Other than a few stories about the attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, most of the political news (as opposed to news about Sandy) in the last couple of weeks (or more) has been what I call “horse race” stories; i.e., who is leading who and where and by how much. Personally, I don’t find all those stories all that useful. They are interesting, I suppose (especially if your candidate is deemed to be winning), but useful? Not really.
And the problem is that are some important issues in this presidential election. Perhaps the most important issue, and the most important difference between the candidates, is that Barack Obama believes in government much more than Mitt Romney does. Barack Obama really thinks that government can solve a lot of our problems. He really believes that, with enough money and enough government action, things will get better. He really does seem to believe that more government is better and that more government will make us better off.
I don’t believe that, and neither does Mitt Romney. And therein lies the reason this election is important.
I think that Barack Obama would, if he could, keep spending high (he calls it “investing”) and continue to increase what government does. The problem is that, at some point, we’re going to run out of money. Let me mention a couple of the reasons why. First, eventually, we won’t be able to find anybody to lend to us. So far, we’ve been lucky. Other countries have been even worse off than we have. And they didn’t have a printing press. But someday, it’s going to be our turn. And cutting back then is going to hurt a lot more than starting to address the problem now.
Second, more and more government will mean less and less private economic growth, and it is private economic growth that ultimately pays for government. If we don’t have enough real economic growth, see number one above.
What we need is relatively less government spending and more tax revenue (not higher tax rates, more tax revenue). But Barack Obama won’t get us there. His main idea for controlling spending is to cut defense, and his main idea for increasing revenue is to increase tax rates on the rich. This won’t work because you can’t cut defense spending enough and because the rich don’t have enough money to pay for all the spending.
Mitt Romney believes that we need to control spending (more than just defense) and that we need to reform taxes by broadening the tax base and lowering the relative rates. Done right, which I think Mitt Romney will do, this will increase tax revenues while not discouraging private economic activity.
I know that there are some Republicans who think that any tax reform has to be “revenue neutral”; i.e., any increased revenue from broadening the tax base has to be exactly offset by lowering tax rates. I disagree. Until we can get the deficit down and until we can get some of the debt paid off, we need more revenue, so the tax revenue “lost” by lowering tax rates is going to have to be less than the tax revenue gained by broadening the base.
Barack Obama isn’t going to do any of this. He already ignored this idea when it was presented to him by his own deficit commission. He likes tax subsidies and specialized tax deductions and credits too much to engage in any serious base broadening. And raising tax rates on people he calls rich seems to be something he really believes in (even, as he said in 2008, if it doesn’t increase tax revenue).
We’ve got to get the deficit down. We’ve get the debt down. To do this, we need relatively less government spending and more tax revenue. I think there is a much better chance of getting this done with Mitt Romney as President than Barack Obama.
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