What would America look like under a President Romney?

Duck Soup

With Romney now starting to show signs of viable life as a Presidential candidate, perhaps this would be a good time to consider what America would like under a President Romney.

Taxes. He's promising a 20% tax cut to the tune of $5tn over 10 years. This is only doable if he closes all the loopholes. Actually there's a body of opinion that says that it still doesn't add up, even if he does close them all. Romney says he won't name the loopholes because that's to be hammered out in Congress.

So what will happen? Taxes are cut. There's screaming blue murder at the thought of cutting things like homeowners mortgage relief and deductions for charitable donations. End result? Not enough loopholes are closed. Deficit explodes.

Healthcare expenditure. Romney says he's going to 'restore' the $716bn he says Obama is 'taking out' of healthcare expenditure. Thing is, all that $716bn comes out of payments to providers and none of it is from patients. So Romney is basically saying we'll give HMOs $700bn back that they've already agreed to give up.

Healthcare insurance. Obamacare would take down the number of uninsured to about 27m by 2022. If Romney bins Obamacare and replaces it with Romneycare Version 2, there would be about 72m uninsured by 2022. End result? 45m more Americans would be without health insurance.

Public services. Romney says he will bring down government spending to 20% of GDP by 2016 and then set a cap - presumably though law in Congress - that it can't rise above 20%. He says 4% of spending will go to the military. Romney has already said that there will be no change to Social Security or Medicare for those over 55, so these won't be cut for the next ten years. So to recap: he's not going to cut defense, Social Security or Medicare and he's going to needlessly give back $700bn back to health insurers to boot.

So where does this leave the rest of public spending? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities crunched the numbers and came to the conclusion that “all other programs — including Medicaid, veterans’ benefits, education, environmental protection, transportation, and SSI — would have to be cut by an average of 40 percent in 2016 and 57 percent in 2022.”

40% out of education. 40% out of veterans' benefits. 40% out of transportation.

This looks like an America that's great to be wealthy in. Not so much for everyone else.

Bertser

He'll probably change his mind on all these issues by tomorrow morning.

Sir Pompous Righteousness

In terms of Romney's foreign policy, you're looking at a war with Syria or at least a no-fly zone if Assad doesn't give up before the US elections, a Iraq-esque war with Iran (but even longer) and cooling relations with Russia and China. Possibly even cooling of relations between the EU and the US. Overall, in terms of the US' standing on the global stage, the US under a President Romney looks very bleak.