I went to Ath last night to hear Mitt Romney speak and I wanted to share my thoughts / provide a little summary in case you didn’t go. The Governor's talk was especially relevant to our class and interesting regardless of your political views. Also I think his speech builds perfectly on Brian’s blog post reagarding the problem the deficit is and will continue to become. While his cure for the problem, much smaller government, many of you diagree with he highlighted and continuely stressed that the deficit is the largest problem we currently face. Romney talked about how lately government has been heading the wrong direction to paraphrase him, spending like we have a credit card from China. I believe he is rightfully worried about what happens when these interest payments begin to come due and how taxes will have to rise exponentially in order to support government spending and service the interest payments. This problem is not as simple of a fix as raising taxes. Higher taxes will drive business aborad further decreasing the total taxable income of corporations and individuals in this country. It is important that our generation realizes the problem WE will be faced with and Romney made that point clear numerous times throughout the talk.
Romney went on to talk about how every great nation has fallen in history so far. From the Ottomans to the British, empires have come and gone. The Governor went on to talk about how America in his opinion could easily go down this same road and be surpassed. However he believes America is different and can avoid this fate if its citizens stand up and vote for action and change (Or in my words, fight off the evil government.)
Romney drew on parralles between the USA and some of the most successful corporations (i.e.
Microsoft, Wal-Mart, Walt Disney and Apple) He talked about how these companies all embody the personality of their founders. He used this point to talk about how much influence the founding of an organization can have on its operations and culture forever. He went on to say this needs to be the case with the country as well. It is important for us to return to the founding of America and how the founders did something brand new when they established the government of the United States. They reversed the trend of the government being the royalty and the people being the servants. Instead they founded a nation built on the idea that citizens would have the power (through voting) and that the government would serve them. Romney believes Americans stand up and make the government work for them again.
Romney ended by calling on everyone to get involved and to speak their voice / vote. He joked, "I don't care if you vote Republican or Democrat... wait actually I do care, Vote Republican!"
The question session also proved to be quite insightful as the croud asked Romney to address three big questions.
1) How he would have handled the financial crisis differently than Bush and Obama?
Romney made a ridiculous claim that he hopes he would have seen the housing crisis coming and been able to act proactively. While some people did predict the bubble bursting, I cannot imagine what Romney would have done as a politician to prevent the crisis from materializing. However, I was impressed that in response to the stimulus he gave a specific plan that he would have pursued. He pointed out that in a recession / depression like we were facing in March 2008, consumers lose confidence and begin saving and acting very cautionary. Therefore giving money to extra cautious citizens like Obama’s stimulus plan did, is not an efficient use of money because so many Americans spent on only the bare neccessities in this time quite possibly saving the extra stimulus check not knowing how bad the coming times would be. Instead Romney proposed that businesses should have been given incentives to make capital expenditures. He claimed that business are better at looking at the long-term and that giving business incentives to grow would pick up the entire economy. While "incentivizing business" is often simply a typical Republican answer, I was impressed that he went one step further and expressed that he would have accomplished this by allowing companies to expense any capital expenditure (computers, software, vehicles, buildings etc) at the time of purchase therefore giving businesses the tax benefit right away instead over 5-20 year depreciable life of the asset. I think this would have been a great stimulus for our country and would have fueled growth much faster than giving every American a $1,000 check to put under their pillow.
2) How can he champion his Massachusetts' healthcare bill but be against the recent reform?
Here he argued that recent reform in its 2,000 pages gave the power to the government to either make insurance industry very rich or broke. He argued against parts of the legislation that will allow the gov't to say what insurance companies must offer and how much they can charge for it. He argued his plan just erased the free rider problem of some citizens not paying for health care insurance but instead relying on tax payers to foot their bill. (He stated this country already had "universal health care" in that everyone gets medical coverage when needed. He said if someone without health care insurance has a heart attack or other medical emergency they go to the hospital and the state / the tax payers pay for their care.
He argued that his seventy page bill made sure everyone paid for the care they received by forcing citizens who choose to not have health insurance to pay a penalty for the extra cost they are imposing on the tax payers. He also made sure to make the popular Republican argument that health care should be up to the states and that the government needs to stay out of American business. Overall, I was interested to see how he would address the heatlh care reform topic and I think his answer / explanation to the differences between his plan and Obama's will play a big role if he (when) he chooses to run in 2012.
3) How does he think he can capture the Evangelical vote given his Mormon religion?
He stated that theologians have been battling out religion for centuries so he doesn't think he can add anything to that debate or that he should get involved. His whole speech / platform is about appealing to the thinking, fiscal Republicans. While this may win him my support, will it suffice for Moral Majority Christians? I think he needs to continue to follow in Kennedy's footstep with more speeches like this.
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