Campaign Literature
On Oct. 23, 2012 Obama for America issued a 20-page booklet "The New Economic Patriotism: A Plan for Jobs & Middle Class Security."  The Romney campaign responded with a memo from Policy Director Lanhee Chen, PhD:




MEMO: PRESIDENT OBAMA HAS NOT LAID OUT A SECOND-TERM AGENDA – BUT WE KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY WILL DO
By Policy Director Lanhee Chen

As Republicans, Democrats, and third-party observers have noted, in the course of four debates, our opponents didn’t lay out an agenda.  But, if re-elected, we know exactly what they will do. We already know what four more years of the last four years will look like.

The Obama campaign today is publishing a glossy 20-page pamphlet that purports to be an agenda for a second term. But a glossy pamphlet two weeks before an election is no substitute for a real agenda for America. As much as President Obama might try, you can’t gloss over four years like the last four. And you can’t fool the American people into thinking you have a real plan for the future when all you are offering is more of the same. Instead of offering a plan to get our economy back on track and create new jobs, President Obama has just offered them another four years like the last four years.  The President re-proposes policies that have already proven ineffective and repeats discredited allegations against Governor Romney.  Coming just 14 days before Election Day, this is further proof of the intellectual bankruptcy of the Obama Administration – they simply have nothing new to offer to the American people.

Manufacturing

While the President brags about jobs created in the last 31 months, he seems to want all of us to forget that since he took office 45 months ago, we’ve lost 610,000 manufacturing jobs and the United States has lost its position as the world’s leading manufacturer.  What’s the President’s plan to turn this around? Eliminate a deduction for moving jobs overseas that the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation has said simply doesn’t exist. While we agree that we should reform the corporate tax code and lower the tax rate, in four years in office the President has done nothing more than offer a vague, 25-page outline that fell far short of an actionable reform plan. After four years in office, this is the opposite of Presidential leadership.

Mitt Romney has a plan to revitalize American manufacturing by producing more domestic energy, which will require more equipment to produce the energy and will lower energy costs, which are a key cost of doing business for manufacturers.

He will also stand up to cheating by our trading partners.  On Day One, he will designate China a currency manipulator and start protecting American intellectual property rights so American know-how and designs are not stolen by unscrupulous competitors.

Mitt will also make trade work for American manufacturers by getting America off the sidelines in global trade, where we’ve been languishing under the Obama Administration.  Since America signed its last international trade agreement during the Bush Administration, Chinese and European Union leaders have negotiated or signed agreements with 48 countries. And the Census Bureau had concluded that trade grew three times faster from 2004 to 2008 than it has from 2008 to today.

Energy

The President claims to be pursuing an all-of-the-above energy strategy, but the record shows that he’s really pursuing a policy of picking winners and losers in his favored green energy sector. While he’s pumped billions of taxpayer dollars into failed investments in companies like Solyndra, Fisker, and Ener1, coal employment and production has been falling and energy production on federal lands is down. Oil production on federal lands was down 14% last year, natural gas production has dropped 9% last year, and leasing and permitting for energy production on federal lands has declined by half during the Obama administration.”

Mitt Romney knows that a true all-of-the above energy strategy requires a comprehensive approach that includes responsible development of all of our natural resources: coal, natural gas, oil, and renewables. He’s offered a detailed plan to make North American energy independent by the end of this decade and to provide safe, reliable, and affordable energy supplies to American consumers, farmers, and manufacturers.

Small Business

For small businesses, the best the President can do is to promise not to raise taxes on some of them and even this claim is dubious given the exploding debt and deficits under the President’s budget. What the President doesn’t reveal is that his plan to raise taxes on successful small business will hit nearly 1 million firms and result in 710,000 fewer jobs according to an independent analysis by Ernst & Young. And the crushing burden of regulations already put in place by the Obama Administration and those that are coming in a second term is impeding small business growth.

Mitt Romney’s plan to champion small business will lower tax rates on every small business across-the-board. On Day One he will begin the repeal of Obamacare, which three-quarters of small business owners in a recent survey said was an obstacle from them from hiring new workers. And Mitt will stop the increases in regulation that are tangling job creators in red tape.

Education

President Obama’s proposals for education are more of the same – more money for teachers’ unions, more debt for college kids, and more top-down rules from Washington on local schools. Under President Obama, there’s been almost no progress in improving the quality of education, college tuitions are up 25%, student debt has topped $1 trillion, and half of recent college graduates are unable to find a job matching their skills or any job at all.

Mitt Romney has a real plan to give a chance to every child and to ensure that every American has the skills they need to succeed.  As president, he will pursue genuine education reform that puts the interests of parents and students ahead of special interests. He will take the unprecedented step of tying federal funds directly to dramatic reforms that expand parental choice, invest in innovation, and reward teachers for their results instead of their tenure. These policies will equip state leaders to achieve the change that can only come from commitment and action at the local level. He will also ensure that students have diverse and affordable options for higher education to give them the skills they need to succeed after graduation and that, when they graduate, they can find jobs that provide a rewarding return on their educational investment.

Deficit Reduction

The President repeats his brazen and false claim that he has a plan to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion. In fact, as independent fact checkers have concluded that number simply doesn’t hold up. Instead of living up to his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term, the President has instead racked up the four straight trillion-dollar deficits. Instead of slowing the growth of the national debt, President Obama has added more than $5.5 trillion to that debt. And the reality of the President’s budget plan for the future is illustrated perfectly by this chart from his own budget:

By contrast, Mitt Romney has a plan for a smaller, simpler, smarter government that puts the country on the path to a balanced budget within 10 years. On Day One, Mitt Romney will submit a bill that will reduce non-security discretionary spending by 5%. This is a first step in reversing the dramatic expansion of federal spending during the Obama Administration. Since 1946, federal spending has on average been 19.9% of the economy. During the Obama Administration, federal spending has hovered around 24% of the economy. To address this dramatic expansion in the size of government, Mitt Romney will cap federal spending at 20% of the economy, returning us to pre-Obama levels of spending. He put forward a complete plan for putting the country back on the path to a balanced budget here.
 
Health Care

After signing into law a government takeover of the health care system, the President has the gall to claim that he’s “putting you in charge of your health care.” Since President Obama took office, health care premiums have risen by over $3,000 a family and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that up to 20 million Americanswill be forced out of their health insurance because of Obamacare.  Rather than acknowledging the failure of Obamacare, he’s doubling down on the $1.7 trillion in new spending and nearly $1 trillion in new taxes. And for today’s Medicare beneficiaries, Obamacare means $716 billion in cuts to fund Obamacare and reduced access to care.

Mitt Romney will on Day One begin the repeal of Obamacare and start the process of replacing it with patient-centered reforms that really will put you in charge of your health care. He’ll restore the $716 billion Medicare raid so that today’s seniors get the care they earned with no changes for anyone in or near retirement. For future seniors he will strengthen Medicare by introducing choice and competition so that the program is there when it is time for them to retire. He will block grant Medicaid to the states where they can more efficiently meet the medical care needs of their populations. And he will reform the health care system to put individuals, doctors, and their families at the center of decision making.

Retirement

Finally on retirement programs, the President’s plan is laughable. With both Social Security and Medicare on the path to insolvency, the President has proposed to do nothing.  The Social Security and Medicare Trustees have concluded that doing nothing – the President’s plan – will result in seniors seeing their Social Security benefits cut by 25% in 2033 and that the Medicare Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted in 2024.  As President-elect Obama acknowledged in early 2009, we can’t kick the can down the road any further. But rather than offering an honest proposal to protect and strengthen these programs, the President offers just more empty promises.

Mitt Romney has proposed plans to save and strengthen Social Security and Medicare that will make no changes in the program for those in or near retirement, will not raise taxes on anyone, and will save these programs so that future generations can depend on them.
 

Conclusion

President Obama’s latest pamphlet offers no hope to struggling Americans that the next four years will be any better than the last four years. For almost a year, Mitt Romney has traveled the country offering a positive vision for how to turn the country around starting with his 160-page Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth and his white papers on education, energy, jobs, and housing, which are all finally encapsulated in his 5-point Plan for a Stronger Middle Class. Mitt Romney will not settle for the disappointments of the last four years and the slowest economic recovery since the Great Depression. He believes in America and knows we can achieve greater things.