{"id":13092,"date":"2012-02-21T19:49:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T00:49:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13092"},"modified":"2012-02-22T14:29:58","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T19:29:58","slug":"mitt-romney-crypto-keynesian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13092\/mitt-romney-crypto-keynesian\/","title":{"rendered":"Mitt Romney, Crypto-Keynesian"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mitt Romney has at least one thing in common with every other member of the Republican presidential field: his worst enemy is Mitt Romney.<\/p>\n<p>At a speech in Shelby Township, Michigan earlier today <a href=\"http:\/\/firstread.msnbc.msn.com\/_news\/2012\/02\/21\/10469786-romney-spending-cuts-slow-economic-growth\" target=\"_blank\">Romney&#8217;s answer to a question about the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commision<\/a> ended up in this intellectual cul-de-sac:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you just cut, if all you&#8217;re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you&#8217;ll slow down the economy. So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Romney, of course, is correct about the broader question of tax policy, but his understanding of public spending makes him sound like a logical candidate to succeed Timothy Geithner as President Obama&#8217;s Secretary of the Treasury.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/newsbusters.org\/blogs\/rich-noyes\/2009\/02\/01\/debunking-myth-government-spending-stimulates-economy\" target=\"_blank\">Federal spending doesn&#8217;t generate economic growth<\/a> &#8212; all it does is repurpose money from the private sector. In some cases where government is performing essential functions, such as law enforcement or national defense, that&#8217;s a necessary sacrifice. In virtually all others &#8212; from green energy boondoggles to stimulus giveaways &#8212; it&#8217;s a net drain on the economy. And, as Milton Friedman would remind Romney, the rate of spending is the effective rate of taxation.<\/p>\n<p>Over the past few weeks, a wide variety of conservative pundits have counseled Romney to more aggressively address his &#8220;authenticity&#8221; problem, showing the public a little more of his true personality. But as today&#8217;s little slip-up reveals, the only candidate less palatable to conservatives than the phony Romney is his authentic counterpart.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mitt Romney has at least one thing in common with every other member of the Republican presidential field: his worst enemy is Mitt Romney. At a speech in Shelby Township, Michigan earlier today Romney&#8217;s answer to a question about the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commision ended up in this intellectual cul-de-sac: If you just cut, if all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,391,2718,3239,3366,160,71,2616],"class_list":["post-13092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-federal-spending","tag-john-maynard-keynes","tag-keynesianism","tag-milton-friedman","tag-mitt-romney","tag-taxes","tag-timothy-geithner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13092"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13095,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13092\/revisions\/13095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}