Cogito Ergo Non Serviam

Massachusetts is Romney's Achilles Heel, Not Bain

The media and political parties are having a grand time trying to decide whether being an asset-stripping capitalist suits Willard Mitt "Crassus" Romney to be president. To the extent history has anything to say, businessmen tend to fail in the White House (Hoover, Carter, both Bush the Elder and Bush the Lesser). But a far more relevant part of Mr. Romney's resume is his single term as Governor of Massachusetts, a job comparable to the presidency save for the scale and foreign affairs. Here, Mr. Romney comes up short.

The one thing Governor Romney achieved was the reform of the state's health care insurance system. Yet because it was so clearly a model for the national reforms passed under President Obama, the Romney campaign prefers to say nothing about it. The best they have been able to do is claim that the state-level rules and regulations don't translate to a federal-level reform. In terms of venture capitalism, the plan doesn't scale. In fact, it scales pretty well, and the problem is that Mr. Romney cannot argue against the Obama plan without looking foolish. It was for this reason that Rick Santorum said Mr. Romney was the weakest possible Republican the party could nominate to run against Mr. Obama, and he was right. In practical terms, how does a state mandate to purchase health insurance differ from a federal mandate?

However, digging into the details of the Massachusetts legislation, one finds even more reason for Mr. Romney to remain silent. Wikipedia notes, "Romney vetoed eight sections of the health care legislation, including the controversial employer assessment. Romney also vetoed provisions providing dental benefits to poor residents on the Medicaid program, and providing health coverage to senior and disabled legal immigrants not eligible for federal Medicaid. The legislature promptly overrode six of the eight gubernatorial section vetoes, on May 4, 2006, and by mid-June 2006 had overridden the remaining two." These vetoes make him look miserly and hardly a bipartisan leader.

Under Governor Romney, Massachusetts did not exactly flourish. Among the 50 states, it was 47th in job creation. If his campaign is going to blame Mr. Obama for the unemployment situation in the US, the argument that he could do better is badly undermined. The state's long-term debt load increased under Mr. Romney, meaning he really can't argue much against the Great-Recession-spawned federal deficit. And he increased taxes and fees on state residents by $750 million, leading the Cato Institute in 2006 to call his promise not to increases taxes "mostly a myth."

Rolling out his latest attack on the Obama administration, Mr. Romney said yesterday that the US is "in the midst of a national education emergency." He added, "Here we are in the most prosperous nation on earth, but millions of our kids are getting a Third World education. And, America's minority children suffer the most. This is the civil-rights issue of our era. And it's the great challenge of our time." Since education in the US is handled by the states, Mr. Romney's record in this area is illuminating. It includes higher college tuition costs, greater class sizes, and cuts to education funding.

No wonder he wants to talk about Bain Capital.

© Copyright 2011 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.



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