The Republican presidential candidate says he is hoping to reduce federal spending from 25 percent to 20 percent of the GDP. To accomplish that goal, he says he'll cut $500 billion from the current budget, cut the workforce by 10 percent and make money-saving changes in popular benefit programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps.
In an op-ed for USA Today, Romney said he'd also eliminate federal subsidies for Amtrak and reduce federal support for the National Endowment for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Some programs would be easy to cut because "I just don't like them," Romney said, while others might be harder but worth it. He specifically referenced the $1.6 billion in federal subsidies for Amtrak. He also called for cuts in foreign aid, noting that the U.S. provides $10 million to one of its creditors, China. "It's not very much money but just the idea just galls me," Romney said.
Arguing that fiscal responsibility is the "moral choice," Romney offered as an evidence of his belt-tightening expertise the early days of Bain Capital, an investment firm he co-founded. Employees worked out of an empty warehouse in a supermarket parking lot, and Romney said he required them to pay for the pizza and Coke served at board meetings.
If the federal government doesn't stop wasting money on projects like Solyndra, the solar company that went belly-up despite federal subsidies, Romney said "we could turn into a Greece."
Shortly after the event, the campaign of rival presidential candidate Jon Huntsman blasted Romney for not taking questions from the media. "Once again Mitt Romney is unwilling to do it the New Hampshire way and take questions from voters," Huntsman spokesman Michael Levoff said in a statement. "Governor Huntsman took dozens of questions in his most recent trip to the Granite State. If Governor Romney is scared to answer questions from the media and voters how can we trust him to successfully take on President Obama?"
Romney’s three approaches – which, he said, combined will achieve his goal in cutting spending by half a trillion dollars by 2016 – include eliminating and cutting programs, sending some programs back to the state level and, finally, improving the productivity of the federal government.
“There are some programs I just don’t like and will be easy to eliminate,” quipped Romney. “Like Obamacare.”
“That saves about $90 billion, Obamacare alone, by 2016,” he said.
“There are other programs I like and I don’t want to cut but, yet, I ask myself: Do we have to have that program? Is it essential for America? Is it so essential that its worth borrowing the money to pay for it from China knowing that we’ll never pay it back in my generation but instead pass it on to my kids and then their kids? And, by that test, there are a number of things I say [it is] time for us to stop spending money on,” he said.
“I like Amtrak, but $1.6 billion borrowed from China isn’t a good idea so I’ll cut it out,” said Romney.
On today’s USA Today opinion page, Romney offered even more specifics on the types of programs he would cut. He wrote that he would enact “reductions in the subsidies for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcast and the Legal Services Corporation.”
Eliminating Title X family planning programs that benefit “abortion groups like Planned Parenthood,” would also be on his agenda, wrote Romney.
When it comes to programs that he doesn’t want to eliminate, Romney said he would send them back to the states. While he said he would maintain a safety net for those who can’t care for themselves, Romney said programs like Medicaid, housing vouchers and food stamps, which are all administrated by different departments in the federal government, should be taken back to the state level.
“I’d like to take some of these programs like Medicaid, and take the dollars the federal government has been spending, and give those back to states and let states craft the programs in the ways they think best to care for their own poor,” said Romney.
The third approach to reducing spending, Romney said, is government productivity. He said he’d reduce the government work force through attrition and would repeal the Davis-Bacon Act, a federal law that requires workers be paid wages determined by the Department of Labor.
“It’s time for that bill to go away and for competition to exist and get the best deals for taxpayers,” said Romney.
“Simpler, smaller and smarter,” he said of the economy he hopes that will emerge from his plan.
“I can tell you again, it’s not going to be popular at every corner for us to rein in the excesses of government,” said Romney, who just last week said at a town hall meeting that he is OK if he has to make difficult decisions as president.
In USA Today, Romney used even stronger language, writing, “What I propose will not be easy. Washington is full of sacred cows that supposedly can’t be slaughtered and electrified third rails that allegedly can’t be touched. But if we do not act now, the irresistible mathematics of debt will soon lead to unimaginable peril.”
Romney will deliver his fiscal policy speech tomorrow in Washington, D.C., at the Americans for Prosperity “Defending the American Dream Summit.”
All about: USA Today, The New York Times, New York City , Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain, Mitt Romney
No comments:
Post a Comment