Mitt Romney Outlines How His Private Equity Experience Will Cause Him to Govern

Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid

The Wall Street Journal is in full force editorial mode to support the candidacy of Mitt Romney.  The Journal has apparently forgotten its earlier misgivings and is now directing every available editorial resource towards the election of Mr. Romney.  This consists of (A) giving Mr. Romney advice on how to campaign since theWSJ apparently feels he doesn’t know how to do that and (B) turning over the editorial pages to Mr. Romney so he can brag about his credential.

There are two interesting aspects to Mr. Romney’s piece.  The first is his continued resistance to providing any kind of specificity.  For example here is Mr. Romney on health care and other problems.

My presidency would make it easier for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the investment dollars they need to grow, by reducing and simplifying taxes; replacing Obamacare with real health-care reform that contains costs and improves care; and by stemming the flood of new regulations that are tying small businesses in knots.

Notice the total lack of any concrete ideas or actions.  But the really interesting thing in the pontifical piece is how Mr. Romney will use an ideas he learned in business to manage government.

 For example, at Bain Capital we bought Accuride, a company that made truck rims and wheels, because we saw untapped potential there. We instituted performance bonuses for the management team, which had a dramatic impact. The managers made the plants more productive, and the company started growing, adding 300 jobs while Bain was involved. 

And since Mr. Romney refuses (again) to provide any specifics on how this would work in government, we thought we’d put forth a few examples.  Here’s what might happen with Mr. Romney and his incentive program.

Dissenting Justice
Callahan - Appointed
by George W. Bush
What- You Expected
Something Different?

President Romney announced today that 274 employees of the Agriculture department were awarded bonuses for cutting the cost of nutrition programs.  The employees succeeded in removing 163,000 eligible women and children from the program by instituting onerous burdens for obtaining benefits.  The President praised the employees for putting cost cutting ahead of nutrition for low income families.

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President Romney announced today that bonuses of $14,000 each were awarded to 116 employees of the EPA for ignoring pollution violations.  The President noted that by ignoring massive environmental damage by 17 companies who were in violation of clean water regulations that employees insured that the companies combined profit was over $11.2 billion.  Further savings were incurred when the government refused to do any clean up work or compensate victims of the pollution.  “Regulations kill jobs” the President said, and added “Pollution never harmed anyone”.

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President Romney announced today that bonuses would be paid to 92 federal prosecutors who have jailed accused criminals indefinitely without a trial.  “By eliminating costly trials of obviously guilty criminals these heroic government employees saved tens of millions of taxpayer funds” the President said.  He also praised the employees for contracting with private prison firms to house the unconvicted felons, saying that even though there was government prison space available America was built on free enterprise and that increasing profits for private prisons was the right policy.

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President Romney announced today that bonuses would be paid to 193 employees of the Medicare program who denied expensive life saving care to Medicare program beneficiaries.  The President noted that health care costs are huge for complex health issues and that those denied care were eventually going to die anyway.  Mr. Romney said that the employees showed great initiative by copying private health care practices to put in place for government programs. 

Okay, that specific enough for everyone?