Health care is still Mitt Romney's Waterloo
Nothing will beat Mitt Romney's
declaration that we are presently in "peacetime" (yes, that's a
quote), but
this part of Mitt Romney's foolish op-ed in the Manchester Union Leader was also pretty dumb
Obama is not serious about America’s financial health. AMERICA received a giant wake-up call when Standard & Poor’s, the bond rating agency, announced that it was changing the outlook on its highly prized AAA rating for U.S. Treasuries to "negative" from "stable." This is the first ratings warning for the United States since S&P began evaluating our creditworthiness in 1941.
S&P's action is a significant marker of our country’s deteriorating economic position.
Treasury bond ratings matter — they are measurements of the fiscal strength of the country. The better the bond rating, the lower the cost of borrowing. And the costs of borrowing by the federal government are, of course, ultimately carried by the taxpayer.
But as Paul Krugman has repeatedly pointed out, since the S&P issued its warning, interest rates on bonds have actually fallen, which is exactly the opposite of what you'd expect if investors were actually worried about America's creditworthiness. Conservatives take it on faith that current spending levels are driving up the cost of borrowing, but despite near-constant freakout, there's just no evidence to support their fears. These guys all talk like their serious, but as David Dayen reminded us last week, there's really only one proper reaction: laughter.
Steve Benen has more on Romney's silly op-ed, including debunking Romney's claim to having presided over an economic boom in Massachusetts. In fact, Massachusetts ranked 47 out of 50 states in job growth during Romney's tenure and he didn't seek re-election.
By the way, since no Mitt Romney post should end without mentioning RomneyCare, here's a link to Mitt Romney endorsing a health insurance mandate, in case I hadn't mentioned it before. Oh, and here's a link to Romney saying in 2009 that RomneyCare should be a national model.