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Interview With Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney On Technology Issues
mittromney.com — This interview should help answer some of the questions you might have had about Mitt's vision for technology in America. You should also be able to see that Mitt has many more good ideas than the other candidates that he is facing and he won't have to raise taxes to implement them!
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- BillORights, on 11/03/2007, -1/+0The Romney-Kennedy Massachusetts Legacy
by Carla Howell
Is Mitt Romney the "economic conservative" he claims to be? Especially when it comes to tax and spend policies?
Now that he's running for president, let's compare his words with his deeds.
Romney claims to be anti-tax. He even "took" a "no new taxes" pledge when he ran for Governor of Massachusetts in 2002. "Took" is in quotes because he refused to sign that pledge. His signature wasn't necessary, he claimed. He assured us that he's a man of his word.
But Mitt Romney has been a champion of new taxes.
Mitt Romney proposed three new taxes while campaigning for governor in 2002: a new tax on vehicles, a new tax on campaign donations, and a new tax on building construction. They didn't get much fanfare in the media and were quickly forgotten.
Right before the 2002 election, he ran millions of dollars in ads portraying himself as a "no new taxes" governor. The media refused to set the record straight.
But that was only the beginning.
Each of the four years Romney served as governor, he raised taxes - while pretending he didn't. He claims he only raised mandatory government "fees". But government mandatory fees are nothing but taxes, and taxes are nothing but mandatory government fees. Romney's new tax-fees raised hundreds of millions in new tax revenue for the state government every year.
He also increased several taxes by "closing loopholes" to enable collection of a new Internet sales tax and by passing legislation that enables local governments to raise business property taxes. This, he claims, is not raising taxes.
I suppose you could say Romney merely enacted bills that force taxpayers to hand over billions of dollars - which end up in the coffers of the government.
Quacks like a tax increase?
Mitt Romney claims to have cut the Massachusetts budget by "$2 billion." Sometimes he claims he cut it "$3 billion." The media gives him free advertising by parroting this myth repeatedly. They repeat it so often that even some libertarians assume it must be true.
But these "cuts" were merely budget games. Spending cuts in one area were simply moved into another area of the government budget.
In fact, not only did Mitt Romney refuse to cut the overall Massachusetts budget, he expanded it. Dramatically.
The Massachusetts state budget was $22.7 billion a year when he took office in January of 2003.
When he left office in January of 2007, it was over $25.7 billion - plus another $2.2 billion in spending that the legislature calls "off budget." (Romney never reminds us of this fact.)
The net effect of budgets proposed and signed into law by Romney? An additional $5.2 billion in state spending - every year.
He claims to have done a good job as governor of liberal Massachusetts in light of the fact that it's a "tough state" for poor "conservatives" like him. He infers his hands were tied by the predominantly Democratic legislature.
But when it comes to tax and spend policies, he's not only in lockstep with the Democratic legislature. He leads the way.
Each of the four years Romney served as governor of Massachusetts, he started budget negotiations by proposing an increase of $1 billion. Before the legislature even named a budget figure.
Romney initiated massive new spending - without any prodding from the legislature.
The legislature responded with a handful of line item budget increases. Romney agreed to some of them and vetoed others. The media helped him out again by making fanfare of his vetoes and portraying him as tough on spending - after he had already given away the store.
Over the course of Romney's four-year term, he signed into law over $5 billion in new state spending and a similar increase in new taxes.
But his grande finale was the worst of all: RomneyCare, Mitt Romney's version of socialized medicine.
By his own admission, Romney didn't plan his socialized medicine scheme until after the 2002 election. After convincing voters that his Democrat rival would be worse - because she would saddle us with socialist tax and spend policies, he said - Romney popped the granddaddy of Big Government expansions on unwitting voters.
Voters of Massachusetts did not vote for RomneyCare. Mitt Romney foisted it upon them without warning.
When Romney ran for U.S. Senate in 1994, his campaign popularized the derogatory term "Kennedy country" to describe the devastating effects of Ted Kennedy's "liberal social programs" on poor neighborhoods in Massachusetts.
Yet Mitt Romney stood proudly with Kennedy while he signed RomneyCare into law. Romney championed it from the beginning - again, without any prodding from his Democrat rivals.
Ted Kennedy has pushed for socialized medicine for decades. Romney fulfilled his dream. Kennedy lobbied the legislature hard to get Romney's bill passed. It was a Romney-Kennedy alliance.
Welcome to Massachusetts: Romney-Kennedy country.
Romney's socialized medicine law mandates everyone who doesn't have insurance to buy it - or suffer income tax penalties. There's yet another "off budget" Mitt Romney tax increase.
Romney's mandate will cost taxpayers many thousands of dollars every year in health insurance premiums for unwanted policies - or force them to pay the equivalent in tax penalties. Romney's law goes go into effect in part in 2008 and in full force in 2009. Unless it's repealed before then, the loudest screams of protest from Massachusetts won't be heard until after the 2008 presidential election is over. Romney's time release tax increase.
Romney now boasts that he was the first presidential candidate to sign a "taxpayer protection pledge," in which he promised to oppose "any and all efforts" to increase income taxes on people or businesses.
So he'll call his tax increases "government fees" or "closing loopholes" or something else. But the IRS will collect this money from you, your family, your friends, and millions of Americans just like you.
Mitt Romney labels himself with words like "anti-tax", "conservative", and a "budget cutter."
Mitt Romney's deeds show he's the opposite: high tax, a big spender, and solidly Big Government.
- avions, on 01/23/2008, -0/+1Woah there Wall Of Text! You have eleven more months to educate your peers. You might want to spread things out.
- avions, on 01/23/2008, -0/+1Good interview but I want to hear what he has to say on issues pertaining to the internet.
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