Presidential Profile: Rick Santorum

Rick Santorum has a lot of problems when it comes to Economics.  He has the most baggage in his voting record, or at least as much as Newt Gingrich.  Rick Santorum has been an "active duty" politician for 16 years, first serving in the House of Representatives and then a Senator for Pennsylvania for 12 years straight.  During this time, he cast a lot of votes.  His voting record can be found here (via votesmart.org). 

He made a few bad Economics votes, such as voting to raise the minimum wage which seems like a good thing for lower-income workers, but in fact has been proven to hurt more people than it helps by forcing employers to lay their workers off instead of increase their wage.  Employers then either double the work load of the remaining workers, replace workers with wage-free machines, or produce things in China where they can pay remarkably low wages.  

Rick Santorum voted for No Child Left Behind.  There are arguments as to whether this program is successful or not, but regardless, it is bad policy.  It has huge expenses and gives more power to the Department of Education.  This federal department should not exist - it creates too much waste and inefficiencies.  The responsibility to educate should lie with the States and local government.  Let the states come up with their own programs, and let the people migrate to the state with the best program.  Competition between the states will improve education while decreasing cost and inefficiencies.  

Rick Santorum has voted to increase military spending every single time that he has had the chance, and he has voiced that he will continue to do so (to be fair, so has every other candidate but Ron Paul).  But Rick seems to be the one who is most emotionally and religiously attached to protecting our allies and destroying our enemies.  Emotion and religion should not play a part in defense spending and military action.  Keep in mind, that defense spending is our 2nd largest budget item leading to our $15,300,000,000,000 debt.

Rick Santorum has increased the debt limit 5 times since he has been in office.  The debt limit increases allow Congress to spend more and more and more and more.  We need someone with the courage to vote against these debt increases, forcing us to default on our payments to our debtors, causing them to downgrade our credit, thus causing us to cut our welfare and military spending.  Rick Santorum could not make this tough decision, so how can he make tougher decisions as President?

These are a few reasons why Rick will not win my vote.  

Presidential Profile: Ron Paul

Ron Paul is running as a Republican, but is known mostly as a Libertarian.  He believes in following the American Constitution in determining the role of government.

This means that drastic changes would occur with President Paul, and they would pretty much all represent free-market philosophy.

President Paul would phase out Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Food Stamps, Unemployment insurance, and almost any other federal program that you can think of.  If it's not in the Constitution, he is not for it.

The real effect of these positions is not that any of these programs would be abolished.  As President, you don't have the authority to do that.  The greatest power given to a President is his power to veto.  This power allows him to nullify bills that pass through congress.  Using this power, Paul would not pass any increase in growth to these programs, thus forcing congress to pass budgets that would keep these programs from growing any more.  Then he would advocate slowly decreasing these benefits until they are gone (over a huge generational time span).  These social programs are the largest budget item and are the culprit of our ever-increasing federal deficit.  They must be reformed, and if you're a believer in the Constitution, these government dependency programs must be phased out.

President Paul would decrease military spending to Constitutional levels.  He would close down the hundreds of bases that we have spread out across the world.  This "defense" spending is currently the second largest culprit to our federal deficit.  President Paul would follow the Constitution and only spread our military power when we declare a war - something that hasn't been done since World War II.

President Paul wants to get rid of the Federal Reserve (blog post forthcoming).  This is the private company who controls the supply of the dollar.  Currently our dollars are backed by nothing but the "full faith and credit" of the United States government.  Paul would advocate that a resource (such as gold) backs our currency.

Economically and constitutionally, Paul is the best choice for the Presidency.  He would balance our budget and get rid of unconstitutional social programs.  He would have no interest in subsidies or special interest spending.  Paul is my man.

Presidential Profile: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is a moderate or middle-right conservative.  This means that, although he represents a lot of the Republican views, he is able to attract some Democrats - especially the ones that believe in a balanced budget.

Mitt Romney believes in balancing the budget.  His work in the private sector has helped him to do that.  Since you can't survive in the business world without making profits, he has been forced for most of his life to do it.  Mitt Romney is the only candidate that has more experience in the private sector than in politics.

Mitt Romney "saved" the Olympics.  The Salt Lake City Olympics had a projected budget shortfall of almost $400 Million.  We came out of it with a $50 Million surplus.

I learned from reading his book, "No Apology" that Mitt Romney believes in "free-market" economic interactions.  He knows how the "invisible hand" helps control the supply and demand of products and services, and he believes that government intervention in these markets creates inefficiencies.

He is attractive to some Democrats because he doesn't talk much about slashing huge government programs.  He has said that he will help make Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security "more solvent", meaning he will balance their budgets.  Right now, we are paying out trillions more in these programs than we are receiving from tax revenues.  We are able to do this by printing money and borrowing money from China.  To balance these budgets would require a tax hike, which I don't think Romney would propose, or a change to the program that will make it more expensive for people dependent on these programs.

I think Mitt Romney would be a good President because he would stop the current outrageous trend set by Obama of spending twice as much as we take in.  He would encourage the markets to interact without much government intervention.  However, I don't think he would make the difficult decisions that our country needs to make eventually (like abolishing Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security - SLOWLY) in order to bring the American government back to its small Constitutional size.

Election 2012

Before 2007, I voted for whoever and whatever my mom told me to vote for.  Turns out she was always right, but I decided then that I wanted to study the issues myself and make my own decisions when it comes to elections.  I think that everyone has a responsibility to be somewhat informed of the issues each election cycle.  But it's time-consuming!  And you don't know who to listen to!  Well, the next couple of posts will be 60-second bios on each of the Presidential candidates.  Let it be known that I WILL show some bias, but I'll stick to economic issues.  Hopefully it will be semi-informative.  A great place to go for unbiased direction is votesmart.org.  Go to their vote easy page to find the candidate that best represents your views.