Tag Archives: Mitt Romney

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Grand Theft Election II: Keystone State Stories


By ThinkProgress War Room

GOP Plan to the Steal the White House is Back

Earlier this year, Republicans in several swing states unveiled sore loser plans to allocate their electoral college votes by congressional district or in some other proportional manner rather than the current winner-take-all system in place in 48 states. This would result in votes that would likely go to the Democratic nominee being pushed over into the GOP column. Tellingly, the GOP is not proposing to split the electoral votes of red states.

Had such a plan been in place in every swing state last year, Mitt Romney would most likely be president right now despite having lost the popular vote by nearly 5 MILLION votes.

Fortunately, massive outcry quickly killed this plan in Virginia, Florida, and other states where it reared its head.

Unfortunately, this GOP plan to steal the White House is now back in two key swing states:

  • Pennsylvania: 13 GOP state senators, including the senate majority leader, have formally introduced their electoral college rigging bill. Republicans need a total of 26 votes to pass the bill. They currently control the chamber and hold 27 seats total. As they also control the state house in Pennsylvania, the GOP could theoretically ram the bill through in as little as 4 days as soon as they have the votes to pass it.Pennsylvania has been at the forefront of recent efforts to rig the electoral college, with Republicans from Gov. Tom Corbett on down first considering this scheme way back in 2011.
  • Michigan: On Saturday, Republicans gathered for their state convention voted overwhelmingly (1370-132) to back a scheme to divide their state’s electoral votes by congressional district. For his part, Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) has opposed the scheme, saying it’s not the “appropriate time” to consider it. This, however, is cold comfort, as Snyder once said the exact same thing about an anti-union bill that he later signed after it was rammed through the legislature with little debate.

BOTTOM LINE: If the GOP wants to win elections the old fashioned way — by winning more votes — then they should change their unpopular policies instead of trying to change the rules in the middle of the game.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

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The sequester will harm border security and our ability to stop a terrorist attack.

The Supreme Court made a good decision on campaign finance.

GOP senator with an “A” rating from the NRA is open to background checks.

POLL: voters prefer military spending cuts to reduce the deficit.

Why Seth MacFarlane and The Onion’s jokes about Quvenzhané Wallis are so gross.

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Jobs V Loopholes


By ThinkProgress War Room

7 Tax Loopholes the GOP Loves to Love

In less than two weeks the very damaging across the board “sequester” cuts will kick in unless Republicans agree to a replacement that is a balanced compromise including both new revenues from closing tax loopholes and smarter, more targeted spending cuts.

When it was convenient for them to do so, Republicans including Speaker Boehner and Mitt Romney argued vociferously for closing loopholes and ending wasteful giveaways in the tax code. But now that push is coming to shove, these Republicans are refusing to help protect the economy and jobs by replacing the sequester cuts with new revenues from closing loopholes.

This intransigence has real consequences. As the president laid out yesterday, these cuts will cause pain:

So these cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction — people will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.

Here’s a look at the top seven loopholes and giveaways that Republicans think are more important than protecting our economy, jobs, the middle class, and the most vulnerable among us:

  1. Extra tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthiest Americans — $520 BILLION
  2. Tax break for companies that ship jobs overseas — $168 BILLION
  3. Special tax breaks for the largest oil companies — $25 BILLION
  4. The loophole that allow people like Mitt Romney to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class workers — $21 BILLION
  5. Tax deductions for vacation homes and yachts — $10 BILLION
  6. The corporate jet loophole — $3 BILLION
  7. Special write-offs for horse breeders (aka the Bluegrass Boondoggle) — $126 MILLION

BOTTOM LINE: The Republicans are choosing to protect millionaires and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street instead of funding our military and programs vital for the middle class and the health of our economy.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Annals right-wing media failure: how a joke became an attack against Chuck Hagel.

Florida’s GOP governor will expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

Marco Rubio is no savior for women.

800.000 defense workers to be furloughed because of the sequester.

Fox News: Al Jazeera America is a plot to activate Muslim sleeper cells in Detroit.

Supporters of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline outspend opponents 35 to 1.

The latest sneak attack on unions.

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How the sequester cuts hurt the long-term unemployed.

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Another Self-Inflicted Wound to the Economy?


By ThinkProgress War Room

GOP to Blame for Latest Manufactured Crisis

The country is bearing down on March 1, the day that deep, damaging across-the-board spending cuts — known as the “the sequester” in Beltway parlance — start to kick in.

If Republicans hadn’t taken the entire economy — the full faith and credit of the United States — hostage in 2011, there would not be a sequester. Period. End of story. What’s more, an overwhelming majority of Republicans in the House and the Senate voted in favor of the cuts. At the time, Speaker Boehner said he’d gotten 98 percent of what he wanted in the deal that wrote the cuts into law.

In the year and a half since Republicans demanded — and received — the cuts, they have rebuffed every effort to substitute something else smarter, more balanced and less damaging to the economy in their place . The president repeatedly offered significant spending cuts and changes to social insurance programs, including Medicare and Social Security, as part of balanced plan that also included new revenues, but Republicans always said no in order to protect millionaires and special interests from having to pay their fair share in taxes.

Just months ago, Mitt Romney and Speaker Boehner actively advocated for closing tax loopholes and eliminating giveaways in the tax code. But now Republicans are saying no in order to protect the wealthy and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street. They say they now prefer spending cuts that stand to kill several hundred thousand jobs and could potentially drag the economy back into recession to raising even a penny more in new revenue. Just months ago, leading Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan said these cuts would “devastate” the country, but now they appear to be fine with them.

Here’s a few examples of what the choices we face actually mean — and which side Republicans are coming down on:

  • Republicans will let the wealthiest Americans keep special tax breaks instead of funding our military.
  • Republicans will kick 70,000 kids off Head Start and fire 10,000 teachers instead of ending giveaways to Big Oil.
  • Republicans want to cut 1,000 FBI agents and aid to thousands of schools instead of ending loopholes that allow people like Mitt Romney to pay a lower tax rate than middle class workers.
  • Republicans will cut thousands of food safety inspectors, which could shut down the entire meat industry, instead of eliminating giveaways for corporate jets and special tax breaks for horse breeders in Kentucky (the home state of Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell).
  • Republicans want to cut unemployment benefits and loans to small businesses rather than end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

We need to reduce our deficit, but we should do it in a balanced, targeted way instead of with blunt, across-the-board cuts that will harm the economy. Instead of governing, the GOP is only interested in gimmicks and games. As the President said again last week, we have got to stop governing by crisis. Our economy cannot afford to play the GOP’s games any longer.

BOTTOM LINE: Once again we find ourselves facing yet another crisis manufactured by the GOP. It’s time for the GOP to choose sides: the middle class and the military or millionaires and special interests.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

¿GOP en Español? Not no fast.

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Pentagon to offer expanded benefits to same-sex partners.

NRA lobbyist dismisses the “Connecticut Effect.”

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GOP … Fiscal Plan

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By ThinkProgress War Room

TProgress

Ed. Note: Thanks for staying tuned during our hiatus last month. We’re back and eager to cover all of the latest developments on the fiscal showdown and other important issues.***

The GOP’s Warmed Over Fiscal Plan

Last week, the president put out his plan to avoid the fiscal cliff, including $1.6 TRILLION in new tax revenues, $1.5 TRILLION in spending cuts that have already been enacted, $400 BILLION in additional targeted spending cuts, and additional measures to stimulate growth, including an extension of emergency unemployment benefits and new investments in infrastructure.

While Republicans have laughed at the president’s plan, said it is not “serious,” and have already fabricated new myths in order to attack it, there’s one thing they haven’t done until today: offer any real alternative.

A prime example of the GOP’s refusal to offer their own credible alternative plan was on display yesterday when Speaker Boehner (R-OH) was pressed on the details of the GOP plan by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Boehner avoided any details and refused to say which tax deductions Republicans could cap or eliminate.

Just a couple hours ago, House Republicans finally offered an alternative: some of the worst of the GOP’s recent budget ideas along with $800 BILLION in new revenues from a tax plan that lowers rates and closes loopholes. And, unlike the new revenue proposed by the president, even this revenue is not locked in. It’s to come as a part of a yet to be determined tax reform plan to be put together by Congress.

If this all sounds familiar, that’s because it is. It is similar to the plan that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan ran on — and lost. And now Republicans are trying to put it forward as a credible alternative to the policies the president ran on — and won.

Let’s review in brief why this GOP plan does not pass muster:

  • It raises the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 and includes deep cuts to both it and the Medicaid program. As we’ve discovered over the past two years, these ideas are both unfair to seniors and the middle class and are also highly unpopular. Raising the Medicare eligibility age is yet another change that simply shifts costs away from the government and onto seniors. In fact, it would actually result in higher overall health care spending.
  • It doesn’t generate enough potential revenue to guarantee that programs that protect the needy, benefit the middle class, and make investments in the future won’t be subject to very deep cuts.
  • It could place tax deductions for the middle class, not just the wealthiest Americans, at risk. This could actually mean lower taxes for the rich and higher taxes for the middle class.
  • It does not seem to address the debt ceiling, affording Republicans yet another opportunity to manufacture a crisis and crash the entire economy unless a fresh set of their demands are met over the next few months.

The Republican proposal states that it is based on a plan put forward last year by Erskine Bowles (not to be confused with a different plan put forward by both Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson). Bowles, however, denied that that was the case today and also noted that “circumstances have changed” since then.

BOTTOM LINE:Any plan that fails to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share and forces seniors and the middle class to shoulder the burden of dealing with our debt is neither balanced nor credible.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

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