President Obama has offered Americans a clear and detailed roadmap to increase our energy independence, improve access to quality education, and grow a stronger economy built on “Made in America.” This is the plan we need to move the country forward.
Mitt Romney, however, is banking on taking America backwards. As the President said to Romney in the last debate:
You seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s, and the economic policies of the 1920s.
Here’s how Romney is projecting a 20th century plan onto the 21st century.
Foreign policy of the 1980s
Mitt Romney has repeatedly revealed that he’s “stuck in a Cold War mind-set”, using “blunt, swaggering language on the stump that at times has evoked the Cold War Era.” As Slate’s Fred Kaplan noted,” Romney and his advisers “don’t seem to understand ... the extent to which the world has changed” since the 1980s. Here’s proof:
Romney called Russia our “number one geopolitical foe,” and has repeatedly referred to Russians as “Soviets.”
Romney wrote in his book that, “It was a lot simpler when it was just the Soviet Union versus the United States.” Now, threats are “more varied.”
Romney compared his desire to increase military spending to President Reagan’s defense budget increases because Reagan “pressured the Soviets into a corner” with that level of spending.
Romney’s foreign policy advisers have also referred to “Soviets” and even attacked the President for supposedly abandoning plans to put a missile defense site in “Czechoslovakia”—a nation that has not existed for decades.
Social policy of the 1950s
When it comes to women’s health and women’s rights, Romney is firmly committed to taking American women back to the backwards policies of the 1950s. Here’s why:
Romney declared support for overturning Roe v. Wade—a move that’d “take away a fundamental right that American women have had for nearly 40 years.” Calling the decision “one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history,” Romney said he hopes to “appoint justices” that would reflect “my preference that they reverse Roe v. Wade.”
Romney endorsed a bill that would allow employers to “have free rein to pick and choose your medical care as he or she saw fit”—including coverage for birth control. Nearly 79 million American women received health care coverage thorough their employers.
Romney declared he’d “get rid of” funding for Planned Parenthood, a health organization that provides vital basic health care—including breast and cervical cancer screenings—to millions of women. And Romney even went so far as to call for defunding Title X—a program that provides family planning and preventive health services. As the Washington Post’s Sarah Kiff notes, “In moving to eliminate Title X, Romney is venturing into a new territory” in terms of extremism. Even anti-choice groups haven’t asked candidates to oppose Title X.
Economic policies of the 1920s
There is no question that Romney’s economic plan would drive us back to the failed policies of the past that have helped create this country’s major economic crises. Not only would he go back to the policies that contributed to the 2008 economic crisis—but his policies even mirror the top-down approach of the 1920s, which focused on tax cuts for the wealthy and rolling back the rules of the road for Wall Street.
Romney would roll back regulations that would help prevent another financial crisis. He has pledged to repeal the President’s Wall Street reform, which helps protect consumers and ends the era of Big Bank bailouts. But, “he is nearly silent on how—without the regulation—he would prevent Wall Street from once again engaging in the risky practices that helped cause the 2008 financial crisis.”
Standing on hay bales in Iowa, Romney declared that “corporations are people, my friend.” And his policies, which could raise taxes on the middle class to pay for new tax cuts for millionaires, illustrates what his priorities would be if elected president. And Romney has proposed additional tax cuts for the wealthy. He has put forward $5 trillion in tax cuts weighted towards millionaires and billionaires, which could only be paid for by raising taxes on the middle-class.
To learn more about the clear choice in this election, check out each candidates plans here—then share the facts with your friends.