First debate shows Romney has future as infomercial snake-oil salesman

I suppose I was one of those odd-balls who thought that Barack Obama “won” the first presidential debate with Mitt Romney. Why? Because going into it I knew that Romney was a slimy snake-oil salesman with all his lines down pat, and that is exactly how I perceived his “performance.” According to a CNN poll, two-thirds of viewers might as well have been watching one of those infomercials where some Slick Rick tries to convince people that they can become “rich” without spending a single dime of their own money. You know—put another mortgage on your home, use the proceeds to “buy” another property, and then turn around and resell it to make a quick profit. Maybe. Or maybe you lose your home, the property, and your shirt; the only person who actually gets rich is the salesman who sold you those DVDs and handbooks. 

We should remember a few things when listening to Romney. He is a man born into wealth, in a religion where class distinction and white “purity” provides him the validation of his self-superiority over the “47 percent”—“mistake” or not, he still believes it. We must remember that Romney did not start his own business that created jobs in this country; he started out as little more than a broker who invested however and wherever he could make a quick buck so he would be free to pursue his other goals—like become president and lord over the common minions he has in the past regarded in condescending terms. When he quoted people who asked him if he could give him or her a job, Romney might as well have advised them to move to China and other foreign lands where he has invested in job creation for years. Did he mention how he admired a Chinese factory he invested in, which was fenced in to keep people out rather than in? Did he mention that a technology company owned by Bain had just closed its doors in Freeport, Illinois, and sent almost 200 jobs to China?

Romney doesn’t care how he makes his money, as long as he made it; much if not most of his income comes from investments not in this country, but overseas. That is how much “faith” he has in America; he makes those people at his campaign stops shouting “USA!” look like fools who don’t know it. His economic “plan”—long on superficial pronouncements, but short on those “details” that some people claimed to have “heard” at the debate—was nothing more than his well-rehearsed stump speech. I was left thinking “OK. So where is the beef?” It was like those McDonalds ads where someone is holding a burger so big he needs two hands to hold it—when the reality is that the “real” thing being sold is much more diminutive in size and a complete rip-off. Take, for example, Romney’s jobs record while governor of Massachusetts; as I wrote about before, the state during Romney’s tenure was third from the bottom in the nation in GDP and job creation. Why Obama didn’t mention this in the debate mystifies me. Romney only knows how to make money for himself; he can’t identify with working people, and throughout his career has thought only to maximize his benefit at the expense of jobs for average Americans. That is the substance of his “experience.”

During the debate, Romney kept insisting that Obama was “lying” about his tax plan, how it would cut a grotesque $5 trillion in taxes over the next ten years, mostly for the benefit of his class. But it is Romney who is lying. Remember, his tax “plan” envisions spreading the tax burden more “evenly” among all income groups, meaning lowering the top marginal rate to 28 percent, eliminate or  reduce  the alternative minimum tax, the  estate and capital gains taxes—all of which are heavily skewed toward the wealthy. The recent study released by the Tax Policy Center noted that Romney’s plan will create a $360 billion dollar revenue shortfall in its first year of implementation—and that number will only increase as the untaxed  largess of millionaires and billionaires grows over time. Romney claims that his “plan” will eliminate certain tax exemptions, but he has not indicated what they will be; but the Tax Policy Center noted that it is likely that some of these eliminations will constitute a de facto tax increase for lower-income households. 

Romney makes a great many assumptions about what corporations, small businesses and the wealthy will do with increased revenue. Will they invest in American jobs? Why should we believe that from past experience? “Invest” in tax havens like Switzerland, as Romney has? Invest in companies in China and other foreign lands? The man who has a record of closing companies in the U.S. and shipping them to places like China, like that technology company Illinois? Romney doesn’t care if you personally have a job or not; he only cares if he and his friends have theirs. If elected president (God forbid), he will run this country like a business that benefits only his class. He will tell you his wealthy class must be happy before you can be made happy. And some of you will believe that line.

The Center noted that the assumption of economic growth that Romney’s plan claimed based on his tax plan was “implausible,” because “revenue neutrality would still require large reductions in tax expenditures and would likely result in a net tax increase for lower- and middle-income households and tax cuts for high-income households.” Since lower-to-middle income households are the principle drivers of a consumer economy, the reduction (among other things) in their spending capacity can only have negative effects on the economy—and that is before we even talk about how the reductions in government spending will cost millions of jobs in education and infrastructure that are unlikely to be replaced by the private sector.

Robert Samuelson, a Washington Post columnist who has been writing on economic issues for 35 years, recently wrote that “The political damage from this lopsided tax plan transcends its details. The central appeal of the Romney candidacy is that he would bring a competence to economic policy that would inspire the confidence needed to reinvigorate the recovery. The idea is to present a compelling contrast to Obama, whose low understanding of and meager sympathy for business seem plain and have arguably hobbled economic expansion.” Apparently Romney did give that impression to the media and a majority of Americans during the first debate; but as we can plainly see, Romney has some working people actually believing that what has been good for him personally has relevance in their own lives. But like the infomercial salesman, Romney seeks to make him and his “class” better off by selling gullible people a load of bovine scatology.

To reiterate for the hard of head and easily manipulated, the Tax Policy Center study concluded that “a revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed – including reducing marginal tax rates substantially, eliminating the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) and maintaining all tax breaks for saving and investment – would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers. This is true even when we bias our assumptions about which and whose tax expenditures are reduced to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible. For instance, even when we assume that tax breaks – like the charitable deduction, mortgage interest deduction, and the exclusion for health insurance – are completely eliminated for higher-income households first, and only then reduced as necessary for other households to achieve overall revenue-neutrality– the net effect of the plan would be a tax cut for high-income households coupled with a tax increase for middle-income households.”

The Center determined that Romney’s tax plan would see persons making ((not necessarily earning) $1 million or more increasing their income by 8.3 percent—while those earning less than $30,000 would actually see a decrease in income by 0.9 percent. Why? “Because taxpayers above $200,000 as a group have received a net tax cut, revenue neutrality requires that taxpayers below $200,000—about 95 percent of the population—experience a tax increase.” The lower your income, the less disposable income you will have under the Romney plan. This is “good?” Romney calls this “base-broadening”—you know, the “47 percent” who allegedly don’t pay taxes. But the Center points out that this “base-broadening” will be nowhere near enough to address the huge imbalances the Romney plan entails. In order to “balance” the huge revenue shortfalls the “plan” will lead to—far more irresponsible and debilitating than the Bush tax cuts—it would require an “unprecedented” reduction in expenditures in public welfare and other programs like the EITC and child tax credits that benefit low and middle-income families, programs which apparently are “expendable” because the wealthy have no need of them. Based on just the first year that the Romney plan would theoretically go into effect, “in order to offset $360 billion in cuts, one must eliminate 65 percent of all of the available $551 billion in tax expenditures.” 

Do you people who were enamored with Romney’s “performance” understand what this means? Will you allow him to pull the wool over your eyes with his lies and deceptions? And for what? “Furthermore,” notes the Center study, “estimates indicate that the effects of tax rate reductions on the macroeconomy are likely to be small or even negative, at least, over the typical 10-year budget window.” The only people who benefit, as we have said over and over again, are the wealthiest Americans. Those are the only people Republicans and the Tea Party really care about. For the rest of us, we must say clearly on Election Day that lies and deception that work against the public good will not sway us.