Romney's Approach to the Budget

On September 30, 2012 Chris Christie on ‘This Week With George Stephanopoulos’ said President Obama is a liar. Romney is going to lower the tax rate on the rich and close some loopholes for them so they won’t pay any less than they do today. Christie said the President is saying he’ll create jobs without saying how and will reduce the deficit without a solid plan. George pointed out that the same thing is being said about Romney. Christie said the President has more of an obligation to tell the specifics than Romney and if the same amount of money is coming out of your pocket you don’t care what the tax rate is – Romney isn’t going to lock himself in to the loopholes to close, he wants to negotiate with Congress to get to the specifics and accomplish his goals. Christie said Romney is laying out a clear vision on how we can be competitive in the global market and the public needs to know what direction he’s going to take us in – not the specifics. Christie went on to say the President has laid out hard lines instead of learning how to negotiate with Congress.

David Plouffe the Senior White House Adviser responded to Christies’ comments saying – Obama wants to rebuild the economy by making the middle class secure. Analysts have looked at the Romney plan and someone who makes over $3 million a year would get over a $250,000 tax cut; Romney is proposing a $5 trillion deficit cut, $2 trillion added to the defense budget and $1 trillion to extend the Bush tax cuts – that’s $8 trillion. Romney’s 47% comment wrote off almost half of the country. The middle class has to understand that the notion that they won’t get harmed is false. The Democrats are giving the people more credit than I am. Plouffe said the American people will not be listening for Romney’s planned zinger lines to get the President angry but for a good idea to help them and their families move forward.

I believe Romney’s approach leaves a lot of uncertainty for Americans. Romney has made it clear that he won’t change the tax on dividends and capital gains. Christie’s point that under a Romney administration the rich will pay the same tax as they do today only confirms that the rich will continue to pay less than their fair share. I’ll say it again – with your votes to reelect the President and vote out Republicans it’ll be easier to create jobs and reduce the deficit. The President had a Jobs Act that would have benefited small businesses and brought jobs back to the US (he wants to eliminate the credit given to those doing business overseas and the subsidies given to big oil) and by eliminating the tax cuts on dividends and capital gains more revenue would be received by the federal government and therefore the deficit would be reduced without taking away from or increasing taxes on 98% of Americans.