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Politics : President Barack Obama -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RetiredNow who wrote (124890)	10/23/2012 10:08:42 PM
From: ChinuSFO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 149317

Finally, the ad claims Romney “balanced every budget, without raising taxes.” Massachusetts’ Constitution requires a yearly balanced budget, so the boast isn’t — or shouldn’t be — that Romney balanced the budget every year. Rather, it’s that he did it without raising taxes. It’s true that Romney never raised personal income taxes as governor. But as we have noted repeatedly, Romney increased government fees by hundreds of millions of dollars, and he also closed loopholes on some corporate taxes (a fact we have noted whenever Romney has claimed he did not raise taxes as governor). ....read it all at factcheck.org ================================================= There is another claim that he was bipartisan as Gov. So here goes: Democrats in the legislature held a veto-proof super-majority. That meant Romney had no choice but to play ball with them or else he would get nothing done. Sometimes he opted for the former, as in the case of healthcare reform. Often, he opted for the latter. Looking at Romney’s record in Massachusetts one does not see bipartisanship as an operating principle. Rather than it is a tool he uses when it is convenient. Romney was not particularly good at cultivating relationships with the Democratic legislature. Former Massachusetts House Speaker Tom Finneran told the Associated Press, “Initially [Romney’s] sense was, ‘I have been elected governor, I am the CEO here and you guys are the board of directors and you monitor the implementation of what I say.’ That ruffled the feathers of legislators who see themselves as an equal branch (of government).” Romney’s approach to the legislature remained mostly hostile, rather than conciliatory. As NPR reports: ....read it all at thenation.com Romney clearly did not relish having to work with a Legislature that was 85 percent Democratic. He pushed hard during his first two years as governor to boost the number of Republicans on Beacon Hill. But that effort was a failure; Republicans ended up losing seats in the midterm elections…. Apart from health care, Romney defined success not with big-picture legislative accomplishments but with confrontation. In a 2008 campaign ad, Romney actually bragged about taking on his Legislature: "I like vetoes; I vetoed hundreds of spending appropriations as governor," he said. Romney issued some 800 vetoes, and the Legislature overrode nearly all of them, sometimes unanimously.