In his recent interview with Time’s Mark Halperin, Mitt Romney made a pretty stunning admission—one that undermines the entire basis of the Republican party’s economic platform. And just about nobody noticed until MSNBC’s Chris Hayes pointed it out on The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday.
Here’s the exchange between Halperin and Romney:
Halperin: Why not in the first year, if you're elected — why not in 2013, go all the way and propose the kind of budget with spending restraints, that you'd like to see after four years in office? Why not do it more quickly?
Romney: Well because, if you take a trillion dollars for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5%. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I'm not going to do that, of course.
Wait, hold on. Did Romney just acknowledge that slashing government spending reduces economic growth? And cutting a trillion dollars in spending next year would throw the economy into a recession? Isn’t that exactly what Republicans have been denying, as they push for more cuts?
Indeed, Rep. Paul Ryan—whose budget Romney has wholeheartedly embraced—has been pretty clear on this (at least in recent years): He believes government spending to stimulate the economy doesn’t work. "We are not Keynesians. We don't believe in demand-side stimulus. We're going to stop the spending spree," he told the Wall Street Journal in 2009.
That's what this whole debate we've been having since the economy tanked has been about: Many Democrats have argued we need more government stimulus to jump-start growth. Republicans have countered that this will only add to the deficit and further reduce confidence.
As Hayes, the host of Up With Chris Hayes, marveled Thursday night:
[Romney] conceded the entire theoretical framework of Keynesian stimulus in one sentence as a throwaway line in a Mark Halperin interview! And no one said anything.
So in effect, Romney is now saying that the Ryan budget would have a disastrous effect on the economy. That seems like kind of a big deal.
This might be one of those tests for the Beltway press corps that Maddow talked about Wednesday night. In a country with a well-functioning press, this would go down as a major "gaffe"—or worse, evidence of an enormous contradiction in Romney's approach to economic policy.
Halperin flunked. How will the rest do?
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Please replay Mitt Romney's "gaffe", over and over again until we all get it! :) Props to Chris Hayes for the team effort!
It's much more than a gaffe. Run in reverse, it's Krugman's argument-- that a $1T stimulus is 5% of GDP, or 7M jobs (or an unemployment rate of 4.5%). The bigger question is that if Romney knowingly believes his own model's results, then isn't his and his party's opposition to the stimulus plans of the past 2 years closer to treason (or at least doing direct harm to those 7M unemployed Americans)?
Of course it is.
In watching the Republicans intransigence for the past three years; in watching them stonewall and filibuster ANY PLAN that would promote growth, provide revenue, and/or provide relief for the Middle Class, it MUST BE patently obvious to everyone but the most cognitively impaired observer that they (the Republicans) HAVE NO ANSWER that would be significantly different than what President Obama has proposed (repeatedly).
I do not believe that the Republicans opposition is really based on Policy direction. The opposition is that they simply DO NOT WANT these proposals implemented under a Democratic President. All the bluster over the "DEBT" and "OUT OF CONTROL SPENDING" is just nonsense to keep their base fired up. All of their rantings about "Socialism" and "Entitlement" is purely rhetorical.
If the Republicans were to win the White House and Congress, I believe we would not see a significantly different approach, they would "SELL IT" to their base as the only reasonable way to move the Country forward, CLAIM that they were better at providing the Leadership to get the necessary programs enacted (largely because they would end up getting "bi-partisan support" because the Democratic Politicians would NOT abdicate their responsibility) and then claim "SUCCESS" when these programs worked.
This is not to say that electing the Republicans would be overwhelmingly "GOOD" for the Nation! I do think they would still push ahead with; Privatizing Social Security; Fundamentally changing Medicare (voucher system); Continuing to support the Tax Rates that favor the rich; and, very possibly, start another War. By the end of four years, they would be gambling that "as long as "deficit spending" decreased unemployment and provided substantial fluidity to average peoples budgets, they could get away with ultimately pushing the Nation further into debt, and further away from the kind of reform that President Obama is advocating for. The "system" would be more broken than it is now, but as long as people had "money in their pocket" they wouldn't complain.
The risk, of course, is that after another go round of Republican Governance we would be facing another CRISIS (much like 2008), but I believe they'd be willing to risk that because they could just do a "re-run" of the past four years, where they could "blame the Democrat" who would potentially be elected to "clean up the mess", and then the entire cycle could start all over again.