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Andru Blonquist
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January 14th, 2008 | | Posted in Analysis, Commentary, and Editorials, John McCain, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney, Negative Ads, South Carolina, Taxes
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From South Carolinians for Romney
Question: What do you call someone who denies something to your face, but who knows that at that very moment, he is actually doing the opposite?
Answer: Entrenched Politician
Time has an article entitled “The Dirt Starts Flying” about South Carolina’s Republican primary coming up this week and had an interesting–though not surprising tidbit about the McCain campaign.
But as the McCain campaign rode down the sea coast towards Charleston before the weekend, the candidate spoke as if he was defying history. When asked if he thought he could get through South Carolina without going negative on his opponents, he said, “I think I can.” …
Indeed, even as McCain spoke on the bus, his campaign had already postmarked a nasty negative mailer in South Carolina with several misleading claims about Mitt Romney, including the allegation that the former Massachusetts governor had “provided taxpayer funded abortions.”
Rather than talking about McCain’s hypocrisy, let’s talk about the false claims of the piece.
1) Romney’s health plan allowed for $50 abortions on demand
The truth of the matter is that any health insurance plan in Massachusetts was required by law to include abortions at the same co-pay as other similar surgical procedures–not that there is any such thing as a “similar surgical procedure”, but that’s how the 85% Democrat legislature defined it in their deluded mental state when the law originally passed before Romney was ever elected.
2) Romney increased fees and taxes by $700 million in Massachusetts
This one is more than just two opposing views of the same figures and statistics–it’s outright deception. First of all, the previous governor of Massachusetts had signed into law an increase in state fees that didn’t take effect until after Romney took office. This accounted for $240 million of increased revenue. Then, Romney added $260 million in fees to which he takes full credit. Then another $150 million was raised by closing loopholes in corporate tax law (that allowed businesses to circumvent the intent of the law through claiming specific categories and statuses). I’ll explain this a little better in just a second, but for now, the total comes to $650 million, which McCain then conveniently rounds up to $700 million (what’s $50 million to a 4th-term US senator anyway?).
As for the corporate loopholes, let me give you an analogy to explain what happened.
Let’s say John Appleseed owns an apple stand and sells more apples than anyone else in town. Meanwhile, Joe Florida down the street sells oranges, but he’s struggling due to a deep freeze destroying most of his crop. Joe Florida’s friend, D. Libocrat–the politician who occasionally gets free juice from Joe–writes a bill giving tax breaks to orange sellers. Upon seeing this preferential treatment, John Appleseed runs down to the grocery store, buys a few pounds of oranges and starts to sell them. Then when John files taxes that year, he lists his business as “orange seller” rather than “apple seller”. The result–a significant reduction in Mr. Appleseed’s corporate tax burden.
Governor F. Potus Romney, who sees the “devil in the details”, analyzes the data and finds out that the orange business is doing fine now so he repeals the “orange tax loophole” and now both John and Joe are back to paying normal tax rates.
The tax law in these instances were written to help specific portions of the state’s economy (we hope), so businesses tried to maneuver themselves into those “special-treatment categories” for tax breaks. It’s not surprising that so many of these “special-treatment categories” existed in a state of liberals who preach concern for the common man–but write obscure details into laws that benefit special interests (though I’m sure republicans aren’t blameless).
Fees vs. Taxes:
Some argue that a fee is a tax, but there is a huge difference. Jeff, at Iowans for Mitt put it best when he said,
Service fees are not taxes, service fees REDUCE taxes. Make the user pay so the taxpayer doesn’t have to. Or, put another way:
Fees: Pay for what you get.
Taxes: Pay for what others get.
I would add that exorbitant fees are bad–especially if they exceed the cost incurred providing the service. But no one is claiming that any of Romney’s increased fees were exorbitant. They were a common sense approach that is innately fair. Make the user pay, and not the taxpayer.
Again, it’s not surprising that McCain would try to distort Romney’s record. I’m just surprised he kept a straight face while doing it.
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