The Coming Romney Boom

Just ending Obama era restrictions on energy production, especially coal, as well as pipeline and refinery capacity, will be a boost to the economy. Eliminating Obamacare will prevent the implementation of a plethora of new taxes, and restoring the Bush era tax cuts will be important measures.

In the short term, should Romney win and the GOP gain 50 or more Senate seats, the economic outlook will strengthen. As the tax cuts under Reagan and Bush II proved, lowering tax rates stimulates economic growth and actually causes tax revenue at all levels (Federal, state, and local) to increase. The supply side model, which liberals call trickle down economics, works.

The longer term prospect is not nearly as good. We are still working with a $16 trillion deficit, and over $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities. There is little political will to cut entitlement programs, and since the days of Eisenhower, the Republicans when in power have not done so, nor generally retracted Democrat advances in government power generally and indeed, under Nixon and both Bushes, modestly increased these areas, under the rubric of compassionate conservatism. Even if Obamacare goes away, the existing structure of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc., is unsustainable on an actuarial basis.

A second, though lesser, factor is military expenditures. Wars and interventions are expensive, and Romney appears inclined to be more proactive than Obama. We can afford a larger and better equipped military if social programs were cut. History shows that the GOP will not do so. We cannot afford "guns and butter." When the deficits are not reduced, and our ability to borrow declines, our military and prestige will be sacrificed to preserve the benefits of seniors, the poor, retired Federal workers, et. al., not to mention making interest payments on the national debt.

Just ending Obama era restrictions on energy production, especially coal, as well as pipeline and refinery capacity, will be a boost to the economy.

Absolutely true. The price of energy permeates through everything in the economy. Approving the Keystone Pipeline, ending the (illegal) Obama restrictions on drilling in the Gulf, increased development of domestic energy resources, and many other things have at least a chance of happening with Romney. It is for certain energy prices will continue to rise with Obama in office. That is a serious drag on economic activity.

Affirmative action, EPA, big business, excessive state and local laws, government deficit spending, unions, fake green industry, overly-litigious culture (wacky judges and lawyers), etc. all continue to increase and are the real obstacles to higher sales and lower expenses for small business.

While a second nobama term would be disastrous, I’m not looking for Romney to change from the GOP-e positions.

IMHO, the ideal situation would be for Romney to win and then the grassroots to turn it’s attacks on the GOP and begin the process of replacing it with a “no party” party.

This must be done at the grassroots level, where business-knowledgeale Christian citizens (as opposed to political types) get elected to their local town council and state legislatures by being drafting by local supportive groups and not being associated with the Republican party.

The lying about government debt we see in Europe and the U.S. by politicians of practically all stripes continues.

Stopping the U.S. defecit will be extremely difficult for limp-wristed Republicans even if they control both houses and the Presidency because they compromise between wasting zero and wasting 1 trillion at wasting 1/2 trillion, which is still a disastrous loss for fixing things.

As the debt bubble gets bigger, all the financial institutions that own the debt are, in truth, insolvent but they certainly don’t want to admit that nor do politicians (forget the Fed they’re just the enabler).

When they talk about “the system” failing they’re talking about large banks failing, not small ones; they don’t give a rat’s patooty about them.

Yes Romney could stop the zerobama things that have not been implemented yet.

But the horse is already out of the barn and 16 trillion miles down the road by now.

In order for consumer businesses to have higher Sales, consumers need a “boom” of jobs.

The 1990’s was caused by the “boom” of ERP software, the web and Y2K all happening at the same time, creating hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs. The jobs were NOT high paying because big business was “nice” or wanted to “spur growth”, but because big business was LAZY and STUPID in ignoring those until they were forced into catch up mode to get them done; the web and ERP for competitive reasons and Y2K for calendar reasons. They were DESPERATE, that’s why they opened the company checkbook. Money was no object - this was an emergency brought on by far too many C-levels being jerks and not doing their job of having, oh, I don’t know, something like foresight. After all, the floorsweeper does not have that in their job description, it’s the C-level who’s supposed to be navigating the future. And they let things go until it was far too late for their own employees to have the training and time to do those things. Their answer - like always - outsource. So the smart employees (that no one listened to) quite their jobs and came back as “consultants” and extracted their pound of flesh from jerk employers like the one they left.

There is nothing remotely like that on the horizon. Everyone and every thing can be connected via the internet; that is trivial at this point. Hundreds of thousands of people got out of the IT industry since the 1990’s. So there is an enormous glut of potential IT workers. That’s why companies can’t find IT people now - they’re paying $90k per year for the same job they used to pay $180k per year. Big business is now in the mode of getting people to work as cheaply as possible. That will not produce a “boom” for jobs.

A new technology won’t create a jobs “boom” at this point because by definition it’s only creating jobs for a few smart people.

At this point there are millions of mediocre people needing jobs who are not engineers and scientists; they can’t program their way out of a wet paper bag and don’t even want to. They need what I call “worky-work” jobs, real jobs where you have to create some real value. The big trouble is that every consumer is getting along without needing more “stuff” or “services”, since their household is down a job or two or perhaps quite concerned that they might lose a job. So few people are spending without thinking carefully about just how much they want or need something. We have very conservative consumers now, who carefully pick and choose the few pleasures they grant themselves.

We are starting to pay the price for exporting manufacturing to NON-EPA, NON-UNION third world dictatorship thugocracies. The lovers of the EPA and UNIONS refuse to admit this however, and keep warning the electorate about John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie.

We needed a candidate for President who would lead in making the fundamental earthquake type changes that are needed, i.e., quitting Federal welfare programs cold turkey, etc.

IMHO, that’s why the only path out is upending the political system by getting Christian citizen politicians to a majority in both houses and the Presidency over the next 10 years or so.

If we don’t, there will come a time when simply sputtering along will fail, since government deficit spending will turn our dollars into play money. We do not need the currency “backed” by anything since that would simply be manipulated (the Spanish empire did this and failed). We do need money creation simply limited to a given percentage of total net worth of the nation. As people save and invest, and the population grows, total net worth increases; a certain amount of that must be able to be held in cash so there is enough to facilitate transactions.

Pure low rate lending to spur economic growth creates a situation where there is too much capital looking for businesses to invest in; there simply are not enough investment opportunities.

Right now, there is 16 trillion “invested” in what taxpayers are going to pay as taxes in the future. Taxpayers will have to pay that all off. 16 trillion. Taxes.

Thanks to guys like “Smilin’ Joe”.

Mitt Romney needs to, truly, become a very small government conservative

Sorry, that's not likely. The effect of Romney shifting his positions throughout the day depending on the crowd is that everyone in the room thinks he's secretly on their side and is just saying what he needs to get elected. To reduce your disappointment set your expectations for Romney to be the second coming of Nixon, not Reagan.

Freeper "lurk" is quite correct.

There is a cubic s--tload of debt deleveraging, public and private, which we must work our way through.

Getting rid of Obamanomics and returning to market principles (the most important of which is that no bank is "too big to fail") can put us on the path to recovery, but no one should delude himself that this is an instant, painless quick fix.

The real challenge for Romney/Ryan will be to get this across to Joe Sixpack while not sounding like they are repeating the Obama script of blaming the predecessor.

Ms. Charen’s dreams about a Republican president and congress pushing through all sorts of reforms and corrective legislation to reinvigorate the economy may end up being little more than wishful thinking.

Even if the Republicans retake the Senate along with the presidency, they will fall short of 60 seats and a “filibuster-proof” majority. This will leave the Senate as the only remaining “firewall” by which the ‘rats can prevent a conservative agenda from being implemented.

And obstruct they will, as never before seen in American politics. There will be no honeymoon period for a President Romney, neither in the halls of Congress nor in the media.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see “Wisconsin style” politics and political theatrics used to block legislation, regulatory reform, etc.

I would not expect to see ANY conservative nominee to replace Ruth Ginsburg pass the next Senate. The ‘rats will try to “Bork ‘em all”.

Then again, there is always “the nuclear option”, to erase the filibuster and go to a simple majority-rule vote. But both sides have backed away from this in the past. Would the Pubbies have the nerve to try it?

First, defeat BO! Next, I do hope that conservatives have plans to run for POTUS in ‘16, if a “President Romney”, truly, isn’t conservative enough on enough issues, which is a probability.

Club for Growth on Romney’s term as Governor, quotes regarding cutting size of government, entitlement reform, tax reform:

“On balance, his record comes out more positive than negative, especially when one considers that average spending increased only 2.22% over his four years, well below the population plus inflation benchmark of nearly 3%.”

“Governor Romney receives credit for reducing actual spending unilaterally in Fiscal Year FY2003, even though he entered office halfway into the fiscal year, because of the tremendous spending cuts he forced down the Legislature’s throat in January of 2003. Facing a $650 million deficit he inherited from the previous administration, Romney convinced the unfriendly State Legislature to grant him unilateral power to make budget cuts and unveiled $343 million in cuts to cities, healthcare, and state agencies. This fiscal discipline continued in 2004, in which Romney continued to slash “nearly every part of state government” to close a $3 billion deficit.”

“To his credit, Romney attempted to cut down on government spending by streamlining many duplicative and wasteful elements of Beacon Hill. Some of his more ambitious proposals were rejected by his über-liberal Legislature. These include: his plans to overhaul the wasteful Boston Municipal Court and close underused courthouses; merge the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority with the Highway Department; decentralize management of the University of Massachusetts; streamline the Alcoholic Beverage Control Commission; and phase out the obsolete Worcester State Hospital where employees outnumber patients nearly 3 to 1.”

“Governor Romney successfully consolidated the social service and public health bureaucracy and restructured the Metropolitan District Commission. Romney even eliminated half of the executive branch’s press positions, saving $1.2 million. He also used his emergency fiscal powers to make $425 million worth of cuts in 2006, taking particular aim at local earmarks, instead of allowing the Legislature to dip into the state’s $1.2 billion rainy day fund. While there is no question that Governor Romney’s initial fiscal discipline slacked off in the second half of his term, on balance, he imposed some much-needed fiscal discipline on a very liberal Massachusetts Legislature.”

“Romney fought for legislation that would bring Massachusetts’ welfare system up to date with federal standards by increasing the number of hours each week recipients must work and establishing a five-year limit for receiving benefits. Much to his credit and to the dismay of many Massachusetts liberals, Romney successfully forced Medicaid recipients to make co-payments for some services and successfully pushed for legislative action forcing new state workers to contribute 25% of their health insurance costs, up from 15%. Governor Romney also deserves praise for proposing to revolutionize the Massachusetts state pension system by moving it from a defined benefit system to a defined contribution system.”

“In May of 2004, Mitt Romney proposed cutting the state’s income tax rate from 5.3% to 5.0%—a measure Massachusetts voters had approved in a 2000 referendum, but was blocked by the State Legislature in 2002. The proposed tax cut would have provided $675 million in relief over a year and a half. When the Massachusetts Legislature refused to budge, Romney proposed the same tax cut in 2005 and again in 2006 with no success. Romney was more successful when he took on the State Legislature for imposing a retroactive tax on capital gains earnings. After a bloody fight, Romney succeeded in passing a bill preventing the capital gains tax from being applied retroactively, resulting in a rebate of $275 million for capital gains taxes collected in 2002.”