The Real Deficit Hawk

After his bruising defeat in the first presidential debate, Obama has to try and land as many punches as he can in tonight’s debate. Watching Biden’s performance will give Obama the proof he needs that being “too polite” is not the way to go, he must be forceful and call out Romney when he lies.

Obama does come into debates with a slight advantage amongst voters. According to a poll of registered voters by ABC News and the Washington Post, Obama leads Mitt Romney in practically every area of policy that they asked about. Here are the numbers:

Who would do a better job on…?:

The Economy                     Obama +4

Taxes                                    Obama +5
Health Care                        Obama +6

International Affairs       Obama +10

Unexpected crisis            Obama +12

Medicare                             Obama +15

The only area on which Obama falls behind Mitt Romney is that of reducing the deficit; Romney leads Obama by three points in this field. What I don’t understand is how Romney can possibly be ahead on this area. If we look at Obama’s record and the record of Republicans and Democrats over the last 40 years, then you begin to wonder why the Republicans have a reputation for being deficit hawks. Of the three Republicans to be president in that period, all of them have added to the budget deficit by significant amounts. George W. Bush has the worst record of any modern president, followed by George H. W. Bush and then Ronald Reagan. Of the three Democratic presidents in that same period, only Jimmy Carter added to the budget deficit, even so he added less than any of the Republicans. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are the only presidents of the past 40 years to actually reduce the deficit! For some more historical context, the last Republican to balance a budget was Dwight D. Eisenhower who was president from 1953 – 1961.

So you would think, with the weight of historical context favouring Democrats, and with Obama’s own record on reducing the deficit, that Mitt Romney must have some fantastic plan to reduce the deficit. You would imagine that he is very precise about what he is going to do and that even Democrats could not touch his plan because it was so fantastic.

You’d think so wouldn’t you, but that could not be further from the truth.

Romney has promised a sky-rocketing in defence spending, unseen since the Korean War, a $5 trillion tax cut for the wealthy and all at the same time as balancing the deficit. If you were watching the first presidential debate you may remember when Obama accused Romney of the $5 trillion tax cut (figures sighted to the non-partisan CBO), Romney said that six studies have trashed the CBO study. That’s basically a lie as none of the six are actual studies, three are blog posts, two by a Conservative think tank and one by a Romney advisor, one is a report by a Conservative think tank (reports are no-where near as in depth as a study) another is an op-ed by the same Romney advisor as before and the final is a paper by a George W. Bush advisor. We all remember what he did to the deficit.  So Mitt Romney is obviously going to have to cut lots of programs or he will send the deficit through the roof, but the only cut he has actually admitted to is that of PBS.

Tonight is a real opportunity for Obama to win support for him on the issue of the deficit. When Romney brings up the six reports, Obama must tell the American people that that is completely misleading. If Romney brings up the “doubled the deficit” line, remind him that he’s not debating George W. Bush. If he brings up the issue of jobs, Obama needs to remind Romney about the fact that there has been a net increase in jobs and unemployment is below 8%.

The facts are behind Obama on the issue of the deficit, he should not let any American forget this fact.