Position: Romney should be elected
This position addresses the topic United States presidential election, 2012.
For this position
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Romney has shown an ability to lead, from turning around the deficit-ridden 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics to his term as Massachusetts governor. His plans for tax and entitlement reform are encouraging, shifting the focus from government first to freeing the private sector to innovate. Voters should demand more specifics, but at the heart of his plans — especially on reforming a teetering Medicare system — is an instinct to rely on competition over regulation to drive growth.
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The suggestion that tax increases and higher energy prices will lift the middle class defies logic. But it's not terribly surprising coming from an administration that's completely lacking in business experience and openly hostile to free-market capitalism. This summer, the president famously said "the private sector is doing fine," and to business owners: "You didn't build that."
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With more than 23 million Americans unemployed and economic growth limping to reach 1.5 percent, the most pressing challenge is to revive the economy to get people working again. This will take an experienced executive to cut government spending and regulation to unchain the dynamism of the private sector. Mr. Romney has spent his life taking failing companies and revamping operations to make them competitive; he has the skills to do the same in the Oval Office.
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Romney also promises to repeal Obamacare — a singularly necessary step to restore America's entrepreneurial spirit — and replace it with reforms that will not bust the budget, not trample individual rights, not undermine the independence of patients and medical professionals. Turns out, an economic crisis is no time to insist on an overwhelming and incoherent government program that does little to solve problems but much to suppress job-creation. Repeal may be the most effective stimulus package passed in nearly a decade.
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Romney’s plans for recovery revolve around the economic principles of reducing government regulation, cutting corporate taxes and opening more global markets. It’s an approach consistent with who Mitt Romney is – a businessman and a moderate conservative who doesn’t believe so much in government’s making things happen as he does in lifting government interference so they can happen.
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Which candidate could forge the compromises in Congress to achieve these goals? When the question is framed in those terms, Mitt Romney emerges the stronger candidate. The former governor and business executive has a strong record of achievement in both the private and the public sectors. He was an accomplished governor in a liberal state. He founded and ran a successful business that turned around failing companies. He successfully managed the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.
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Oklahomans solidly rejected Obama four years ago. They knew what the people in too many other states apparently did not — that this man is simply not qualified to hold such a high office. He has inferior business skills and leadership qualities, little appreciation for the sacrifices that the successful make and an anemic respect for America's starring role on the world stage.
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Romney understands that the country’s most pressing issue is a stalled economy weighed down by huge annual deficits and accumulated debt, a mess that Barack Obama not only failed to clean up, but compounded. The resulting predicament is stark. Americans are struggling as the percentage of adults in the workforce approaches record lows. The past four years have been the worst for employment since the Great Depression.
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And however well intended his belief that the Bush tax cuts should be ended for upper-income brackets, his $250,000 benchmark has been remarkably low, as many two-income families and small business owners and others in the suburbs can attest. More pointedly, we are disappointed in the tone of Obama’s relentless insinuations that wealthy Americans refuse to pay their fair share. That tone is divisive and damaging for the nation and for our economy. It creates villains and victims, and unfairly so.
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A President Romney would have far more influence over a Republican-controlled House, which seems to be assured. President Obama had his chance to lead by advocating for the recommendations of his own Simpson-Bowles Commission. He failed to do so. It’s time to give someone else the opportunity to lead in defusing the ticking debt bomb that threatens our position in the world, national security, standard of living at home and even our domestic tranquility.
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If Obama is elected, the likely outcome is four more years of gridlock. The nation can’t stand anymore of it; the issues are too great. Romney, in contrast, led one of the most liberal states in the union and managed to get along as well as could be expected. His health care plan was right for Massachusetts, but Romney showed his impeccable common sense by acknowledging the Massachusetts plan isn’t right for every one of the 50 states.
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We believe Romney will help this nation find the political will to address the challenges with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We’d like to see him exercise equal fiscal discipline at the Pentagon, whose budget has grown 50 percent in 10 years and exceeds that of the next 10 largest nations combined. The greatest threat to our national defense is not the size of our military, but the ever-escalating size of our national debt. We must get government spending under control, across the board.
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The economy is making an all-too-slow recovery. The nation's budget problems remain unsolved, portending a new financial crisis ahead. In the ending of the Iraq War and the killing of Osama bin Laden, there is a sense that we've already seen the high points of an Obama administration. And Americans hoping for better from a prospective second term are frustrated by Obama's failure to explain how four more years would be different.
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We anticipate that Romney will govern in the same manner as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a practical leader who shares his background as a business executive. Snyder has rapidly set Michigan on the path to revival by applying sound business practices and accountability to government operations. We expect that Romney will also employ a results-oriented approach and be ever mindful of his customer, the taxpayer.
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We anticipate that Romney will govern in the same manner as Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a practical leader who shares his background as a business executive. Snyder has rapidly set Michigan on the path to revival by applying sound business practices and accountability to government operations. We expect that Romney will also employ a results-oriented approach and be ever mindful of his customer, the taxpayer.
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Scrape it down to bedrock, and Mitt Romney knows that there is but one issue in this campaign: America’s woeful economy, and the demonstrated inability of President Obama to cope with it. Obama says he inherited the mess, but he’s done nothing to fix it. Borrow, spend, regulate and redistribute is not a prescription for sustainable growth, yet that has been the totality of his program.
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Romney has offered a 5-point plan built around boosting small businesses, calling them “our engine of economic growth” and creating energy independence by harnessing our own resources. He calls for an education policy grounded in parental choice and high standards intended to build American skills for an internationally competitive workforce. As a businessman, Romney wants to crackdown on nations including China that engage in unfair trade practices that hurt American businesses and workers. And he recognizes that it is time to for serious talk about changes to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to make sure the entitlements remain for future generations.
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Let’s not forget that’s how Romney earned his reputation — and his personal fortune — at Bain. He took failing enterprises or startups and nurtured them into thriving enterprises. He did that all over again for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Then here in Massachusetts he worked with an overwhelmingly Democratic Legislature to close a looming budget gap and craft a health care law that brought together the public and private sectors so that today 98 percent of the state’s residents are covered by health insurance. And unlike the false promises of Obamacare, here residents really could keep the doctors and insurance policies they wanted.
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While Obama offers rhetoric and pipe dreams, Romney offers a real plan to bring the economy back to life. It is not the George W. Bush plan. Bush spent more than he took in. Obama, who doubled Bush’s level of deficit spending, accuses Romney of wanting to return to Bush-type deficit spending. It is not true, but if it were, that would be an improvement over the last four years.
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As a career businessman and former governor, Romney brings a wealth of executive experience in the private sector and the public sector that dwarfs that of Obama. From working both sides of the government/private-sector equation, he understands how that relationship can aid or impede prosperity. His election would be an immediate signal to the private sector that someone who knows what he is doing is managing the nation’s economic policy.
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In our 2008 endorsement we cautioned the president against demonizing the energy sector - good advice that he has never heeded (see Keystone XL Pipeline). By contrast, Gov. Romney has listed energy atop his five-point plan to rejuvenate the economy. It can.
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The contrast in their approaches is seen in the president's insistence on increasing tax rates for the rich so they will "pay their fair share." But the wealthy already pay most of the country's tax bills. The richest 10 percent pay 71 percent of federal income taxes. Any such tax increase would likely hurt small business owners, most of whom are hardly well off even if their incomes are higher than $200,000. The president's plan would also increase the tax on capital gains for those with higher incomes, which could discourage investments and knock the wind out of a recovering stock market, and thus damage the savings of retirees. Romney understands a reformed tax code, one that closes loopholes but lowers overall rates, would help businesses and consumers. A growing economy can generate more revenue, even with lower rates.
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Not counting long-term unfunded liabilities tied to Social Security and to many of those Johnson-era programs, the nation is more than $16 trillion in real-time debt, one of the greatest financial-debt burdens in modern history. Our belief that Republican Mitt Romney should be elected the 45th president of the United States is anchored in that tough reality.
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However, while he had to contend with a Republican Party that was determined to deny him a second term at any cost, Obama cannot avoid the consequences of poor decisions and misplaced priorities. Foremost among them was his early focus on an overreaching health-care reform plan that wasted 12 very valuable months of his and Congress’ time and cost him precious political capital. The manner in which the legislation was drafted violated Obama’s pledge to govern openly, and its passage — leveraged through a supermajority — served to further galvanize the partisan divide in Congress. Fear of the impact of that reform and the costs associated with it continue to play a major role in preventing businesses from hiring new employees at a time when nearly everyone agrees that jobs must be the president’s foremost goal.
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Absent change at the White House, the economy will be left to its own devices, most likely a continued but very slow recovery. But slow isn't what the country needs. Romney is an agent of change whose primary campaign thrust has been the economy and his plans and qualifications to improve it. On this front, he is highly qualified, both by business experience and public service.
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What we could not have predicted, however, was how scandal-ridden Mr. Obama’s administration would be. There’s the prevaricating attorney general who, promoting the rule of lawlessness, was found in contempt of Congress (think of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal). There are the executive orders that exceeded presidential authority (think of the broad amnesty for illegal aliens). And then there’s the rank abuse of the government pulpit for political ends (think of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ unpunished violations of the Hatch Act), among other unsavory behavior.
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What we could not have predicted, however, was how scandal-ridden Mr. Obama’s administration would be. There’s the prevaricating attorney general who, promoting the rule of lawlessness, was found in contempt of Congress (think of the Fast and Furious gun-running scandal). There are the executive orders that exceeded presidential authority (think of the broad amnesty for illegal aliens). And then there’s the rank abuse of the government pulpit for political ends (think of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’ unpunished violations of the Hatch Act), among other unsavory behavior.
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Romney is not our ideal candidate for president. We've been turned off by his appeals to social conservatives and immigration extremists. Like most presidential hopefuls, including Obama four years ago, Romney faces a steep learning curve on foreign policy. But the core of Romney's campaign platform, his five-point plan, at least shows he understands that reviving the economy and repairing the government's balance sheet are imperative — now, not four years in the future.
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Because as important as foreign policy, social issues, immigration and the environment continue to be, this election hinges on Americans’ fear of a European-style economic collapse. No other issue will matter more, and to more voters, on Election Day. The next president must be the one with the best chance to get the crushing, $16 trillion national debt under control, coupled with the more immediate need of enabling a vibrant job market. It is because the economy is paramount that The Tennessean endorses Gov. Mitt Romney for president.
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Critically, he has tailored his policies to create jobs, jobs, jobs. The centerpieces of Romney’s plan call for spending restraint and rewriting the Internal Revenue code to lower rates by 20%. He would make up much of the lost revenue by eliminating deductions and loopholes that have made the tax system a thicket of strangling complexities. On its own, paring the personal and corporate rules to the basics would catalyze business and consumer spending.
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Romney showed as the Republican governor of Democratic-leaning Massachusetts that he can find agreement across the partisan divide. And his vice presidential pick — Wisconsin's U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Janesville — suggests Romney is serious about tackling America's fiscal mess.
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It is far-fetched to believe Obama would achieve a different result in a second term. Romney, by both party affiliation and personal style, has the better chance of becoming the master mechanic who unlocks Congress' gears, convincing lawmakers that the status quo is unsustainable. Romney is a businessman and he will get down to the business of reversing a $16 trillion debt, falling family incomes, lingering high unemployment, a 15 percent national poverty rate.
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As for his state health care reform law, aka “Romneycare,” unlike Obamacare, it didn’t boost taxes or cut Medicare. Another crucial distinction: Romneycare was a bipartisan initiative. Obamacare passed both chambers of Congress without a single Republican vote (and with 34 House Democrats voting against it) — and without time for lawmakers to read the 2,700-page behemoth.
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Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate — the percentage of the adult population that is employed or looking for work — has dropped from 65.7 percent when Obama took office to 63.6 in September. The lower number in part reflects workers who have simply given up looking for jobs. As a companion to the jobless rates, poverty is up, family incomes are down and enrollment in the nation’s food stamp program has risen from 31.9 million to 46.6 million recipients. President Obama’s rhetoric is all about helping the middle class, but his policies have crushed it.
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Romney promises to issue an executive order on Day 1 that could immediately eliminate Obama-era regulations that unduly hamper job creation. The federal government shouldn't be in the business of job creation – leave that to the private sector – but it does need to put policies in place that foster economic growth.
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While the president can give a resounding speech about the power of the free-market economy when it suits his needs, he must be judged on his actions. They show a man who believes that government “investments” in green energy, high-speed rail and other infrastructure will somehow jump-start the broad private-sector economy; that there is nothing wrong with government taking up a bigger and bigger share of the total economy; and that businesspeople who complain about excessive regulations are polluters or miscreants who shouldn’t be taken seriously.
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I know something about leadership because I have led before. I have reformed businesses that were on the verge of collapse. I have helped to save an Olympics that was plagued by scandal. I have worked with men and women on both sides of the aisle in Massachusetts to achieve real change and real reform. I can do it again in Washington.
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Obama's failure to accelerate the improvement of the economy is the dominant reason Romney is the right choice, but it's not the only one. There are also the broken promises. On the campaign trail in 2008, Obama promised to halve the annual budget deficit of the United States. Instead, the shortfall has remained over $1 trillion per year, and the national debt has increased about 45 percent. Obama said he would pass comprehensive immigration reform, but he never made a significant attempt to address it.
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Obama is sure to block any attempts to repeal his signature law in a second term, and even if a Republican were to win in 2016, undoing ObamaCare two years after it's gone into full effect would be like trying to unscramble an egg. By 2016, ObamaCare will have fundamentally reshaped the way people get health coverage, with millions forced into subsidized, government-run exchanges after their companies drop coverage, and roughly 17 million added to Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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Against this position
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The state of Washington depends on trade, and had reason to worry four years ago when candidate Obama threatened to scrap the free-trade agreement with Mexico and Canada. In office, he left it alone and pushed through a good trade agreement with South Korea. Now it is Romney who rashly promises to pick a trade fight with China.
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If more Americans were paying attention, this election would not be close. Barack Obama would win going away, at least 53 to 47, perhaps even 99 to 1. But the atmosphere has been polluted by lies, distortion, voter suppression and spending by desperate plutocrats who see the nation's changing demographics and fear that their time is almost up.
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Despite his C-minus performance as president in his first term, there still are reasons to vote for Obama. We support a second term largely because he has delivered on pledges to end the war in Iraq, and hunt down al-Qaida leaders, including removing Osama bin Laden as a world menace.
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Obama’s recovery program stopped the free-fall. He ended the war in Iraq. He saved the auto industry. He saved billions in bank ripoffs in the student loan program and put the money into Pell Grants for deserving students. In the midst of a national crisis, he faced unprecedented and unrelenting Republican obstruction. And despite this, America has done better on his watch than any other industrial country in coming out of the calamity.
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Progressives made real advances during Obama’s four years in office, and we can build on the lessons and struggles of his first term if he’s given a second. But with the so-called fiscal cliff looming at year’s end, and with Obama gesturing toward a Grand Bargain that concedes far too much to the right, it would be a mistake to believe we can cast our votes and go home, secure in the knowledge that our nation’s social contract with all its citizens will be protected. What was true in 2008 is still true today: electing Obama is a necessary first step, but the more complex challenges commence after election day.
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Obama is both the key to a brighter future and the bulwark against a return to the chaos of the Bush years. He stands between the divides in American society, so some say he must therefore be the source of division. But as president, Obama has reached out repeatedly to Republicans and shied away from the I’m-the-decider pronouncements of his predecessor. He’s been diligent and responsible — to a fault. If anything, he’s been too little of a politician, not enough of a persuader. But he’s built a record of major accomplishments in the face of intense pressures, and fully deserves reelection.
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He has faced Republican intransigence at virtually every turn. But the test of a great president is someone who can overcome objections, who can create the kinds of personal relationships with key lawmakers that allow them to work together to hammer out compromises. It is a skill Obama needs to develop.
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It’s often said that character is what matters most in a candidate, because that’s the only way voters can predict how he will govern. Romney fails that test. His character is one that insults fully half of the country and that won’t play straight with the rest.
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This election is about values. The person in the Oval Office must be trustworthy, and he must care about the needs of all Americans. We fear that under Romney -- who could appoint two new Supreme Court justices -- the rights of women to control their own medical care would be seriously limited. We fear that many disabled and elderly citizens who worked hard all their lives would be left to fend for themselves, to the great detriment of us all.
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General Motors and Chrysler are thriving — a long, long way from the edge of insolvency, which is where Obama found them on his first day in office. Bridge loans and managed bankruptcies turned them around, and stable growth followed soon after. Is there anything more important to people here in Michigan?
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Mitt Romney and Republicans of all stripes are sworn never to raise taxes, so spending cuts are the only alternative. But Mr. Romney also promises to protect the notoriously wasteful military budget, which could be cut without jeopardizing national security. That leaves few options, so people on Social Security and Medicare better beware. All the reassurances about Mr. Romney's intentions to preserve these programs and others stand mute before the math.
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As he seeks to limit spending, Mr. Obama understands the economic importance of results-based investment in such things as alternative energy, transportation, job training, and infrastructure repair. His Race to the Top school reform program and emphasis on community colleges are prescriptions to ensure there will be enough workers to fill high-skill jobs. His agenda contrasts with that of Mr. Romney, for whom tax cuts — especially for the rich — are an all-purpose nostrum.
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Harry Truman, and virtually all presidents since, have talked about health care changes. Obama, in a painful fight, managed to go beyond talk, with a reform act that will likely put the vast majority of Americans under health insurance by 2014. Children with pre-existing conditions have been helped already, as have seniors, as have families who are allowed to keep adult children under 26 on their own policies.
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America's fiscal health remains an urgent concern. Of course, government spends more in poor economies to help suffering citizens while it takes in less tax revenues. That America's deficits have greatly worsened in recent years should surprise no one, especially after the big tax cuts, two wars and the creation of Medicare Part D -- all on borrowed money -- that Mr. Obama inherited.
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Obama's approach — tax cuts for working people and businesses combined with stimulus spending — pulled us back from a depression. If you doubt it, look at Europe which chose austerity over stimulus and keeps sliding back into recession, while the U.S. economy slowly digs out of a very deep hole.
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In the poisonous atmosphere of this campaign, it may be easy to overlook Mr. Obama’s many important achievements, including carrying out the economic stimulus, saving the auto industry, improving fuel efficiency standards, and making two very fine Supreme Court appointments.
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Romney’s fix on tax cuts, plus his guarantee to protect defense spending that genuinely could constrict, leaves him precious little room to maneuver. Remember, the next president needs to reach deals that slash debt by many trillions -- without bankrupting Washington in the process.
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Despite his move toward the center since winning the nomination, Romney's chameleon tendencies -- coupled with an economic plan that lacks credibility -- have left us with too many doubts about how he would lead the nation. Those doubts, combined with our fundamental disagreement with even the postconvention Romney's positions on key issues, lead us to endorse Barack Obama for a second term as president despite our disappointment over the lost opportunities of his first four years.
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His policies helped the middle class and kept a deep recession from becoming worse. He repaired America’s reputation in the world. And he got important legislation passed. For that, the nation is better — not fully healed, but pushing forward. He has earned another four years.
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He made a gutsy call to get Osama bin Laden. Saving the car industry was an equally tough call, and a good one. And the much-maligned Affordable Care Act ensures that Americans won’t go broke just because they get sick. He found two well-qualified women for the Supreme Court and got them confirmed without too much fuss.
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Mr. Obama took a number of steps to get the moribund economy moving again, including the $787 billion stimulus package, Wall Street re-regulation and recapitalization of major banks (at no cost to the government). The U.S. economy is growing, although slowly — unlike Europe's. It took nearly two decades to end America's Great Depression; the second coming of FDR wouldn't end this one overnight, either.
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Critics can justifiably point to the lack of discipline in the $787 billion stimulus program and the sheer weight and regulatory meddling of the Affordable Care Act. But unemployment and access to health care were undeniably reaching a crisis point without government intervention - and Obama's leadership helped push these measures, however imperfect, through a polarized Capitol.
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We come to that judgment with eyes open to the disappointments of Mr. Obama’s first term. He did not end, as he promised he would, “our chronic avoidance of tough decisions” on fiscal matters. But Mr. Obama is committed to the only approach that can succeed: a balance of entitlement reform and revenue increases. Mr. Romney, by contrast, has embraced his party’s reality-defying ideology that taxes can always go down but may never go up.
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It seems obvious that, long-term, both parties will have to back down. Entitlements must be cut and taxes increased to chip away at America’s increasingly dangerous national debt. There’s been too little acknowledgment of this reality among Democrats – but absolutely none among the bulk of Republican lawmakers and primary voters. Their hard-line opposition to any tax increase is a big reason Congress is gridlocked over the deficit. The election of a Republican president – who wouldn’t touch defense spending – seems bound to empower them.
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The unemployment rate is down to 7.8 percent — not great, but the same as when Obama took office. The stock market has come back, new housing starts are the highest in four years and housing prices in Tampa Bay and other areas are rising. The financial industry is stable, interest rates remain low and corporate profits are healthy. There is still too much economic pain, but America is better off than most of the rest of the industrialized world.
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Voters face a momentous choice in November between two candidates offering sharply different prescriptions for what ails the country. Obama's recalls the successful formula of the 1990s, when the government raised taxes and slowed spending to close the deficit. The alternative offered by Romney would neglect the country's infrastructure and human resources for the sake of yet another tax cut and a larger defense budget than even the Pentagon is seeking.
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Obama took office four years ago amid a meltdown of the nation's financial, housing and labor markets. He acted swiftly to continue and enhance what had been bipartisan measures to stabilize those markets. He also took new steps to tighten regulations on banks, create a floor under the rising number of home foreclosures and stanch the loss of up to 800,000 jobs per month while also rescuing the U.S. auto industry. The results: a stock market that has risen more than 60 percent since Obama took office, housing starts in September up 38 percent from one year ago and 31 consecutive months of job growth.
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In words and some deeds, Obama has worked to protect vulnerable Americans – the uninsured, gays, the children of illegal immigrants. He’s governed with a philosophy that all Americans deserve at least the opportunity for success, and he’s advocated for tax reform and an educational infrastructure that would promote fairness. The America he believes in celebrates the common good as well as the individual good. When the economy improves – and it will – the country needs a president with that agenda, with those values.
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Obama’s problem on the debt has been his lack of courage. He appointed the Simpson-Bowles commission, then punted on its report — the biggest mistake of his presidency. But he has at least staked out the reasonable middle ground, embracing the bipartisan framework of a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. When and if the Republican fever breaks, he is clearly ready to cut a deal. On this decisive issue of the national debt, it is not a close call. We endorse President Obama.
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The economy is beginning to turn around. Unemployment is the lowest it's been since Obama took office; the country has had 31 straight months of job growth and the creation of more than 5 million private-sector jobs. Obama's decision to save Detroit automakers preserved a million American jobs. Reformed financial regulations better protect consumers when they use credit cards or invest their money.
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[Obama] has led the nation back from the brink of depression. Ohio in particular has benefited from his bold decision to revive the domestic auto industry. Because of his determination to fulfill a decades-old dream of Democrats, 30 million more Americans will soon have health insurance. His Race to the Top initiative seeded many of the education reforms embodied in Cleveland's Transformation Plan.
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The blows to housing, construction and finance made certain the recovery would be slow and halting, many coping with diminished assets and heavy debt, all of it setting back demand. In response, the Obama White House and a Democratic Congress acted as aggressively as the political landscape would allow. They enacted a stimulus package that prevented something much worse and set the economy on a path of growth. They rescued the auto industry. They strengthened regulation of Wall Street.
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The president was willing to concede on the issue of entitlements in a deal reached with House Speaker John Boehner in 2011. But Boehner couldn't sell their agreement to Tea Party conservatives in the House. We expect Obama will stand up to liberals in his party to compromise on the sacred cow of entitlement reform as part of a larger budget deal shortly after Election Day. There is less reason to believe that Romney would attempt to — or even could — manage a similar feat in challenging the Tea Party wing of his party on tax revenues.
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In considering which candidate to endorse, The Salt Lake Tribune editorial board had hoped that Romney would exhibit the same talents for organization, pragmatic problem solving and inspired leadership that he displayed here more than a decade ago. Instead, we have watched him morph into a friend of the far right, then tack toward the center with breathtaking aplomb. Through a pair of presidential debates, Romney’s domestic agenda remains bereft of detail and worthy of mistrust.
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Like FDR, Obama has walked us back from the brink. He averted a depression, ended one war and put us on the path ending the other, rescued the auto industry, slowly building the sound footing necessary to have a sustained recovery — better, smarter regulation of those that brought this upon us, tax breaks to save a dwindling middle class, and a request that the very super rich, folks like Gov. Romney who have taken advantage of loopholes and deductions and off-shore accounts to amass their fortunes, pay their fair share.
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That doesn't mean Obama shouldn't be criticized for not doing a better job with the economy. But Romney hasn't presented any evidence that he would have done better. He has reached back to the Republicans' familiar trickle-down rhetoric about creating jobs by cutting taxes. But he leaves out key details, so no one can tell if his plan would work.
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Despite the non-negotiating stance of Republicans – even those who once supported a system such as that in Massachusetts – Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. While there still is much work ahead to implement health care reform and hold down medical costs, this law holds the promise of extending health care coverage to 36 million Americans. Obama has good reason to be proud of "Obamacare." It is a signature achievement that has eluded presidents dating back to Harry Truman.
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Romney's judicial picks would be out of touch with the values of most Americans. They would likely set back the rights of women, side with states that want to interfere with minority voting rights, allow more taxpayer money to fund religious activities, protect polluters and shut the courthouse door to little-guy consumers, workers and gays seeking equal rights.
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Like the country as a whole, the Editorial Board was split, and debated at length before making what was a difficult decision. The president has, in many ways, disappointed those who endorsed his vision for hope and change in 2008. And he has deviated from his stated intention of bringing a new era of cooperation to Washington. The challenges faced by the nation — economic and otherwise — cry out for leadership. Obama must redouble his efforts to be that leader.
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These United States need a president honest with its citizens and honest with himself. Mitt Romney has not been honest with the American people, and candidate Romney has not been true to the progressive, moderate Romney who once led Massachusetts. Four years later, we see Barack Obama with his flaws, but also with his strengths.
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Under Mr. Obama’s presidency, the economy has begun to recover, albeit slowly. And while we might have hoped for a faster recovery or more rapid advances in policies, bear in mind Mr. Obama has been forced to proceed against obstructive Republicans in Congress more eager to destroy his presidency than help provide Americans with jobs, access to health care and safety-net services for the poorest and most vulnerable.
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I've worked with Republicans to cut a trillion dollars of spending, and I'll do more. I'll work with anyone of any party to move this country forward. But I won't eliminate health insurance for millions of poor, elderly or disabled on Medicaid, and I won't turn Medicare into a voucher to pay for another millionaire's tax cut. That is surrender to the same philosophy that hurt middle-class families for too long.
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President Obama's record is not just about stopping the bleeding, it is about setting the stage for a more sustainable, competitive American economy. His Race to the Top initiative has unleashed a wave of school reform far greater than what was achieved by the one-size-fits-all approach of No Child Left Behind. It has fostered incentive pay for teachers and charter schools, even in union-dominated states like Maryland. The president's policies have made college loans more affordable so that the nation has a chance to once again lead the world in educational attainment.
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Indeed, the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions. But the Republicans have become a party of Torquemadas, forcing representatives to sign pledges never to raise taxes, to dump the chairman of the Federal Reserve and to embrace an ever more Southern-fried approach to social policy.
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President Barack Obama has taken major steps to reduce our carbon consumption, including setting higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks. His administration also has adopted tighter controls on mercury emissions, which will help to close the dirtiest coal power plants (an effort I have supported through my philanthropy), which are estimated to kill 13,000 Americans a year.
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Mixed on this position
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Instead of trying to persuade you one way or another in a race where most minds are made up, we take this opportunity to lament a presidential campaign bogged down in trivialities, in thrall to extremists, hijacked by moneyed interests and, in contrast to four years ago, uninspiring in the extreme.
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