Romney 2012?

"There's only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare," Romney said. "Seven-hundred-sixteen billion dollars to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare."

As for the GOP’s claim that "the bill would add over $700 billion in red ink over the next decade," we judge it to be mostly bogus.

It rests largely on a claim that hundreds of billions of dollars in projected Medicare savings are being "double-counted." But CBO is simply not doing that.
The GOP’s $700 billion figure also includes more than $200 billion for a permanent "doctor fix" to prevent a cut in Medicare payments to doctors. But that is not even a part of the new law, and many Republicans endorse the "doctor fix" anyway.
The GOP claims the law will cost $115 billion to administer, but that isn’t true. CBO actually puts those costs at roughly $10 billion to $20 billion over the next 10 years.

ehBeth wrote:

What's the benefit of aggravating your host at a party?

When the host has millions of other guests and does a bad job at securing their safety? Maybe that the host gets shamed into shaping up. Coming from an Olympic city where bad security got 11 athletes killed by terrorists, I'd consider that a real benefit. Real enough that even a tiny chance of preventing a sequel would be worth an offended host.

Already, there is a curious bit of conventional wisdom taking hold that Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan is shrewd because it will draw attention from Romney's ever-more apparent weaknesses, notably the more rapacious elements of his work at Bain Capital and his undisclosed tax returns. Sorry, but this makes no sense. It seems hard to imagine a running mate who would jibe better with the Democrats' Bain Capital attacks than a well-born Ayn Rand acolyte. More crucially, it is hard to imagine a running mate who will draw more attention to the matter of Romney's taxes than Paul Ryan. Why? Because under the "Ryan plan" that made the congressman famous, Mitt Romney would pay zero taxes.

Don't believe it? Romney himself said so, just a few months ago. The Ryan plan -- formally, the "Roadmap for America's Future" -- "promotes saving by eliminating taxes on interest, capital gains, and dividends; also eliminates the death tax." Mitt Romney's income -- more than $20 million each of the past two years -- comes almost entirely from capital gains on his investments, or from "carried interest," a cut of Bain Capital profits that are taxed as capital gains (the infamous "hedge fund loophole.") His only major ordinary income was from the speaking fees he collected ($374,000, or "not much," as he put it.) This explains why his tax rate was only 13.9 percent last year -- because the capital gains rate is 15 percent, well below the top rate of 35 percent for ordinary income.

But if the capital gains was eliminated altogether? Well, let's let Romney explain the result in his own words, as he did at an NBC primary debate in January:

Hours before he plans to release his 2010 tax returns, Mitt Romney noted at the GOP debate in Tampa that under his opponent’s tax plan, he wouldn’t have paid any taxes at all. The moment came after Newt Gingrich joked about Romney’s 15 percent tax rate, saying: “I’m prepared to describe my flat tax as the Mitt Romney flat tax.”

Romney jumped in to ask: Do you tax capital gains at 15 percent or zero percent? Gingrich’s answer: Zero.

“Under that plan, I’d have paid no taxes in the last two years,” Romney said, alluding to the fact that all his income is from investments.

So, at the very moment when we're all tittering over Harry Reid's wild accusation that Romney paid no taxes for the past decade, Romney picks a running mate whose plan -- supported by virtually the entire GOP congressional caucus -- would have him paying, well, no taxes. I'm pretty sure that the Obama and Priorities USA ad-makers will be able to do something with this.

Not that they even need the Romney example, really. There is an easy broader case to be made against exempting capital gains, which are already taxed at a lower rate than they have been in decades (thanks partly to a certain former Democratic president.) Consider: over the past 20 years, more than 80 percent of all capital gains have gone to the top 5 percent of taxpayers and half have gone to the top one-tenth of a percent of taxpayers. It is the favorable treatment of capital gains that has helped drive income inequality to its current levels and that results in the 400 households with the highest income in the country paying such jarringly low tax rates. And Ryan wants to now eliminate the tax on this income entirely? Just seven months ago, Romney argued convincingly in his exchange with Newt that this was taking a good thing a bit too far. Now he's tied at the hip to the leading champion of this approach -- and has turned himself into the poster boy for why it's a terrible idea. In that sense, Ryan and Romney could hardly be more ill-suited to each other's needs: Romney puts an inconvenient face on the extremity of Ryan's plan, while Ryan's plan sheds even more light on Romney's taxes -- or the glaring lack thereof.

The $716 billion figure comes from the Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimate of the Republican proposal to repeal the law, though the office doesn’t back up the charge that Obama stole the money from the current Medicare budget. Rather, the savings slow the growth of Medicare over the next decade: eliminate overpayments to private insurers, reform provider payments to encourage greater efficiency, tie reimbursements to improvements in economic productivity, and reduce fraud and abuse.

As a result, “growth in spending will be restrained” and the life of the Medicare trust fund is expanded by eight years, the government estimates. Sixteen million seniors are also benefiting from the savings by receiving preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and saving more than $3.9 billion on prescription drugs.

The Ryan-backed GOP budet maintains these cuts, but rather than using them to improve the Medicare program, it applies the savings to pay for massive tax cuts. As the budget chairman himself admitted during an April 5, 2011 speech at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “We retain the Medicare savings” — and that’s not all. The Republican blueprint transforms the existing Medicare benefit guarantee into a premium support program that would provide seniors with depreciating vouchers to buy insurance from private plans.

The Ryan-backed GOP budet maintains these cuts, but rather than using them to improve the Medicare program, it applies the savings to pay for massive tax cuts.

You people really underestimate just how stupid americans are.

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You people really underestimate just how stupid americans are.

I don't underestimate how stupid YOU are.

Cycloptichorn

I don't like Krumple because she always calls me out on my bullshit and lies I try to spread to support Obama.

There is a reason the country evenly split on who should win and that is because both candidates are exactly the same.

There is a reason the country evenly split on who should win and that is because both candidates are exactly the same.

I don't like Krumple because she always calls me out on my bullshit and lies I try to spread to support Obama.

You invite it on yourself, thanks to your penchant for throwing around lies in political threads, and then cowardly refusing to admit it when you were shown to be wrong.

You can think whatever you want about it, but until you're willing to admit that you make things up instead of doing, yaknow, even an ounce of actual research, don't expect to be taken seriously.

And, I love this -

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There is a reason the country evenly split on who should win and that is because both candidates are exactly the same.

This is the exact sort of thing that idiots who can't be bothered to do research spout off, because they think it makes them sound smart and cynical.

I see you edited this in:

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I don't like Krumple because she always calls me out on my bullshit and lies I try to spread to support Obama.

You've never once called me out on anything, so why would you write that? Not only that, you incorrectly seem to believe that laws preventing third parties from running for Prez exist, when they don't; and you don't have the guts to admit you were wrong. That's not impressive.

Cycloptichorn

I mean if it isn't true then what's the point in engaging me?

All you can do is use ad hominems? ROFL

Like anyone gives a **** about your opinion at all. However, it is often diverting to be able to thwack a fool with a stick.

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I mean if it isn't true then what's the point in engaging me?

Because you're a fool and you deserve to be told to your face more often. If you don't like it, stop posting in threads that you don't know anything about.

Feel free to come back with something relevant to the thread - if you can be bothered to look anything up and report on something topical or interesting. Otherwise, I think I'll just let this little diversion die out.

Cycloptichorn

Foreign Cash Disqualifies Romney from Presidential Bid

No other American presidential candidate has ever left the US to garner campaign contributions from foreign citizens.

There is a reason for this, one Romney and his staff seem oblivious to and the mainstream media has ignored.

Using foreign contributions in any American election is a felony.

Here, Fox News identifies illegal fundraising in both Israel and in London, no doner is identified, no records are kept:

If you go outside the US, if you stay inside the US, if your contributor is living in the US but not a citizen, any money you get can mean years in jail.

For Romney, he went the whole way, outside the US, foreign citizens, and while traveling humiliated himself and his country with his ignorance and his attempts to trade illegal cash for promises of illegal war. One could hardly break more laws if one wanted.

Romney raised millions in foreign cash at fundraisers across Israel. One table alone gave him a million in cash. None was from American citizens. Fewer than 10% of Romney’s contributors in Israel are estimated to be “dual citizens.”

Would be nice if this turns out to be true!

Quote:

Foreign Cash Disqualifies Romney from Presidential Bid

No other American presidential candidate has ever left the US to garner campaign contributions from foreign citizens.

There is a reason for this, one Romney and his staff seem oblivious to and the mainstream media has ignored.

Using foreign contributions in any American election is a felony.

Here, Fox News identifies illegal fundraising in both Israel and in London, no doner is identified, no records are kept:

If you go outside the US, if you stay inside the US, if your contributor is living in the US but not a citizen, any money you get can mean years in jail.

For Romney, he went the whole way, outside the US, foreign citizens, and while traveling humiliated himself and his country with his ignorance and his attempts to trade illegal cash for promises of illegal war. One could hardly break more laws if one wanted.

Romney raised millions in foreign cash at fundraisers across Israel. One table alone gave him a million in cash. None was from American citizens. Fewer than 10% of Romney’s contributors in Israel are estimated to be “dual citizens.”

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/08/12/foreign-cash-disqualifies-romney-from-presidential-bid/