Rod Boshart, CR Gazette –
DES MOINES – Presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney unleashed a scathing attack on President Obama’s economic policies Tuesday, blaming Obama for creating a “financial crisis of debt and spending” that threatens the future for many Americans.
“A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation and every day we fail to act we feed that fire with our own lack of resolve,” Romney told an overflow crowd of more than 200 Iowans during a campaign event at the Hotel Fort Des Moines. “This is not a Democratic or Republican problem. That fire could care less if you have a donkey or an elephant in your front lawn, it’s still coming for your house.”
Romney, a former Massachusetts governor making his first appearance in Iowa since he essentially nailed down his party’s 2012 presidential nomination, conceded there is plenty of blame to go around for both political parties since the onset of recessionary problems in 2008. However, he noted that “America’s Nightmare Mortgage” of national debt has grown by more than $5 trillion under Obama’s watch to a staggering $15.7 trillion in government debt and unfunded liabilities with no sign of a solution – equating to more than $520,000 per household.
“Rather than put out the spending fire, he has fed the fire” with government spending and borrowing, he said.
“President Obama started his days in office with the trillion-dollar stimulus package – the biggest, most careless one-time expenditure by the federal government in history,” Romney added. “And remember this: the stimulus wasn’t just wasted – it was borrowed and wasted. We still owe the money, we’re still paying interest on it, and it’ll be that way long after this presidency ends in January.”
Romney also attributed financial uncertainty that American businesses are facing to the passage of the “Obamacare” revamp of health-care and insurance provisions that he said still carries an unknown price tag that is stifling U.S. economic growth and responsible for “the most tepid recovery” in modern history.
“Employers aren’t hiring, entrepreneurs are worried, all because of a massive, European-style entitlement that Americans didn’t want and can’t afford,” he said.
“Today America faces a financial crisis of debt and spending that threatens what it means to be an American,” Romney said. “Here in the heartland, you know in your hearts that it’s wrong. We can’t spend another four years talking about solving a problem that we only make worse every day. When the men and women who settled the Iowa prairie saw a fire in the distance, they didn’t look around for someone else to save them or go back to sleep hoping the wind might blow another direction. They knew their fate was in their hands and so it is today.”
If elected this November, Romney said he would offer a different approach to “lead us out of this spending and borrowing inferno” once he was sworn in as president in January 2013.
Romney said his experience in private-sector business, as governor of Massachusetts and as leader of the committee that organized the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City taught him to hold every department and agency to a simple test: If something can be done better and more efficiently outside of government, “then that’s where it belongs.”
“Wherever we have the option of returning functions back to the states, to local governments, or, better still, to the private sector, that’s what we will do,” he said. “We will make the federal government simpler, smaller, smarter – and, by the way, more in keeping with the vision of the Framers of our Constitution.”
By contrast, Romney called Obama “an old-school liberal” who has a “static big-government mindset” replete with limits and regulations that thwart creativity, innovation and expansion.
“What President Obama is doing is not bold. It’s old,” he told his receptive audience. “Disappointment is the key in which the President’s re-election is being played. Americans will not settle for four more years of the same melancholy song. We can and we must do better.”
However, a group of Obama supporters gathered at a site near Romney’s speech venue Tuesday to bash Romney’s record as head of Bain Capital where the philosophy was to “put profits ahead of people,” criticize his support for policies that could hurt elderly Iowans’ access to Social Security and Medicare benefits, and potentially make the debt work via proposed tax policy changes that could reduce federal revenue.
“Mitt’s record in business isn’t one of growing companies and creating jobs, it’s one of broken promises and the shattered dreams of thousands of Americans,” said Ken Sagar, president of the Iowa Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO. “In a career of buying and selling companies, Romney’s pattern was to reap quick profits for himself and his investors at the expense of workers and communities. Sometimes it meant sending American jobs overseas. Other times, it meant cutting wages and benefits.”
Midge Slater with Iowa Alliance for Retired Americans worried about the future of Social Security and Medicare under a Romney administration, while Morgan Miller, a recent University of Iowa graduate, said she was concerned interest on her student loan debt would spike under GOP leadership.
“Romney is the last person who should be lecturing Americans about debt and reckless spending. Mitt Romney has no credibility on controlling debt given his $5 trillion tax plan that would blow a hole in the budget, his private-sector record of piling debt on companies and his public sector record of running up debt on constituents,” said Michael Hunt, communications director with the Iowa Democratic Party. “Once again, the Romney rhetoric does not match the Romney record.”
To counter the six paid commercials the Obama campaign already has posted in Iowa – among the key swing states in the 2012 presidential campaign – the Romney campaign released a Web video entitled “A few of the 23 million” that featured Iowans talking about how they have suffered under Obama economic policies since 2009. According to the video, there are 23 million Americans out of work, underemployed or who have given up on looking for work and the three featured Iowans were chosen to put “stories behind the statistics.”
Outside Romney’s speech venue, a small band of protesters chanted “Tax the rich; jail the bankers” and waved placards with messages like “Romney: king of vulture capitalism” and “corporations are not people.”
common sense you speak common sense. Romney is so full of shite that he’ll need a new pair o’ magic undies before leaving the Hotel…
If he had given that speech when Bush was adding 5 trillion to the debt and the prescription entitlement program I might believe him.