Numbers Don't Lie, But Politicians Sure Do

The following blog post if from John Dougherty of Latrobe. John is a veteran, a father of five and a former-Republican who is speaking out against his former party's policies.

Unsurprisingly, last week Mitt Romney was nominated at the RNC Convention to lead the Republican party. 

I joined a group of hard-working Pennsylvanians to protest in Tampa because I'm deeply concerned about what a "Romney Economy" would mean for my family and my community. 

Outside of Clint Eastwood's empty chair speech, very little about the RNC took anyone by surprise. But we certainly took the PA delegation breakfast by surprise last week, when we charged into a breakfast in Tampa for the Republican delegation from PA and "serenaded" the group with a special version of the "Steelers Polka." Tampa was full of wealthy donors and out-of-touch politicians. I was proud to bring them a dose of reality from the Keystone State while showing my Steelers pride.

As a father and a Vietnam War veteran from Greensburg, I've fought for family and country. And I've worked hard at a good union job to put five kids through college. 

But Romney's vision for America would give tax breaks to millionaires, and leave the rest of us to pick up the tab. If Mitt Romney runs our country like he ran Bain Capitol, our good jobs will continue to be shipped overseas and replaced with minimum wage jobs. In this tough economy, we can't afford that. I want an America where my kids can work hard and get ahead -- just as I did. 

This week we'll hear stump speeches from the Democrats as well. While neither party has a silver bullet to fix all our nation's problems, there is a clear contrast between the economic policies of the two candidates. While the media discusses the "deeper" meaning behind Michelle Obama's dress or how Mitt Romney eats muffins, we are left with gaping holes in explaining what the Romney/Ryan platform would actually mean for the economy. Here's a great place to start if you want to fill in those gaps: 

• Mitt Romney's economic plans are based on the failed, discredited "trickle down" economic theory, which during the Bush Administration led to the slowest job growth since WWII, growing income inequality, and stagnating wages for middle class families.
• According to an independent, nonpartisan study, Mitt Romney's tax plan would raise taxes on 95% of Americans and make the average middle class family pay $2,000 more -- in order to pay for NEW tax cuts for the richest few.
• The Ryan Republican budget that Mitt Romney has endorsed and based his ideas on could cost our economy over 4 million jobs in the next two years alone.
• Economic experts say that implementing all of Romney's economic ideas would "push us deeper into recession and make the recovery slower." Even Romney admits that massive spending cuts will “throw us into recession or depression" -- but he supports them anyway.
• His budget proposals would also require massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, disabled veterans programs, and a wide range of home front investments like education, medical research, and roads and bridges -- with the cuts reaching nearly 60% in 10 years.
• In fact, on his way to ending Medicare as we know it, Romney would cut it by $1.4 trillion through 2012 and raise premiums for 24 million Americans

Not every voter is a policy expert who can wade through the mistruths line by line. We all deserve the truth from the people who want to represent us in Washington. We did not get a lot of truth from many of the stump speeches at the RNC last week. Whether you agree or disagree with the Romney-Ryan platform, there are real numbers that coincide with their vision for the economy. And to be quite frank about it, some of those numbers are pretty scary.