Tonight's presidential debate is the first of three and Robert Reich has compiled some pointed questions ..."Governor Romney: You've said that you have used every legal method to reduce your tax liability..."
Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)
Questions Unlikely to Be Asked Tonight
03 October 12
overnor Romney: You've said that you have used every legal method to reduce your tax liability. You've also said that as president you would close tax loopholes in order to help finance a major across-the-board tax cut. What specific tax loopholes have you used that you would close? A followup: Would you close the loophole that allows private-equity managers to treat their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax, even when they risk no capital of their own?
President Obama: You have spoken eloquently of the need to reduce the influence of big money in politics. What specific measures will you advance if you are reelected to accomplish this goal?
Governor Romney: You have promised to repeal the Dodd-Frank bill if you're elected. Yet our largest Wall Street banks are significantly larger than they were before the near meltdown of 2008. How would you prevent another bank from being too big to fail?
President Obama: The Dallas Federal Reserve Board, one of the most conservative in the nation, has called for a limit to the size of Wall Street banks. Sanford Weill, the creator of Citigroup - one of the largest Wall Street banks - says Wall Street banks should be broken up. If you are reelected, will you support capping the size of Wall Street banks?
Governor Romney: You have said you'd repeal the Affordable Care Act if you're elected. That would leave 30 million Americans without health insurance. You championed a small version of the Affordable Care Act in Massachusetts. Does that mean you believe it's more efficient for each state to have its own system for insuring the uninsured?
President Obama: Last December, in a speech you gave in Osawatomie, Kansas, you noted that in the last few decades the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent, to $1.2 million per year. For the top one hundredth of 1 percent, the average income is now $27 million per year. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by 6 percent. If you're reelected president, what do you propose to do about this trend?
Governor Romney: Your mathematics has been attacked by those who say it's impossible to provide the tax cut you propose; expand the military, as you want to do; preserve Medicare and Social Security, as you promise to do; and at the same time balance the federal budget, as you say you'll do. Can you take us through the math, please, with specific numbers?
President Obama: You have called for equal marriage rights for gay Americans. If you're reelected, will you support repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act?
Governor Romney: You support states' rights, and don't support wealth redistribution. Yet as you know, the citizens of most so-called "blue" states - notably California, New York, and Massachusetts - send more federal tax revenue to Washington than they receive back from Washington, while most of the citizens of "red" states send less tax revenue to Washington than their citizens receive back. Would you, as president, seek to end this subsidy of red states by blue states?
President Obama: In the 2008 campaign you and your opponent, Senator McCain, both supported some version of a "cap and trade" system for limiting emissions of carbon into the atmosphere. During the last four years, evidence has mounted that climate change may be doing irreversible damage to the planet. If you are reelected, will you push for a "cap and trade" system, or a carbon tax, or both?
Governor Romney: America has had some very wealthy men elected president. Your wealth is estimated to be more than a quarter of a billion dollars. The wealthy men elected president - a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt; Franklin D. Roosevelt; and John F. Kennedy - all fought for equal opportunity, reduced the power of large corporations and Wall Street, and gave average working Americans more economic security. Do you share these objectives, and, if you're elected president, what will you do to achieve them? Please be specific.
President Obama: TARP authorized not only a bailout of Wall Street banks but help to distressed homeowners. You chose not to condition the bailout of Wall Street on the banks reducing the amount people owed on their mortgages. In hindsight, do you think that was a mistake? A follow up question, if I may: It is estimated that one in five American families is still underwater - owing more on their home mortgages than their homes are worth. So far your efforts to help them have fallen far short of the goals you set. If you are reelected, what specific measures will you initiate do more for these families?
Governor Romney: You have campaigned as a "businessman" who has the managerial experience to turn the economy around. Yet some say you've run one of the worst campaigns in recent memory - filled with gaffes, misstatements, poor timing, Clint Eastwood, and much else. Conservative columnist Peggy Noonan, for example, calls your campaign a "calamity." Should Americans be concerned about your management abilities?
President Obama: You faced a particularly truculent Republican congress. But some say you didn't fight Republicans hard enough during your first term, that you often began negotiations with compromises, and you didn't use the full powers of your office to get more of what you wanted. Do you think there's any validity to this criticism and, if so, what will you do differently in your second term?
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Comments
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There are alternatives but we will never get to them unless they become part of the discussion and recognize that the two main economic schools have failed to get at either the root causes of our economic problems (just look at the decline in growth rates since the early 1070s which is a reflection of the decline in the rate of profit capital gets on its investment)or offer alternate "solutions" as opposed to continuing to offer us policies and practices that have been tried and proven to be completely ineffective.
You know darn well that neither candidate will endorse any economic theory, especially in a short debate designed to bring out the headline grabbing soundbite. Especially the mistake.
However, I am not clear on what would have worked in the 70's. From my perspective, we had a fired up war fueled economy suddenly without any fuel. Once the war stopped there was a lot of labor dumped back into the market, while at the same time there was considerable social change occurring. Women were entering the workforce adding to the labor pressure, Civil rights was opening up more opportunities and pressures for blacks to move up in corporate hierarchy.
At the same time that the labor pool was expanding, government outlays were diminishing. The Johnson administration' s War on Poverty which probably should have been started after Viet Nam, was being defunded by the Republicans and Southern Democrats. Nixon responded with Price Controls, never a good long term solution, and then under Ford Whip Inflation Buttons. Nixon also picked a bad time to disentangle us from the Gold Standard. Again, the right thing in the long run. Since there was no fiscal tightening from the Fed but a sudden increase in the money supply, pent up demand from price controls; inflation exploded out of control. The 70's was not a Keynsian disaster it was mismangement.
I agree that there has been plenty of mismanagment on all sides but both keysnian deficit spending as well as free market trickle down or whatever terms one would use to describe both policies have been tried and failed to do what their proponents claimed they would do; namely, restore economic growth and counter the falling profit rate (the latter being i believe the root cause of capitals problems globally).
the alternative, perhaps (a much longer discussion) is to suggest that there are some sectors of the economy that should not be 'run' (managed) based on the paradigms of growth and profit. So, for example, if we agree that there needs to be an adequate supply of "affordable housing" but that in the end this cannot be done so that it garnishes the type of profit that private capital wants/needs then this is where the state can step in since many of the "services" it provides do not need to be run on a for-profit basis in order to have significant benefits (multipliers) for the economy as a whole.
Unfortunately, this board does not provide the space to have the kind of seious and substantive discussions we need to be having in this country but at the very least it does provide us an opportunity to question and pose questions to others that need to be put out there and hopefully will at least get people thining.
suppose, while taking us off the gold standard, nixon also declared an end to all payroll taxes and instead the federal gov't would provide these funds to directly to the states as a grant. this would have immediatley put alot more money into the hands of consumers (thus creating the aggregate demand Keynsians want and say is necessary) while at the same time eliminating the fiscal problems of the states so that they did not have to impose "austerity" at the state and local level. Finally, what would have happened if the federal gov't had said that the federal gov't would offer anyone a job who could not find one in the private sector and thus create full employment? finally, what if a publicly owned-controlle d federal bank had been created so that the federal gov't did not have to borrow money (at interest) from the private sector)?
these policies are neither keynsian nor free market trickle down and i believe are doable precisely because we left the gold standard (and thus the gov't can print its own currency debt free and does not have to borrow from anyone other than itself).
whatever you or others think about the specifics here the larger point is that we need to be much better at articulating economic alternatives that go beyond what i think have been the equally failed policies of both the left and right variants of mainstream economics.
Thanks for explaining what you mean by another option. From my perspective the key item you are discussing is the establishment of a central federal bank. Followed by federal partial management of supply in particular industries in order to minimize risk to the entire economy. I would guess that the industries managed would vary over time. Is that a fair synopsis?
What you are talking about is a complete, comprehensive re-evaluation or possibly an invention of US economic policy. I say invention because as you probably know, we don't really have an economic policy, which is why we have periods of turmoil such as depression, inflation , recession, high unemployment, low unemployment, bubbles, and crashes. (there are more, but you get the point)
Unfortunately, we are stuck in a spinning wheels universe for economic policy. So we end up talking about the symptoms such as the debt. Or we attack problem backwards, by claining we cannot afford to put people to work because unemployment is too high. The same argument is used against educating people. The conversation is insane and rarely explained by either side. Both sides believe the other should just see how simple it all is, why explain? I know I am guilty of that.
Back to Reich's point that there are questions unasked, that is because our election process is too long, and trivialized so much that when it comes time to talk about what counts, it already over except for the soundbite battle.
i think you pretty fairly summarized what i was trying to get at. While i think Keynes was right as far as deficit spending the problem is that this spending does not in the end solve capitalism's profitability problem which is why i think we need to be talking about what sectors of the economy perhaps should not be run based on maximizing profit or even profit as a whole...this would at least as you put it minimize the risk to the economy as a whole as well as guarantee that the goods and services we believe all should have access to (health care, education, housing...we could debate the specifics) are not subject to the ups and downs of the private markets. this is also why i think it is in some ways foolish to continually push for new regulations on finance since they will always find ways around them rather than say "if you want to play, play with your own money but we're not going to let you play with ours as we have better, more important and productive things we want to do with our resources.
I pretty much agree with your economic points. Especially your point about regulations. What you describe, is what I call smaller government. Smaller government does not mean it is involved less in protecting the people inside it's jurisdiction. It means the protection is clear, simple and based on sound principles. In my mind that is what Jefferson meant by the government that governs best, governs least. The result is less court backlog, lawyers do not consume a major portion of government and private sector wealth.
if we can't even get this kind of discussion on what is in theory a "progressive" board then why should we expect this discussion to be taken up at the national level. we've gotta start it and build it from the ground up and we have to be able to clearly and simply articulate genuine progressive alternatives that are "doable" (which doesn't mean they will be easy to implement just that they are in fact not "rocket science"
I agree that some of the solutions proposed above are very interesting and should be addressed as a broader way to change our lopsided system. If the private sector and the public sector are out of balance our whole system collapses.
Something else that bothers me is that we assume that we can have a 3(5,7 you pick)% growth rate indefinitely - this is not feasible or even logical or sustainable. Doubling our economy every 10 -15 years is not realistic. maybe our expectations are out of whack?
I am arguing though that the fed can in fact "print" this money without it having the end of the world doom and gloom inflation or devaluation of our currency as is typically pushed by both left and right "mainstream" economic schools. Japan, for example, has been running far larger deficits than we have for more than a decade and it has had no effect on either the value of their currency or inflation. And, the US itself has issued trillions in "new dollar" also with no effect on the value of the dollar or inflation. so, the question is not deficit or no deficit but rather how big or how small in order to produce the goals we should be going after; namely, full employment and the production of sufficient goods and services for all.
For those that are interested in the economic theory behind some of this do a bit of your own research on something called "Modern Monetary (or Money) Theory" ...a relatively new book on this school of thought has recently been published
http://www.amazon.com/Modern-Money-Theory-Macroeconomics-Sovereign/dp/0230368891/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1349298059&sr=8-1&keywords=modern+monetary+theory
or check out the web/blog site of Fred Moseley http://moslereconomics.com/
and his 7 deadly innocent frauds of economic policy (this short book is free on his site).
I would argue that Keynsianism did not work even in the 30s (though i would have supported the new deal then as i support a new green new deal today). The new deal did not get us out of the depression...yo u could argue that world war II did (although this would be "military keynsianism" which i don't think is what we should be supporting)...a lthough even this is debatable (it put people back to work i.e., through the military and its industrial suppliers but it did not return the system as a whole to the kind of growth and rates of profit that existed before the depression)...f urther, keynsian policies were not then really used after the war until the 1970s where they were a complete failure (which is not to say that right wing free market policies worked and i certainly don't support these in any way) as our poor growth rates and profitability problems since then have clearly demonstrated.
So, if we are to talk about "keynsian" type policies (i.e., gov't spending) we have to come to terms with the fact that these do not solve the macro economic problems for capital (i.e., return it to growth with a sufficient rate of profit for the system as a whole) and so we need to be looking at how to take segments of the economy out from under the "law of value" (though this is also problematic but is a far longer conversation) so that they are not "managed" and dictated by profit maximization or even profit at all...easier said then done i know.
We need to eliminate the CASINO ECONOMY ruled by a few on Wall Street without oversight, restriction or accountibility. This means reducing (taxing perhaps) the unimaginably VAST piles of unearned hot money in the hands of the 1% that is used only to leverage more wealth, not actually invest in anything tangible or of merit society. I also endorse a tiny transaction tax on Wall Street to dampen the speed trading and silly churning of accounts that is nothing more than thievery.
i agree AndreM5 but you cannot eliminate the boom and bust economy under a capitalist economic system; they are endemic. These are due to the internal contradictions of the system that marx talked about more than 150 years ago and they are still very much in play today. the only answer for capital is to accept "sluggish" growth rates (as the japanese have had to do) although even this is problematic in the long run or see a far greater destruction of wealth (capital) as happened during the great depression and which will ultimately restore the system's profitability though at a horrible cost to the vast majority. The boom and bust cycle of capitalism has been with us from its very beginnings and is not simply the product of a new "casino economy"
I have never heard a GOOD explanation of why a small transaction tax on trades would NOT be a valuable revenue generator and reduce the churning that seems of no economic value. Or a built-in 4 or 5 second/minute delay on trade execution. Any Good Explainers??
sadly, given the effemeral nature of these boards, this discussion is likely to be missed many who would benefit or benefit us with follow-up questions.
(ATTN: MODERATOR) it's too bad RSN doesn't have space for such substantive discussions to continue and at greater length beside the godot section. even two days later, this comment is likely to be lost.
You're absolutely right, this transaction tax (also sometimes referred to as the Tobin Tax) is a great idea (essentially it is a small sales tax on the sale of stocks). It doesn't do anything to reduce the volume/frequenc y of trading but it would collect a lot of revenues (i've seen estimates that in the UK it would collect $11 billion euro a year so it would collect more here given our economy and stock market are much larger). I'm not sure there is any way to cut down on the volume/frequenc y (although the "uptick rule" at least puts the breaks on "shorting" and so is designed to minimize coordinated shorting efforts to severely devalue or even bring down a company).
http://lwv.org/content/league-women-voters-and-candidate-debates-changing-relationship
Dear Mr. Resident Obama:
On April 25, 2008 you promised to a gathering in Indianapolis, Indiana that if elected President you would lower gas prices for all Americans and further blamed bush/cheney for the high prices.On January 22, 2009 you took the Oath of Office and were sworn in as President. The gas prices on your inauguration day were $1.86 per gallon.
It is now 4 years later and gas prices are higher now than at any time in American history. Why did you fail to prevent this from happening, knowing the impact this would have on the American people? Why is our cost of living 10 time higher than it should be? Why do you have a printed kill list for American Citizens? Why does your administration pursue dictatorial control to arrest and detain American citizens,indefi nitely, without due process, through the NDAA. Why do you ignore the Judge's stated ruling on this matter declaring that sections of the NDAA are UNCONSTITUTIONA L? Why do you favor Muslims and spend our money rebuilding Mosques all over the world costing billions of dollars when Americans are losing their homes right here? Why do you continue Bush's policies of torture and unending wars throughout the world? Why did you bail out general motors and then allow them to offshore 70% of the American jobs to China???
These are just a few questions that need to be asked, BUT YOU KNOW THEY WON'T BE...
You are obviously incapable of any real research. I direct your attention to:
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/01/average-gas-pricesjanuary-26-2009.html
Thank you for your ignorant comment...
It is obvious that you suffer from a severe memory loss or are incapable of any true research. Please copy and paste this site: http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2009/01/average-gas-pricesjanuary-26-2009.html
Gasoline averaged $1.84 per gallon in January 2009.
Thank you for your ignorant comment.
The low price of gasoline when Obama was sworn in is a great illustration of demand-side economics. The economy was in free fall. The banks that created the mess were on the verge of collapse. Everyone stopped buying. Demand for gas dropped while people worried about buying food and paying the utility bills. QED: cheap gas.
Dumbledorf would never believe nor say the things you state. You seem like just another Teapublican. Muslim mosques?? Blaming this president...any president!! for high gas prices? Etcetera. Do you really believe we elect some sort of dictator on November 6?
Congratulations on getting so many wrong, gas price being just one of them!
Have Fun 'voting'.
first, we have to fully reject the whole debt/deficit paradigm and explain to people why. debt or deficits in and of themselves are neither a good or bad thing...it depends on how big or small they are and how this money is used. for example, if one borrows money (i.e., goes into debt) to start a business which then becomes sufficiently profitable to pay off the debt and provide the income for you to live a decent life the debt you took on was not a bad thing. the same goes for gov't debt. the difference is that a gov't that prints its own currency can borrow from itself and never has to borrow from others (at interest)...so, one policy would be no more gov't borrowing from anyone in the private market.
second, create genuine publicly owned financial institutions (along the lines of the state bank of north dakota) to fund public works projects that could provide jobs to millions (and again without having to borrow from the private financial market).
third, transform how public pension funds are invested so that they can serve as "community development" investments instead of turning this money over to wall street hedge fund managers. here we are talking about hundreds of billions that could be invested to rebuild the country...out of space.
there are others of course but no more space here.
My additional questions (to both but especially the first to Obama): Why has nothing been done to bring the national infrastructure into the 21st century, thereby creating almost by default millions of jobs for design professionals, skilled trades and blue-collar workers alike.
Do you intend to challenge and overturn Citizen's United, as it has been shown to be perceived as unjust by a large percentage of the US population, regardless of their political orientation?
B.T.W.' try to capture "Prime Minister's Question Time" in the British House of Commons sometime: now THAT's debate and the PM, of whatever orientation has to be right on top of his facts or they are shouted down!
i remember a friend asking Dennis Kucinich this question when he was running for president and his response was "well, i am running for high office so of course i support it."
http://tinyurl.com/PJO-Poverty
mr. romney and president obama: our literacy rates are lies. we say we are 99 percent literate. other studies show we are only sixty five percent literate. What are you going to do to make this lie a truth? Are you going to tell the banks to forgive college debt? Are you willing to raise taxes to support a free college education?
That would be one way to solve the problem, EXCEPT, too many would shout SOCIALISM...
Like I always say....the corporate media hacks are the guardians of the status quo. Remember who they all are.
"Mr. Romney:
In the Harvard Study a few years back, it was determined that 43,000 PEOPLE each year DIE from lack of health care in the U.S. - and that doesn't include the millions who are KILLED by bad pharmaceuticals , refusal to treat, malpractice, etc (thank the rollback in regulations!). Now, with the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), millions of youth can stay on their parents' health care, pre-existing conditions and caps on care cannot be used to REFUSE to treat, and millions of older Americans are not going to go without pharmaceuticals because the Republicans' DONUT HOLE is being closed... Does your idea of repealing ObamaCare mean that you INTEND TO KILL PEOPLE? And, if you do intend to KILL people, does that reflect YOUR idea of POPULATION CONTROL, or CLEANSING society of those non-humans that think they are 'entitled' to health care, food, housing, jobs, etc.?
Is THAT your moral position on government: EXTERMINATION?
They will be given equal time to respond to the questions put to Obummer And Romnybaby
"Dr Stein...."
"Mr. Anderson..."
"Mr. Alexander..."
> managers to treat their income as capital gains, subject to
> a 15 percent tax, even when they risk no capital of their own?
Don't know about Romney or Obama- but I sure would.
Working and Capital Gains Income should all be taxed at the same rate.
More margins at the top levels, and higher income tax brackets in those margins.
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