BY MIKE WALSH You think the deficit is high now. Wait until Mitt Romney gets elected. $16 trillion in new debt is nothing for a man of Mitt Romney’s skills. He claims that Obama doubled the national debt. This is “factually inaccurate” or what I like to call “fucken’ bullshit.” When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10 trillion. It is now a little over $16 trillion. Now $6 trillion in debt is nothing to be proud of, but it is not double $10 trillion. That would be $20 trillion, Mitt. You’re only $4 trillion off. But it’s an ironic accusation, because the Romney/Ryan economic plans could easily double the national debt in 10 years. Here’s how.
First, let’s assume a deficit of $1 trillion for the next 10 years. That’s probably low since Romney promises to continue the Bush tax cuts and since the deficit has averaged about $1.3 trillion per year for the last four years. But let’s assume there will be some economic growth to account for a slightly lower deficit. So that’s $10 trillion in new debt. Only $6 trillion to reach Mitt’s goal. Next, add the $5 trillion in tax cuts that Romney wants. He wants to cut the following:
–20% across the board cut on all income taxes
–Elimination of the estate tax
–Elimination of capital gains taxes
–Elimination of the alternative minimum tax
As several non-partisan organizations have pointed out, these tax cuts add up to about $5 trillion over 10 years and primarily benefit the wealthy. Poll after poll has shown that Americans overwhelmingly approve of higher taxes for the rich, not lower. But Mitt doesn’t care what most Americans think, even though he said he doesn’t care about only 47%. The percentage of Americans Romney doesn’t care about is obviously much higher than that.
So we’re already up to a $15 trillion deficit increase. See how easy that was for Romney? Only one more measly trillion, and Mitt reaches his goal. But wait. Right wingers will point out that Romney intends to cut some tax deductions for the rich. Now Romney won’t tell anyone which deductions he intends to cut, but to be fair, let’s give Mitty-boy credit for $2 trillion in reduced deductions. That takes our 10 year deficit increase down to only $13 trillion. Yikes, this could be close! But Romney wants to increase military spending over the next 10 years by $2 trillion, despite the fact that several poll show that Americans wants less military spending, not more. But as we already know, Mitt doesn’t care what most Americans want. So we’re back up to $15 trillion.
But wait again. Romney wants to eliminate Obama-care, which the Congressional Budget Office says will save the government $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That additional $1.5 trillion takes us up to $16.5 trillion in new debt, more than doubling the national deficit. That takes us to a whopping $32.5 trillion in debt. Wow, that Romney sure can create debt—all without spending a single penny helping an actual American.
But Romney is not done yet. To be certain that he doubles the debt, Mitt needs a little more debt–a debt cushion, if you will. As Mitt has told us many times, he doesn’t agree with the $720 billion in waste and over-payments that Obama wants to cut from Medicare over the next 10 years, even though hospitals and doctors have already agreed to those cuts. Instead, Romney promises that, if elected, he’ll immediately waste and over-pay that $720 billion. Horray!
That takes us over $17 trillion in new debt in just 10 years to a national deficit of over $33 trillion. Wow! Way to go Mitt! When it comes to creating debt, you are without peer. So folks, if you like deficits, Romney is your man. Come back next time when we show you how Mitt Romney as president will out source twice as many jobs as he did when he was at Bain!!! And don’t forget to see our earlier post of how Mitt Romney dodged twice as many taxes as any human ever born through abuse of loopholes, off-shore tax havens, and outright lies. Wow, that Mitt Romney sure is patriotic!
RELATED: Mitt Romney was not a businessman; he was a master financial speculator who bought, sold, flipped, and stripped businesses. He did not build enterprises the old-fashioned way—out of inspiration, perspiration, and a long slog in the free market fostering a new product, service, or process of production. Instead, he spent his 15 years raising debt in prodigious amounts on Wall Street so that Bain could purchase the pots and pans and castoffs of corporate America, leverage them to the hilt, gussy them up as reborn “roll-ups,” and then deliver them back to Wall Street for resale—the faster the better.That is the modus operandi of the leveraged-buyout business, and in an honest free-market economy, there wouldn’t be much scope for it because it creates little of economic value. But we have a rigged system—a regime of crony capitalism—where the tax code heavily favors debt and capital gains, and the central bank purposefully enables rampant speculation by propping up the price of financial assets and battering down the cost of leveraged finance. MORE