Mitt Romney's attack of Obama's stimulus is a central pillar of his campaign: In ads, statements, and speeches, he's attacked the law as a giveaway to the president's "friends, donors, campaign supporters, special interest groups." But buried inside Romney's economic plan is a promise to invest federal money in a new energy R&D program that was one of the stimulus's biggest success stories.
In my experience, you're actually getting a more serious conversation over the issues if you listen directly to the two campaigns than if you're reading about the campaign as filtered through much of the media.
Mitt Romney has promised vast reductions in federal spending while also balancing the budget, which would mean a whopping $9.6 trillion cut in non-defense cuts by 2022. He's largely avoided specifying what he'd actually cut to achieve such fiscal feats. And the cuts he has specified don't come close to getting him there.
With Ryan on the ticket, Medicare has moved to the center of the election. But in policy terms, it's Medicaid that's most under threat.
Mitt Romney is trying to distance himself from Paul Ryan's budget. “I have my budget plan. And that’s the budget we’re going to run on," he said on Sunday. What's the difference between the two? Romney wants to go much farther.
We're starting to see some polling on Mitt Romney's vice-presidential pick. So, how'd he do?
The conventional wisdom in the Beltway is that Paul Ryan's presence on the Republican ticket is either going to work big for Mitt Romney or backfire completely. But there's another possibility that is perhaps even likelier: That it doesn't much matter at all.
Time for a moment of accountability. Earlier in the campaign, I wrote that my rule of thumb was simple: If the economy was adding about 150,000 jobs a month, Romney had the edge. If it was 200,000 jobs a month, Obama had the edge. If it was 250,000 jobs a month, Obama had it easy. I was wrong.
Both campaigns seem to agree that Mitt Romney's pick of Paul Ryan for the veep spot sets up a big, clear policy choice for the election. President Obama's vision for the federal budget is very different from Paul Ryan's. But what do these differences mean in concrete terms? Here's an analysis we did back in March, when Ryan released his 2013 budget, that tried to flesh the differences.
In picking Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney has doubled down on his own campaign promise to give big tax breaks to the wealthy, uniting himself with a candidate who goes even further to do so: While Romney would bring taxes for top incomes down to 28 percent, Ryan has proposed bringing the top rate down even lower, to 25 percent. Meanwhile, Ryan's plan would actually increase the effective tax rate on the very poorest Americans by getting rid of tax breaks that benefit low earners.
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Blog Contributors
Ezra Klein is the editor of Wonkblog and a columnist at the Washington Post, as well as a contributor to MSNBC and Bloomberg. His work focuses on domestic and economic policymaking, as well as the political system that’s constantly screwing it up. He really likes graphs, and is on Twitter, Google+ and Facebook. E-mail him here.
Suzy Khimm covers the budget, economic policy, and financial regulatory reform. Before coming to Washington, she was based in Brazil and Southeast Asia, where she wrote for the Economist, Slate, and the Wall Street Journal Asia. Follow her on Twitter here, and email her here.
Sarah Kliff covers health policy, focusing on Medicare, Medicaid and the health reform law. She tries to fit in some reproductive health and education policy coverage, too, alongside an occasional hockey reference. Her work has appeared in Newsweek, Politico, and the BBC. She is on Twitter and Facebook.
Brad Plumer is a reporter focusing on energy and environmental issues. He was previously an associate editor at The New Republic. Follow him on Twitter. Email him here.
