Gary Johnson would have a chance if people voted solely on issues and not Party Brand

I have to laugh at this....the good old "But it's right there on his website!!!" defense...

I guarantee Obamacare doesn't get repealed at all...rather stripped down to an advanced version of Romneycare...mark this post so you can come back to it later to tell me "You were right Krypt"...

 

A review of Romney's proposal for national health care are fundamentally the same as the provisions in "Obamacare" as they include a State/Private partnership for insurance, prohibitions agianst denying insurance based upon pre-existing conditions, insurance for young adults in their parents health insurance, subsidies for low income workers to obtain insurance and Medicaid to provide a safety net. The only thing lacking from Romney that is included in "Obamacare" are funding provisions. Romney hasn't said how he would pay for his plan.

 

Gingrich Congress slashing the deficit is vastly superior to Obama exploding the deficit. But your ideology blinds you from seeing the difference.

 

Ooh...this could be fun....please...do tell...what is my ideology???

 

Well if Obama gets elected he will work to expand it. Even if all Romney is able to accomplish is to strip it down, that is better for our country than our current course. It appears you agree that there are significant differences between Romney and Obama. One working for less government and the other wanting to expand it as much as he can get away with.

 

It also doesnt hurt that during the Gingrich congress tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was above the 60 year average of 18% from '94 to 2000. Imagine if they actually cut more spending we could have had a real deficit (not just a phony one by having stuff off budget and playing accounting games)and used the surplus to pay down the debt. I say it was a phony deficit because the debt increased every year under Clinton, that only happens if you are borrowing money.

Now that thats out of the way, what does Gingrich have to do with Romney aside from a loose party affiliation? Romney's record in Massachusetts is not one I would be proud of. He had to balance the budget as it was in the state constitution. He did that by raising fees and taxes on businesses as well as cutting aid to local governments which just leads to higher property taxes, and higher education which leads to higher tuition prices. None of those are really reductions in state government size. Also adopting Romneycare and using government force to dictate insurance and healthcare is decidedly non conservative. Its also no surprise that after enacting it in his last year deficits came right back, good of him to get out before the effects can be attributed to his performance.

 

I was asked to give an example of the GOP reducing deficit spending.

This would equate to the Feds propping up the states. We need less federal involvement at the state level. Local governments have the option of reducing their size or raising their own funds. We need less local governments sucking at the teet of the federal government.

If people want government services they should be paying for them. If you were a libertarian you would support people paying for their own government services as opposed to the government providing them for free.

Good for Romney for significant reductions in the size of government in such a liberal state. Good for Romney for taking a deficit and turning it into a surplus.

 

Both the Romney and Obama budget proposals for 2013 have roughly $1 trillion in deficit spending. Romney does not propose shrinking the size of our government nor does Obama. Neither Romney or Obama propose a balanced budget in the future. Even when it comes the "Health Care Reform" there is virtually no difference in what Romney is proposing and what "Obamacare" already covers except that Romney's proposals lack any source of funding.

There is virtually no significant difference between Romney and Obama on the major issues.

 

Could you post a link to Romney's budget proposal for 2013? You clearly got his health care proposal completely wrong as he wants Obamacare overturned. Sounds like you're getting your bad info from an Obama site.

 

Romney is somewhat sketchy on his budget and has basically adopted Ryan's "The Path To Prosperity" proposal. When this proposal was reviewed by Fact Check here are some of the comments:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...yan-budget-plan/2011/04/05/AFIaZpnC_blog.html

Basically the Romney/Ryan budget proposals are based upon pure BS and even with that they wouldn't result in a balanced budget for decades. We can generally assume that if deficit spending continues until at least 2040 that the national debt is going to at least double.

Specific to 2013 there isn't much difference between the House (Ryan) budget and the Obama budget for total expendatures but Obama proposed tax revenue increases (e.g. the expiration of the Bush era tax cuts and an additional tax on incomes in excess of $1 million) which would have resulted in a lower total deficit. As it stand now the Obama budget, according to the CBO, would generate about $1.1 trillion in deficits for 2013 and the House budget would be roughly the same.

 

Not according the Romney's statements on his website.

This is based upon limiting expendatures to revenues which will automatically reduce benefits because Medicaid isn't paying the full cost of benefits today. It fails to address the revenue shortfall which would require increasing revenues.

Most private insurance regulation is controlled by the States, not the federal government. Does Romney propose overriding private insurance regulations imposed by the States? As for Medicaid coverage this is basically a statement that Romney proposes to cut benefits which is highly opposed by most Americans.

The "health insurance exchanges" under the ACA are already established so there is nothing different here. Additionally the ACA provides subsidies for those that need assistance to obtain insurance through the exchanges. What's missing here is that Romney hasn't proposed a means for funding the subsidies. Perhaps he plans on deficit spending to accomplish this.

This has already been done by the provisions in the ACA.

A nice throught so long as this doesn't compromise the rights of the consumer. Most private insurance companies already have a dispute resolution alternative if people choose to use it. Of course the right of the individual to seek resolution in a court of law should not be denied and what is being suggested is an option and not a replacement for civil litigation of compliants.

This refers to punative damages and there is some basis for this but the caps should not prevent the "damages" awarded from being "punitive" related to the malpractice. In short, if there is a billion dollar hospital responsible for male practice the punative damages have to be enough to actually "punish" the hospital financially.

Additionally "pain and suffering" generally is addressed by punitive damages today and this would need to be excluded from the cap and should fall under compensatory damages. A person should be compensated when the actions of another cause pain and suffering including emotional pain and suffering.

The ACA addressed this already as insurance pools for small business are to be set-up.

Covered by the ACA.

Covered by the ACA (although I can also see this as an invasion of privacy potentially violating the 4th Amendment).

There are a few more issues that Romney addresses and a couple do have merit but we must also remember that President Obama is also looking for improvements to the ACA which could easily include some of the suggestions Romney is making.

http://www.mittromney.com/issues/health-care

Remember that I OPPOSE THE ACA but I also oppose many of Romney's proposals that are already a part of the ACA as noted above. Where Romney's proposals fail is that he's not defining any revenue to pay for the same things that are in the ACA where the ACA did propose revenue to pay for the expendatures even though I find the accounting practices used for the ACA dubious at best.

 

Yes, I knew that Romney didn't have a full budget proposal for 2013 and knew you were intentionally fudging reality with that statement. Concerning the Ryan proposal, it contains vastly less spending and vastly less debt than Obama's budget so to suggest they are roughly the same is completely dishonest. Debt as a % of gdp goes down considerably with Ryan's plan. Compare the following graphs:

http://bipartisanpolicy.org/blog/2012/03/paul-ryan’s-fiscal-year-2013-budget-details

 

The only budget proposal by Romney for 2013 is the House (Ryan) budget. The only thing we know from Romney is that he supports continued deficits for 2013 and would like to increase future deficits by cutting taxation predominately for the wealthy.

What we can note is that Romney's making a lot of promises that he simply can't keep when it comes to expendatures and taxation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ions-of-how-to-pay-for-campaign-promises.html

 

The only budget proposal by Romney for 2013 is the House (Ryan) budget. The only thing we know from Romney is that he supports continued deficits for 2013 and would like to increase future deficits by cutting taxation predominately for the wealthy.

What we can note is that Romney's making a lot of promises that he simply can't keep when it comes to expendatures and taxation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-...ions-of-how-to-pay-for-campaign-promises.html

 

Romney went to Israel and praised their socialist healthcare and said we need it here in America.

 

He praised the low amount they were able to spend on health-care. He did not say we needed socialist health-care. More lies.

 

No lie. Simple logic. He got Obamacare passed in Massachusetts five years before Obama got it passed nationwide. He wants to repeal and replace Obamacare. If he praises a particular plan as fantastic, it's not hard to accept that it is more than likely what it'll get replaced with.

But let's talk about how Romney said Israel's low costs are great thanks to the huge role their government took in forcing people to buy insurance.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgpWox1wHMw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

In referring to the following chart from the link we have to remember a couple of things.



First of all the Ryan budget projections are based upon Paul Ryan assumptions where the CBO has already stated that they were unrealistic and based upon unlikely and improbably assumptions. Spending will not, for example, be in the 19% of GDP range, unemployment will not drop to the 2% range, and the job creation projected simply won't happen because of the effect of the national debt on the economy which is going to lower GDP growth considerably. In short the chart is reflecting Ryan BS and not reality.

Next is the fact that we're still reflecting deficit spending under either Ryan's or Obama's projections and that is completely unacceptable. We can't afford to be sitting on $22-$25 trillion of debt in 2020.

 

First it was "I will repeal Obamacare!!"

Then it was "I will repeal and REPLACE Obamacare!!"

Now it's "Well, I'm not getting rid of all of...

 

Republicans have got to be the stupidest people in this country. Democrats, at least, are true to their platform. Republicans are the only party that consistently elect politicians that are AGAINST the stated party platform. And they admit it, but idiot Republicans will still vote for them.

The absolute stupidity is mind-boggling.