(ThyBlackMan.com) The last four GOP candidates debate for the last time tonight before South Carolina’s GOP primary. This is the second debate in just as many days. The debate Tuesday, hosted by FOX News, saw all the candidates that were not Mitt Romney go after Mitt Romney. The coordinated attack on Romney was led by none other than Newt Gingrich. The candidates came after the devilishly handsome frontrunner on his record during his tenure as Massachusetts governor, his time at Bain Capitol, and of course those tax returns. While Mitt Romney didn’t acquiesce to his opponents during the debate about his taxes and finances, a day later he told reporters he thinks he pays 15 percent in taxes.
Really.
Like for real though.
This man worth $270 million pays the same amount as I do on my pittance of a newsroom salary.
Can we just say wrong.
I understand why Mitt Romney pays 15 percent in taxes. The whole money from investments is not income, capital gains tax loophole thing. But just because I understand this small portion of tax law does not mean I truly comprehend how someone who makes money by making money can pay so little money to the government which allows him to play with numbers until he’s dizzy with dollars and cents.
Mitt Romney’s forced admission of just how much he pays in taxes, his statement that $374,000 for a speaking engagement is not a lot of money and proposed $10,000 bet with now former GOP Presidential candidate Rick Perry on the issue of hiring illegals shows Romney is a businessman through and through.
There’s nothing wrong with being a businessman and having a lot of money at your disposal that allows you to campaign for five years straight. But business and politics don’t always mix. I say this from the experience of living in Florida where our governor, Rick Scott, the consummate businessman, has been running the state of the sunshine state into the ground with his 
conservative policies that seek to get a whole lot from absolutely nothing.
This for me is the problem with Republican ideology on finances and fiscal conservatism. They always want a whole lot from absolutely nothing. Clearly, they’ve never heard the phrase you have to give to get.
Mitt Romney, his fellow candidates, and all of his party members in Congress fundamentally believe in building America up from the top down. They fundamentally believe in alleviating the financial burden on the well off, rich, and the wealthy. They believe the removal of said burden will in turn free up money for job creation which will stimulate the economy by putting people to work who will have money in their pockets who will then break the bank to buy, buy, buy fueling our consumerist capitalist culture that allows those at the top, getting the breaks, to reap even more benefits.
This is the Mitt Romney way. This is the Republican way.
On its face this theory sounds like it makes absolute perfect since. Give those who don’t need help even more tools to help others and benevolence abounds. We the proletariats are forever indebted to our benefactors but with every helping hand they offer we slowly climb out of one lowly socio-economic status after the other to eventually reach where they are and then we give back to those beneath us in the true spirit of patriotic altruism.
It sounds so good. But just like the final scene from Too Big To Fail where former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was 120 percent sure the big banks, the Wall Street executives he called friends, would loan out their bailout money. This theory, in practice, fails like Paulson lost on his guaranteed bet.
A man worth $270 million, receiving $374,000 in speaking fees, and paying 15 percent in taxes doesn’t know what it means to struggle. He also doesn’t know what it means to share. Therefore he and his party will never be able to identify with the majority of Americans who pay upwards of 15 percent in taxes and don’t have two nickels to rub together to make a dime after paying Uncle Sam.
Furthermore, Newt Gingrich’s statement that he doesn’t want to raise Mitt Romney’s taxes, but instead lower everyone else’s to Romney’s rate is disingenuous. According to USA Today and Newt Gingrich’s own 2012 campaign website Gingrich’s announced optional flat tax of 15 percent would make all the rich folks like Mitt Romney end up paying zero, zip, zilch, nada in taxes.
The rich not paying taxes is not a solution. People not paying taxes period is not a solution. The country needs revenue now more than ever. There’s a difference between not having enough revenue and having no revenue. Neither scenario is helpful to our current economic condition but one is definitely more harmful than the other.
Since the Bush tax cuts were enacted in 2001 and 2003 Democrats have been crying foul saying the top down way of stimulating the economy won’t work. Now nearly 11 years after the first round of cuts went into effect we see by how much these cuts are not working. Even if Mitt Romney was taxed at 29 percent, provided he had a real job to make the kind of money he makes, he would still be a black card carrying member of the one percent. At a 15 percent tax rate, he’s not only a card carrying member of the one percent he is the epitome of what is wrong with the economy.
Mitt Romney does not see the disparity between him paying 15 percent and my $32,500 salary self paying 15 percent.
And that is why the Mitt Romney way, the Republican way of making more and paying less fails. It sounds so good but it does not create jobs. That’s evidenced by the constant uptick in unemployment every year of the Bush 43 Presidency. The failure of the Mitt Romney way is evident in the slow recovery of the economy despite the shotgun trigger bank bailout. The failure of the Romney way is evident in the slow job creation despite a $787 billion stimulus plan that offered small business owners every incentive to hire in the way of constant tax cuts; including the payroll tax cuts Republicans nearly refused to pass at the end of last year. The failure of the Romney Republican way is evident in the slowly recovering economy despite the fact all of the Bush tax cuts remain unharmed and in effect.
Mitt Romney says he wants to restore America, he can start by restoring respect first from himself and among his super rich friends for the American economy and the people who built it. Not the super rich who make money from money which doesn’t require actual job creation or create jobs, but the eroding middle class who actually open and run businesses to provide goods and services that we the people both need and want. If Mitt Romney wants to restore America he must first restore respect for having nothing but a dollar and a dream and an end goal to have millions of dollars and an even bigger dream.
Right now all Mitt “I like to fire people” Romney respects is his paper and his checks; none of which he’s used to enhance the country’s economy only his own personal goals of running it further into the ground.
But don’t take my word for it.
Go ahead and vote for Mitt Romney in November and see where we are come January 2014: I predict knee deep into another recession with no clue on how to dig our way out because we’ve been more focused on how to get over than how to get better.
What did you think of Mitt Romney’s admission that he only pays 15 percent in taxes?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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