Economic recovery is a time to do less

Let’s have a discussion about the 47%. Students who got bought off by college loans, women bought off with birth control,  poor bought off with medical care, Hispanics bought off with immigration reform. Let’s assume, for a moment, that Romney’s White Man’s Nightmare is true.

Let’s even ignore his secret tax returns and off-shore bank accounts.

We need to ask about the actual cost of these programs and whether this is truly the harbinger of an “entitlement society” as bemoaned by the right.

And at the same time, we need to look ahead about six months or a year, assuming the recovery that seems to be picking up steam (without Republican participation) continues to build.

The more affordable college becomes, the more engineers we produce (and fewer Golden Sach bankers) the better off we are. It is probably an investment, as opposed to a cost. I will make the same argument for much of Obamacare.  We do not have the best health care system in the world, just the most expensive. We can do better.

Immigration reform? How much does that cost us really? Should we send back the Irish, the Swedes, the Italians, the Chinese? C’mon.

Birth control? Let’s get government out of the religion business. And the morality business. Let’s make it as easy as possible to avoid unwanted pregnancies. If abortion offends you, then advocate for birth control.

No surprise, I have a contrarian argument to my friends on the left: We need already to be thinking about doing less with government. The left will say that they won and now is the time to push forward with an agenda they feel they earned. I respond that there was no mandate and a political victory does not change the laws of economics.

First and foremost of those laws is the problem of deficits. Of productivity. And yes, let’s give Republicans their due on this one, it is a fact that if something is free it will be consumed without limits, and the law of unintended consequences assures that if we remove consequences behavior will be altered and individuals will depend more and take responsibility for less.

It was never a good idea to cut budgets during a recession. But now that we see the end of the downturn and the beginning of prosperity, it is time to determine how we will slow the growth of government. Because we can’t live that far beyond our means as a society and we cannot tax our way into higher productivity, the only way that we truly create wealth.

Romney the huckster loses ground

Three things in the last week are turning off voters to Mitt Romney. Each in its own way shows the man has no core.  

He refers to his "plans" for the country but refuses over and over to say what those "plans" might be. He flips and then he flops and says whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear as long as it doesn't mean anything.

Now his "plan" for healthcare would retain the popular parts of "Obamacare." Seriously? After months and months of slamming the new law that covers more Americans, prohibits exclusion for preexisting conditions and allows young people to stay other parents policy, Romney now says he would retain those elements?  Whatever happened to "repealing Obamacare on my first day in office?

Romney now says his "plans" for economic recovery will not lower taxes on the rich. At the same time he talks about lowering taxes. How can he do both? By closing loopholes. Which ones? He won't say. Watch Romney slip and slide around the question in this NBC Interview with David Gregory: It's at about minute 17:30, though the whole show is worth watching.

Even Businessweek  has a hard time stomaching this foolishness. 

Romney VP choice Paul Ryan admits the White House has little voice in the matter: "Mitt Romney and I, … think the best way to do this is to … show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress to do this," Ryan said on ABC's "This Week." Saying "we will close loopholes" is showing the framework of a "plan?" 

Now Romney blames Obama for sequestration worked out by both parties in Congress  as part of a deal to automatically impose $1.2 trillion in budget cuts in defense and Medicare spending in exchange for raising the debt ceiling a year or so ago and keeping America from going into default. Romney VP Paul Ryan helped promote this deal that was supposed to keep a "supercommittee" from failing to find cuts. 

President Obama specifically exempted military pay and benefits. But in his "say whatever it takes" politics, Romney blames the President for something Congress did. The man has no core. He wouldn't get elected in Oregon.

Finally this week the craven Romney tried to capitalize on an attack on American embassies overseas by Muslims angered by a film. Embassy personell were trying to cool a situation that eventually resulted in the loss of life. Romney would have added gasoline to the fire. Even Republicans want Romney to shut up and stop looking like a cheap opportunist on this one.

But Romney can't stop looking like a cheap opportunist. That's who he is.

The GOP's magical thinking

Karl Rove is the political operative running the largest funnel of anonymous money into the Republican party's battle for the presidency. On August 15, 2012, the once credible Wall Street Journal gave Rove a forum for the fiction he uses to reshape America:

“… While there would be no changes in Medicare for those 55 or older, starting in 10 years younger Americans … could either pick traditional Medicare or use … money the government spends on each Medicare enrollee to buy private insurance. The reasoning is based on a reliable truth: Competition will lower costs by using market forces to spur innovation and improvement.”

First, the statement is incoherent. Competition is the "market force." Rove is saying competition will lower costs by using competition to spur innovation… or market forces will lower costs by using market forces…" By using two words for the same force, Rove creates an illusion. The creation of a fictional entity to make belief plausible is characteristic of "magical thinking.”

Rove could have written more logically that "competition will lower costs, spur innovation and improvement," but that would have exposed the second magical element of his thought: the market forces he refers to do not actually exist in most areas of health care.

For there to be "market forces" there has to be a functioning "market." A market requires good information available to informed buyers who choose between multiple providers competing for their business. That is not how we make most health care decisions.

That's the GOP sleight of hand. The GOP doesn't support the fundamentals of efficient markets. The GOP doesn't advocate for good information. The GOP doesn't encourage multiple players in a market, especially if dominate companies make campaign contributions.

Instead, the GOP says "government is the enemy" even when government is protecting markets. The GOP calls rules that prevent oligopolies from ruining markets "antibusiness" when those rules are actually business positive. Bank deregulation harmed many businesses in America by turning mortgage markets into gambling casinos.

The delusions of Paul Ryan and Karl Rove that the Wizard of Competition will give us cheaper healthcare that is even better – Cheaper! Better! – is equally distructive. What they mean is that huge health care monopolies, some partly owned by Mitt Romeny's Bain Capital, will get even more of our health care dollars. That's not healthy for anyone.