Tuesday, February 28, 2012

REVEALED!!! Why Rick Santorum Talks About Contraception – He Doesn’t Know Anything About Anything Else

A Candidate Exposes His Ignorance in the Opinion Pages of the Wall Street Journal – Where Ignorance Usually is Found

The Wall Street Journal editors are still not sold on Mitt Romney, even after he abandoned his own tax plan and replaced it with a tax plan specifically tailored for the Wall Street Journal.  So now they have given space for Rick Santorum to spout his economic and tax views.  This may well have an unintended effect for the Journal editors, because by allowing Mr. Santorum to discuss policy they do what many thought was impossible, they make Mr. Romney’s views look almost (but not quite) rational.

Mr. Santorum provides what he says would be his priorities for the first 100 days of office, should he be elected President of the United States.  Here is a sampling with the appropriate derisive commentary.

sign an order on day one unleashing America's domestic energy production, allowing states to choose where they want to explore for oil and natural gas and to set their own regulations for hydrofracking

Uh, Mr. Santorum states already regulate hydrofracking. 

All Obama administration regulations that have an economic burden over $100 million will be repealed

Ok, that should include all of them. 

The corporate tax rate should be halved, to a flat rate of 17.5%. Corporations should be allowed to expense all business equipment and investment.

Wait, let’s see what he wants to do about the national debt which will of course be increased by this policy.

I'll propose spending cuts of $5 trillion over five years, including cuts for the remainder of fiscal year 2013. I'll propose budgets that spend less money each year than prior years, and I'll reduce the nondefense-related federal work force by at least 10%, without replacing them with private contractors

And once again a proposal to cut federal spending without identifying what programs will be cut.  That’s allright, at $1 trillion a year that is just about all the non-defense discretionary spending. No education spending, no welfare spending, no spending on any government program.  And he is going to fire a couple hundred thousand federal government workers, that should help the unemployment rate (get bigger).

I'll submit to Congress a budget that will balance within four years and call on Congress to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution which limits federal spending to 18% of GDP.

Well a $1 trillion in spending cuts would do, but all those other tax cuts will wipe out those savings, even if they could be done, which they cannot.

Revive housing. I'll submit plans to Congress to phase out within several years Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's federal housing role, reform and make transparent the Federal Reserve, and allow families whose mortgages are "underwater" to deduct losses from the sale of their home in order to get a fresh start in difficult economic times.

Apparently Mr. Santorum doesn’t understand basic housing economics, and doesn’t realize the Fannie and Freddie are right now critical to reviving the housing industry.  As for allowing families to deduct the losses on their homes when they owe more than they receive from the sale, exactly how does that work?  See the banks won’t let them sell the houses because they are underwater, and so people either stay in them until the bank defaults or walk away from them and give them back to the bank.    Being wealthy and having a million dollar income insulates Mr. Santorum from the realities of the housing world.

So there you have it, what millions of people thought was impossible.  Rick Santorum makes Mitt Romney’s policy prescriptions look good, if only in comparison to the undiluted pure idiocy of what Mr. Santorum would do and why he would do it.

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