Customer Reviews

Believe in America: Mitt Romney's Plan for Jobs and Economic Growth

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I just read Romney's book NO APOLOGIES. From that I concluded that Romney is more of a tactician than a grand strategist. Romney doesn't seem to have any grand vision for ending the Great Recession. Of course nobody else does either! What Romney does bring to the table is an ability to improve things at the tactical level --- to make so many individual improvements to government processes that the cumulative effect in improving our economy becomes major.

While Governor of Massachusetts, Romney seems to have improved enough aspects of state government to become very popular, despite his being much more conservative than most of the Massachusetts electorate.

This book is a campaign manual for what Mitt would like to accomplish as President. There's nothing at all radical in Mitt's agenda. It's more of a tweaking of the methods of government than revolutionizing them. Mitt wants to tweak the tax code so as to reduce the corporate tax rate. He wants to rationalize the patchwork of government regulations that impose an unreasonable compliance burden on business, but he supports reasonable, clear, and understandable regulations. He's for more free trade with Latin America and less with China. He wants to repeal Obamacare, the national version of what he did for healthcare reform in Massachusetts, and let the states do their own thing individually. He wants to reform, but not eliminate Dodd-Frank regulations on banks. He wants to reform the legal system to prevent excess damage awards. And of course he wants to develop all economical forms of energy in the USA.

IMO these are hundreds of small-potato ideas that probably don't excite many people when taken one-by-one. Nevertheless, small potatoes can be tasty. Put enough of them together and they become weighty. I prefer this kind of incremental plan to the grandiose trillion-dollar stimulus spending programs that don't seem to have accomplished much in the way of improving our economy.

Anybody seriously seeking an in-depth understanding of Mitt Romney should read his autobiography NO APOLOGIES. Because that is written in Mitt's own words it gives a clear impression of who he is as a person and what he would like do as president. However, this book is a decently written campaign manual of Mitt's agendas.

5 stars!! This is a novel approach to reaching voters (especially the Kindle version), and I wish all candidates would do the same. Let's get rid of the pretty rhetoric and get down to business with specific and detailed plans to restore our economy. This book does just that. It shows that Romney is willing to be open and honest with voters. It is, after all, a risk to put such a detailed plan out for others to bash and critique. It shows that Romney has the foresight, work ethic, and skills to turn the economy around. Now, if any other candidates would care to publish their plans for jobs and economic growth, I would love to read them, so I can do a side by side comparison.

In September 2008 the economy collapsed and Americans were faced with choosing between two presidential candidates who had no clue about the economy. Mitt Romney should have been the nominee for the GOP in 2008, something he shows quite easily with this economic plan.

You can agree or disagree with Romney's actual plan laid out in this document, but you cannot escape noticing that he knows what he's talking about. When Romney becomes the GOP's nominee for 2012, I hope many Americans will take the time to read this and get a sense of how knowledgeable Mitt is compared to Obama on the economy.

I've been reading this on my daily commute, 10 minutes at a time; with Kindle on my Android phone it's easy and convenient. There's really no excuse for not downloading this and taking a look at what Romney has to offer.

Finally a detailed plan. Most candidates make vague references to jobs and ridicule Obama. I rate this book with five stars because it is well written, lays the candidate's plans out in detail, and is free. A great read for anyone who wants to know where Romney stands.

Mitt Romney has referred to this book as the definitive expression of his economic plan in the Republican candidate debates, so I decided to do some due diligence by reading it.

There are 59 recommendations in all, most of which would involve reversing policies of the current Administration. The basic thrust is to slow the big government express and cut the private sector a little slack. Some highlights follow:

TAXES (cut corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%, preserve Bush tax cuts, overhaul tax system longer term); REGULATORY (repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank, force regulators to consider costs of complying with new regulations, require Congressional approval of major regulations); TRADE (negotiate more trade agreements, get tough with China); ENERGY (expedite development of untapped US oil and gas reserves, ban EPA regulation of carbon emissions); LABOR (reverse NLRB effort to favor union organization vs. impartially arbitrating labor/management disputes); HUMAN CAPITAL (rationalize federal training programs and block grant them to the states, encourage immigration of well educated people with valuable skills); FISCAL (cut spending and cap it at 20% of GDP, support a balanced budget amendment).

Most of these ideas seem sensible to me, but the difficulties involved are understated in many cases and there is little discussion of how to overcome predictable objections. For example:

#Repealing Obama would take more than an executive order that support should be given to states that wanted to opt out, including offering an alternative program (none is satisfactorily described in the book) that would work better.

#It is said the first step towards "getting the federal debt under control" will be "admitting we have a problem and refusing to allow any more irresponsible borrowing." In, other words, "just say no." Fine, but how would President Romney propose to get the members of Congress on board?

No president could hope to implement more than a fraction of such an agenda, so it might have been better to focus on what Romney regards as the four or five top issues and go into more detail.

The absence of an identified author results in off putting statements like "Mitt Romney says" this and "Mitt Romney proposes" that, which detract from the book's impact.,,An account attributed to Romney would have worked better, even if most readers suspected it was ghost written.

In sum, "Believe in America" marks Romney as a competent manager versus an inspirational leader. Probably that is who he is, but it is not necessarily a recipe for electoral success.

Mitt Romney released this book free on the Kindle just before the first debate between the Republican candidates for president. The timing and benefits to Governor Romney are obvious. This channel allows him to communicate his message quickly, outside of the adversarial, sound-bite constraints of debate, and free from the charge of, well... charging for it. Nicely done. There are advantages for prospective voters, too--including those certain they will not support Romney's candidacy. He lays out a very specific plan. Agree with him or not, readers must admit that this is more than a vague cry for some kind of unknown change. It is clear where Romney stands and what he proposes to do.

In an introductory letter, Romney outlines his approach. "I have formulated a comprehensive and integrated plan that focuses on seven areas where reform is urgently needed: taxes, regulation, trade, energy, labor, human capital, and fiscal policy." He then tackles each area in turn, describing its impact on the economy, the negative effects of President Obama's policies, and the objectives of a Romney administration. The book closes with an appendix containing fifty-nine policy proposals. If Romney is elected, we can use this list of proposals as a scorecard to track his promises and his progress.

A sample of briefly-stated policies from the appendix:

- Repeal Obamacare.

- Pursue new trade agreements with nations committed to free enterprise and open markets.

- Open America's energy reserves for development.

- Prohibit the use for political purposes of funds automatically deducted from worker paychecks.

- Cap federal spending at 20 percent of GDP.

The book also includes endorsements of Romney's plan. The first is an overview of economic policy by R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean of the Columbia Business School. There are more specifically-themed endorsements from conservative business and political figures. They include Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems on Tax Policy, Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman on Trade Policy, former Missouri Senator Jim Talent on Energy Policy, and eBay's Meg Whitman on Human Capital Policy. The statements by these high-profile supporters appear at the end of chapters, set off clearly from Romney's own analysis and proposals.

This book is highly recommended to readers who want to evaluate Mitt Romney's approach to jobs and the economy. Readers also interested in Romney's views on foreign policy would benefit from his previous book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.

Mitt Romney outlines his strategies for leading America as President. As Mitt has spent the last five years training and preparing for the Presidency, he has conducted extensive analysis and planning. President Obama skillfully leveraged Web 2.0 to propel his 2008 campaign, and Mitt has embraced the Digital Age by sharing his plans and policies via Kindle. Beyond the simple talking points depth of other campaigns, Mitt offers extensive details including his 5 bills and 5 orders for day one. While other candidates offer gimmicky approaches or radical proposals that have no chance of passing in Washington, Mitt's extensive economic plans to revive the American economy offer Americans a clear strategy to debate and implement. As Americans decide who to vote for in the GOP Primaries and the General Election in Nov 2012, this is a must read to help you decide if Mitt's plans resonate with you. Given Kindle readers are more educated and more likely to engage the political process, this free book is worth the read.

This book provides a clear, well written, detailed plan for what Romney would like to do as president. You may or may not agree with the plan, but at least you'll know where he stands.

This is also a good read for people who aren't familiar with the basic principles and arguments for fiscal conservatism. Romney does a good job of making the case for fiscal conservatism in a way that is easy for ordinary people to understand.

Whether you are republican or democrat, this is an essential read for everyone who is going to vote in the upcoming primaries or elections. All of us recently witnessed the near collapse of our nation, and we really need to think about why that happened, why our unemployment has stayed unbelievably high for so long, and what we can do to change it. Even if you can't stand Mitt Romney, you need to read this book for the insights it has.

I'm not a big Mitt Romney fan, but this is a very nice piece of literature for a campaign to put out. I can't think of any other campaign who has ever put out a plan this detailed this early in the process and made it available to this many people. Certainly Obama hasn't put out anything this detailed.

Because of that, I'm going to rate this 5 stars. I really hope more candidates follow his example and we get a primary based on ideas instead of personal attacks.

Now for the content:

*Taxes*

Mitt is definitely focused in the right direction on taxes, but I wish he'd go further and I think he easily could. He supports cutting the corporate tax rate (currently the highest in the world) by 10%. Good start, but that still leaves us with a fairly high rate compared to other OECD nations. He supports ending the death tax, ending taxes on savings and investment for low and middle income individuals (thank you!), and switching to a territorial tax model instead of our worldwide tax system. He says we need a lower, flatter, income tax structure, and that's great. Unfortunately he doesn't really offer too many details on that.

*Spending*

Here I think Mitt needs to go a lot further than he has. He offers a 5% across the board cut for non-defense discretionary spending, which is good but is really just a small percent of a tiny fraction of total spending. He wants to raise the Social Security retirement age or modify the escalator to keep that system solvent. He would cap and block grant Medicaid to the states. Unfortunately he does not really address Medicare, which is by far the biggest driver of our debt going forward. He also doesn't address any reforms in military spending.

*Immigration*

He's got a fairly immigrant-friendly immigration policy, which I like, but it only focuses on immigrants with skills or who graduate college. Not bad, but immigrants in the US generally come in two flavors: Very highly skilled, and very low skilled. Both are complimentary to the existing US workforce (if they weren't, they wouldn't be here) but he only addresses half of them.

In my opinion the rest is barely an improvement over Obama. He's basically making the case that he'd do a better job than Obama, not saying he'd do a 180. He'd spend government money on better energy sources, beat China around better, use government money to fund different or better education programs. It's a lot of government solutions to problems that should be in the realm of the private sector. He's probably right that he'd be a better manager than Obama, but I'd rather have someone that lets Americans manage their own lives instead of trying to do that from Washington DC. That's what Republicans should stand for, and that's the kind of Republican I'm going to be voting for in the primary.

Thanks again, Mitt and company, for putting this out there. I hope to see a lot more stuff like this out of your campaign as well as all the others.