Rohan Gulati ’13: While news networks and politicians have bashed President Obama’s supposedly dismal record, he has actually enacted numerous policies beneficial to the American people and presented a much more viable road ahead for America than Mitt Romney has.
When Presdient Obama took office, the US was losing 750,000 jobs a month and the GDP had shrunk by 8.9 percent. However, by passing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (otherwise known as the “stimulus”), President Obama prevented a full-blown depression and initiated a national recovery. The ARRA’s $819 billion was split between approximately $630 billion of spending and $190 billion of tax cuts. The spending subsidized emergency housing to reduce homelessness, increased education funding (including student financial aid), and invested in improving aging systems like highway infrastructure and the energy grid. Meanwhile, the tax cuts gave tax credits to small businesses, subsidized the adoption of electronic medical records, and lowered taxes for 95 percent of working Americans. Most independent analyses have concluded that the stimulus helped create and save 2.5 million jobs, proving its success in providing a short-term recovery and long-term reinvestment in America.
President Obama also signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which addressed the irony that the American healthcare is more expensive yet worse than those of other industrialized nations. The PPACA lowers healthcare costs for consumers and prevents insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions or discriminate coverage based on gender. Most importantly, this law extends coverage to 32 million currently uninsured Americans, indirectly reducing costs. When an uninsured patient undergoes emergency care, insurance premiums rise for everyone else to compensate for the unpaid debt. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office stated that PPACA would reduce the deficit by $1 trillion over the next 20 years and extend the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by eight years. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, in 2012, “5.5 million seniors and people with disabilities saved nearly $4.5 billion on prescription drugs” and 19 million people received free preventive care thanks to PPACA. On the other hand, Mitt Romney plans to repeal PPACA without offering any tangible alternative. He has flip-flopped so frequently on the issue that his official position is too muddled.
However, while President Obama’s record reflects four years of success, Romney’s “Believe in America” plan still touts the same failed policies that ballooned the deficit and precipitated the financial meltdown. To pay for a 20 percent tax cut across the board and maintain revenue neutrality, Romney would have to cut almost 75 percent of all deductions. The average middle class family would see its taxes jump $2000 due to the loss of the mortgage interest and child tax credits. Romney’s economic plan would cap government spending at 20 percent of the GDP but would increase defense spending by $2 trillion more than the Pentagon requested. According to the Tax Policy Center, for this to succeed, all government expenditures, including veterans’ benefits, Medicare, and education, would have to be cut by 40 percent by 2020, devastating the economy.
Moreover, President Obama’s deficit reduction plan reaches the same deficit goals as Romney’s plan by slightly increasing taxes on the wealthy, adjusting entitlements, and withdrawing from Iraq (and eventually Afghanistan). Under this plan, 95 percent of Americans would not see their taxes increase at all. Meanwhile, Romney uncertainly promises to create 12 million jobs without providing any substantial details. Finally, Romney wants to deregulate the financial industry, allowing banks to loan to almost anyone without much oversight, the same practice that led to the subprime mortgage crisis. The choice is clear: while Romney offers the same ideas that led to the current dilemma, President Obama presents a clear, progressive vision to move America forward.

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