Every time we complain about Romney's vagueness, some twit pipes up that he has put out a fifty nine point plan, an interesting number of points almost guaranteed by the title to be too long to induce most people to look through, much less think about.
Here it is in all its awful . . . not glory - somebody had to do it. I apologize in front for the length of the intro, but brevity is not a Romney virtue especially when hiding things by burying the ideas is excess words.
This is the full booklet, complete with footnotes. with thanks to scribd who was involved in posting it. The fifty nine points of his plan are on pp. 83 and 84.
1. Maintain current tax rates on personal income.
2. Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends and capital gains.
3. Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest, dividends and capital gains.
4. Eliminate the death tax.
5. Pursue a conservative overhaul of the tax system over the long term that includes lower flatter rates on a broader base.
6. Reduce corporate income tax to 25%.
7. Pursue transition from 'worldwide' to 'territorial' system for corporate taxation.
8. Repeal Obamacare.
9. Repeal Dodd-Frank and replace with streamlined modern regulatory framework.
10. Amend Sarbanes-Oxley to relieve mid-size companies from onerous requirements.
11. Ensure that environmental laws properly account for cost in regulatory process
12. Provide multi-year lead times before companies must come into compliance with onerous new environmental laws.
13. Initiate review and elimination of all Obama-era regulations that unduly burden the economy.
14. Impose a regulatory cap of zero dollars on all federal agencies.
15. Require congressional approval of all new 'major' regulations.
16. Reform legal liability system to prevent spurious litigation.
17. Implement agreement with Colombia, Panama and South Korea.
18. Reinstate the president's Trade Promotion Authority.
19. Complete negotiations for Trans Pacific Partnership.
20. Pursue new trade agreements with nations committed to free enterprise and open markets.
21. Create the Reagan Economic Zone.
22. Increase CBP resources to prevent the illegal entry of goods into our markets.
23. Increase USTR resources to pursue and suport litigation against unfair trade practices.
24. Use unilateral and multilateral punitive measures to deter unfair Chinese practices.
25.Designate China a currency manipulator and impose countervailing duties.
26. Discontinue US Government procurement from China until China commits to GPA.
(Diarist's note: GPA refers, per booklet, to the WTO Government Procurement
Agreement, eliminating national right to discriminate in procurement against
products of other nations, an agreement to which China is not a member)
27. Establish fixed timetables for all resource development approvals.
28.Create one-stop-shop to streamline permitting process for approval of common activities.
29. Implement fast-track procedures for companies with established safety records to conduct pre-approved actives in pre-approved areas.
30. Amend Clean Air Act to exclude carbon dioxide from its purview.
31. Expand NRC capabilities for approval of additional nuclear reactor designs.
32. Streamline NRC processes to ensure that licensing decisions for reactors on or adjacent to approved sites using approved designs, are complete within two years.
33. Conduct comprehensive survey of America's energy reserves.
34. Open America's energy reserves for development.
35. Expand opportunities for US resource developers to forge partnerships with neighboring countries.
36. Support construction of pipelines to bring Canadian oil to the United States.
37 Prevent overregulation of shale gas development and extraction.
38. Concentrate alternative energy funding on basic research.
39. Utilize long term, apoloitical funding mechanisms like ARPA-E for basic research.
(Diarist's note: ARPA-E refers, per booklet, to the DOD DARPA rules.)
40. Appoint to the NLRB experienced individuals with respect for the rule of law.
41, Amend NLRA to explicitly protect the right of business owners to allocate their capital as they see fit.
42. Amend NLRA to guarantee the secret ballot in every union certification election.
43. Amend NLRA to guarantee that all pre-election campaigns last at least one month.
44. Support states in pursuing Right to work laws.
45. Prohibit the use for political purposes of funds automatically deducted from worker paychecks.
46. Reverse executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the playing field toward organized labor.
47. Eliminate redundancy in federal retraining programs by consolidating programs and funding streams, centering as much activity as possible in a single agency.
48. Give states authority to manage retraining programs by block granting federal funds.
49. Facilitate the creation of Personal Reemployment Accounts.
50. Encourage greater private sector involvement in retraining programs
51. Raise visa caps for highly skilled workers.
52. Grant permanent residency to eligible graduates with advanced degrees in math, science and engineering
53. Immediately cut non-security discretionary spending by 5 percent
.
54. Reform and restructure Medicaid as block grant to states.
55. Align wages and benefits of government workers with market rates.
56. Reduce federal workforce by 10 percent by attrition.
57. Cap Federal Spending at 20 perent of GDP.
58. Undertake fundamental restructuring of government programs and services.
59. Pursue a balanced budget amendment.
(Spacing added by diarist.)
Romney also promises that on his first day in office, he will submit a package of bills to Congress with the demand that the package be acted upon within thirty days and the package consisting of the following (omitting goofy titles)
- Reducing the corporate income tax to 25%
- Directing the Interior Department to undertake a comprehensive survey of American energy reseves in partnership with exploration companies. and initiate leasing of all areas currently approved for exploration.
- Consolidating federal retraining programs and returning funding and responsibility for these programs to the states.
- Implementing the Colombia, Panama and South Korea free trade agreements.
- Immediately cutting non- security discretioning spending by 5 percent and cutting the annual federal budget by $20 billion.
And five executive orders for Day One:
- To pave the way for the end of Obamacare, an order directing the Secretary of HHS and all relevant Federal official to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health care solutions that work.
- An order directing all federal agencies immediately to initiate the elimination of Obama era regulations that unduly burden the economy or job creation, and then capping annual increases to regulatory costs at zero dollars.
- An order directing theInterior Deparatment to implement a process for rapid issuance of drilling permits to developers with established safety standards using preapproved techniques in preapproved areas.
- An order to the Treasury requiring listing of China as a currency manipulator in its biannual report and the Commerce Department to assess countervailing duties if China ddeclines to float its currency.
- An order reversing executive orders issued by President Obama that tilt the playing field in favor of organized labor, including the one encouraging the use of union labor on major government construction projects.
That's his current plan.
Interesting in a number of ways
For starters:
First, this list is in many respects fully as vague as the Romney we hear on TV, rather than a specific list of specific proposals whose effects can be determined before they are proposed, and considered by voters. If you were looking for details, looking in his plan won't help you in figuring out what he really intends to do if elected. Although full of numbers and argumentative essays against Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the 'corporations are people, too' statement and insults to President Obama, it is likewise not filled with details as to the specific plans in mind, what amendments to this bill or that one, what replacements if any for what would be repealed, and so forth. that would have been possible in a tome of that length.
Second, it is already a dated list as the administration Romney hates has already moved forward on some of these proposals, such as taking action against Chinese trade and currency actions and moving forward, for good or ill on the various treaties mentioned.
Third, The ACA is not to be repealed and replaced, only repealed. The sole apparent reference to whatever his plans are for Social Security and Medicare are in No. 58, fundamental restructuring of government programs and services, without the slightest specification of what he actually has in mind.
Fourth, his plan for federal money is mostly to dedicate it to block grants, which means the US may collect the money but will have little to say about how it is used, and states will not be responsible for paying for plans they individually concoct, unlike private businessmen whose bad choices they themselves have to pay for or take through bankruptcy court Chapter 11.
Fifth, this list is one intended specifically and only for substantial businesses, not small businesses at all, and is calculated to give them the free hand to do what they choose without responsibility for any consequences which arise from their free choices. Workers are to have no voice whatever.
There is no reference whatever to support of education for the individual citizens of this nation, although foreigners with advanced degrees are welcome, and the only education mentioned is job training, as if it is not necessarily intended that the education needed for a new technological world or for anything that does not produce privately marketed goods and services is to be funded for US workers at all, since the problems of families paying for that education without government help have not crossed these pages.
The ill effects on others, voters, of these choices are not discussed. The Deep Water Horizon disaster and Fukushima horror would both be possible of repetition on fast track with what he has in his proposals for established, but not necessarily effective safety measures, preapproved but outdated or nonfunctional designs not taking new geological and preapproved areas, not taking into account geological fault lines and problems newly discovered, as just one example.
Sixth, so many taxes are eliminated that there is no way the US government can pay for what is left, such as defense, infrastructure, education, public safety and the like. And no attempt to assess the consequences to the nation of the inability to furnish essential services which the nation is accustomed to receive from the federal government. It is not even clear that the DOD budget would be protected, and whether there would be enough money to pay for the portion of it constituting 'security', such as soldier wages and housing. Or 'security' in the nature of disaster relief.
Seventh, as to energy, this plan intends to exhaust the entire natural resources of the US at the earliest possible date, and to ensure that when these run out, the alternative energy businesses, who have been limited to basic research in the meantime will not be ready and able to fill in the gaps. Our children or grandchildren will be shivering in the dark. At the same time, of course, it says zilch about the many leases already granted but which the grantees are flat out not using, but banking, to no benefit whatever to the US or its residents, althoug it does indirectly refer to the TransCanada pipeline, which IS of no benefit to US residents outside of Texas since none of the oil for which all the risk is taken is staying in the US, and bears substantial ecological risks.
Eighth, he swears that this is a job creation plan but damned if I can see where, since not one corporation is required to use the many benefits it gets from this to create any US jobs at all in any time frame.
Ninth, he has promised a horrendous trade war with China as part of his dowry to America. Other than loving foreign corporations and foreign workers with advanced educations, he has no foreign policy at all.
Tenth, all of the social issues which concern others, and concern him this year at least, are not even mentioned in here, and this is the document and the program he is pushing so we are just stuck with whatever it turns out he really thinks about anything not mentioned, as to which he is not specific either.
Eleventh, if one conceives of the Federal government as a business, then its mission statement and its business plan have to make sense, and one never starts or continues a business with the premise that there will be no limit on costs incurred but a finite limit on the amount of money made available to pay those costs, all of which revenue is provided other than by those operating the business, with profit not being a goal, without any notion of contingent events, and a market which will be able to afford the goods and services of the business, and the wish to be served on a continuing basis by the business. None of that is here.
Perhaps a comparison of this with the Ryan Plan might be useful, to see which of them has the intention of more completely reducing the nation they claim to love to economic rubble, save for their seventeen or so huge business contributors.
Comments welcomed. I put this up, at least the intro, because I thought that the information needed to be made plainly visible anew to Kossacks for whatever purposes they choose.
I realize that a number of these matters have been individually discussed here, but since Romney is now waving his allegedly definitive and complete plan that he is sure nobody has actually read, based on his business expertise this may be a good time to pull out and examine some of its elements, including matters excluded, and discuss them. since we will be discussing parts of this in a few weeks in full voice anyway. Thinking as you do how to make your comments speak in that human, American, not really technocratic voice which more voters understand.