As we close in on Election Day, the questions about what Mitt Romney would do if elected grow even larger. Rarely before in American history has a candidate for president campaigned on such a blank slate.
Yet, paradoxically, not a day goes by that we don't hear Romney, or some other exponent of the GOP, claim that businesses aren't creating more jobs because they're uncertain about the future. And the source of that uncertainty, they say, is President Obama -- especially his Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and the Dodd-Frank Act, and uncertainties surrounding Obama's plan to raise taxes on the wealthy.
In fact, Romney has created far more uncertainty. He offers a virtual question mark of an economy.
For example, Romney says if elected he'll repeal Obamacare and replace it with something else. He promises he'll provide health coverage to people with preexisting medical problems but he doesn't give a hint how he'd manage it.
Insurance companies won't pay the higher costs of insuring these people unless they have extra funds -- which is why Obamacare requires that everyone, including healthy young people, buy insurance. Yet Romney doesn't say where the extra money to fund insurers would come from. From taxpayers? Businesses?
Talk about uncertainty.
Romney also promises to repeal Dodd-Frank, but here again he's mum on what he'd replace with. Yet without some sort of new regulation of Wall Street we're back to where we were before 2008 when Wall Street crashed and brought most of the rest of us down with it.
Romney hasn't provided a clue how he proposes to oversee the biggest banks absent Dodd-Frank, what kind of capital requirements he'd require of them, and what mechanism he'd use to put them through an orderly bankruptcy that wouldn't risk the rest of the Street. All we get is a big question mark.
When it comes to how Romney would pay for the giant $5 trillion tax cut he proposes, mostly for the rich, he takes uncertainty to a new level of abject wonderment. "We'll work with Congress," is his response.
He says he'll limit loopholes and deductions that could be used by the wealthy, but refuses to be specific. Several weeks ago Romney said he'd cap total deductions at $17,000 a year. Days later, the figure became $25,000. Now it's up in the air. "Pick a figure," he now says.
Make no mistake. Wall Street traders and corporate CEOs are supporting Romney not because of the new level of certainty he promises but because Romney promises to lower their taxes.
Meanwhile, many of Romney's allies who are attacking Obama for creating uncertainty are themselves responsible for the uncertainty. They're the ones who have delayed and obfuscated Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and any semblance of a federal budget.
"Continued uncertainty is the greatest threat to small businesses and our country's economic recovery," says Thomas Donohue, president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been funneled tens of millions of dollars into ads blaming Obama for the nation's economic woes.
That's the same Chamber of Commerce that's been using every legal tool imaginable to challenge regulations emerging from Obamacare and Dodd-Frank -- keeping the future of both laws as uncertain as possible for as long as they can. The Chamber even brought Obamacare to the Supreme Court.
At the same time, congressional Republicans have done everything in their power to scotch any agreement on how to reduce the budget deficit. Because they've pledged their fiscal souls to Grover Norquist, they won't consider raising even a dollar of new taxes. Yet it's impossible to balance the budget without some combination of spending cuts and tax increases -- unless, that is, we do away with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or the military.
Business executives justifiably worry about January's so-called "fiscal cliff", requiring sudden and sharp tax increases and spending cuts. But they have no one to blame but Norquist's Republican acolytes in Congress, including Paul Ryan, all of whom agreed to the fiscal cliff when they couldn't agree to anything else.
Average Americans, meanwhile, face more economic uncertainty from the possibility of a Romney-Ryan administration than they have had in their lifetimes. Not only has Romney thrown the future of Obamacare into doubt, but Americans have no idea what would happen under his administration to Medicare, Medicaid, college aid, Pell grants, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and many other programs Americans rely on. All would have to be sliced or diced, but Romney won't tell us how or by how much.
Romney is casting a pall of uncertainty in every direction -- even toward young immigrants. He vows if elected he'll end Obama's reprieve from deportation of young people who arrived in the U.S. illegally when they were children. As a result, some young people who might qualify are holding back for fear the information they offer could be used against them at later date if Romney is elected.
Conservative economists such as John Taylor of the Hoover Institution, one of Romney's key economic advisors, continue to attribute the slow recovery and high unemployment to Obama's "unpredictable economic policy."
In truth, Romney and the GOP have put a giant question mark over the future of the economy and of all Americans. The only way the future becomes more certain is if Obama wins on Election Day.
ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage," now available in paperback. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
 |
 |
|
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Electoral Votes (270 to win) |
332 | 206 |
| Obama | Romney | |
|---|---|---|
| Total | 65,899,660 | 60,932,152 |
| Percent | 51.1% | 47.2% |
| Democrats* | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Current Senate | 53 | 47 |
| Seats gained or lost | +2 | -2 |
| New Total | 55 | 45 |
| Democrats | Republicans | |
|---|---|---|
| Seats won | 201 | 234 |
Why in earth would people vote for someone when there are so many unanswered questions. At least with Obama you know what your getting. If Romney is elected it could very well be worse than Bush. That's bad!!!!!
But this election will be different because the challenger is asking the electorate to elect him strictly on looks . No details .
Romney told an audience "take a look" as he posed and smiled .
I think the answer is that if Reich ever looked into THIS question mark, he would discover the answer is that Keynesian stimulation does not work anymore.
Why? Because there are enough people out there with enough capital that they will offset any stimulating effect and convert it into profit.
Once upon a time, if a government bought enough of its own currency in the market, it could prop up the value of that currency. Now, everyone knows this just become currency speculators' profit.
The same thing has happened to government economic stimulus.
But Reich CANNOT and will not see this. He is a Keynesian economist. To see this means all his belief system has become obsolete! He would join the ranks fo all those communist theorist and social welfare experts who have great resumes but no work!
Yeah, more certainly crappy. We know what we will get with Obama - a repeat of the economic performance of the past four years. No thanks. I'll take my chances with Romney.
Letting them eat cake may be a good talking point, but look where it ended up? Ryan and Romney's revolution would be the death of this country, lead us into wars of choice, and the only progress they'd usher in would be to finish the job of turning us into a third world country of underpaid workers.
I don't claim to understand Republican logic, but I can't for the life of me figure out how going back to Bush-style trickle down economics and deregulation of Wall Street will make things better when THESE ARE THE SAME POLICIES THAT CREATED THE MESS WE'RE IN NOW.
All I learn from listening to Republicans is that it is possible, if you try hard enough, to convince yourself that up is down, black is white, and dropping a cinder block on your toe won't hurt as much the second time as it did the first.
Didn't Romney see what happened last time we tried Bushonomics?
It was only 4 years ago that Obama took over a nation on the brink of total economic collapse, losing 750,000 jobs per month, economy shrinking at the fastest rate in 50 years, banking sector imploding, auto industry imploding, credit completely frozen, housing market in flames, debt and deficit at an all time high and skyrocketing.
Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.
Remember these facts:
Median net worth for the middle-class dropped by 28% following a decade filled with two nasty recessions, the median net worth of the upper-tier actually rose by 1% based on Pew Research's study
93% of the income generated in 2010 ($288 billion) went to the top 1% of earners, producing an 11.6% rise in their 2010 income over the previous year. As for the remaining 99% -- middle-class included -- income for the average worker increased by just $80 over the previous year.
Earnings are set to end down 3% in the 3rd quarter from a year ago.
Have you been trickled on, yet?
What they have is morally compromised science types who got mired in their own, incompetency-caused career failures; they were given checks, perks, a Bible for self-mesmeration and a sense of gluey belonging, and single, insincere howdies from some of the 1% at the country club. Nerds no longer, these lads now get to rub up against movers and shakers.
Then, too, larger experts exist, those above even the annoited: my favorite science truism from the right was Limbaugh's ranted statement that the Marianis Trench, off the coast of California and the deepest thing on the globe, was actually nature's pollution drain, and that all debris in the oceans eventually was sucked down into the maw of the earth.
The spirit of the old science with accountability at its heart is now being declared arcane.
A new spirit now presses to inhabit science--faith.
"Hope and Change"? "Fundamentally change America"? Rare? Maybe. Recent? Oh yeah.
"100,000 new teachers"? Going where? Paid for how?
"invest in infrastructure"? What infrastructure? Where? Paid for how? More of those shovel-ready jobs that didn't exist?
"Average Americans, meanwhile, face more economic uncertainty from the possibility of a Romney-Ryan administration than they have had in their lifetimes."
Not if they've been alive for the last 3-1/2 years. If you believe the people themselves, confidence in the economy and direction of the country have never been lower. And then, of course, there are the statistics. You like statistics, don't you?
Mr. Reich, if you actually had an argument with actual reasoning, your pieces would be worth reading. But this was just partisan poop too easily refuted.
You've earned a place on the "Don't Waste Your Time" list with Dowd, Krugman, Robinson, Dionne, Klein, Friedman, Fineman, Vanden Heuvel, Sullivan, Clift and the rest of the hard-left regurgitators.
Not just a waste of time. Tedious. It's clear why a friend who worked in the Clinton Administration said they called you, "Clinton's Folly." Now you belong to the HuffPost.
The list of Economists that you mentioned and called "Do not Waste Your Time", , shows that you know nothing about Economy. . To say that " a friend of yours who worked in the Clintonn Administration said they called you (the Professor ) Clinton's Folly"" makes you sound more like a lier than someone with a fertile imagination.
Next time, try to write about greed; because I can bet that it is a subject that you must know very well.