this is the product of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The debate over abortion puts two of our fundamental values in conflict: our respect for life and our love of personal freedom. Arguments in support of abortion generally revolve around the right of a mother to make decisions about her own body. But in any decision about whether to end a pregnancy, we must remember that two lives are involved, and own this point, courts have been long and conspicuously silent. Because the fact is that two lives, not one, is involved. I am unapologetically pro-life. Both mother and child are human beings, but only one does not yet have a voice to defend itself.”
No Apology, by Mitt Romney, p.264-265 , Mar 2, 2010
Barack Obama on Abortion
I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby.
Barack Obama
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