Romney talks economy to Detroit
Posted: Monday, January 14, 2008 9:33 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Erin McPike
DETROIT, Mich. -- At first glance, it looks like the small
government-seeking Romney is backing away from pumping up the privacy
of the private sector. In his remarks before the Detroit Economic Club
this afternoon, Romney marched on with his laments about Washington --
specifically, how the federal government has failed to rescue from
distress the automotive industry that drives Detroit.
“In face of all the existing burdens that weigh down the domestic
automotive industry,” Romney reproved, “instead of throwing over a life
preserver, Washington has dropped yet another anvil on Michigan with
higher CAFÉ standards, and now it’s passively sitting back to see if
car companies can swim.”
So Romney, who’s dueling in a new-versus-old, hope-versus-truth battle
with McCain to win over the voters of Michigan, made his pitch here
about why he’d be a better choice in Washington for the economically
challenged state by offering a set of policy prescriptions he’d pursue
as president.
The first? Yet another conglomeration of forces that will come together to try and fix the problem with Romney’s “can-do” leadership overseeing the partnership. He promised, “If I am your President, in my first 100 days, I will roll up my sleeves, and I will personally bring together industry, labor, Congressional and state leaders to develop a plan to rebuild America's automotive leadership. It will be one that works for Michigan and that works for the American taxpayers.”
This is the same Romney who later griped about the size of the bureaucracy in the federal government and said, "There are currently 40 government workforce training programs spread out over the federal government. Let's replace bureaucracy and bureaucrats with personal responsibility and individual ownership.” He did, however, propose to shift government workforce training programs into personal accounts “that can be managed by the workers themselves to gain education at community college or to pay for on the job training in real jobs.”
Other suggestions included beefing up funding for automotive research and development; providing tax credits and making permanent the research and development tax credit; and yanking from Washington the power to impose CAFÉ standards.
Romney got in a few good lines at certain points including this one when making his typical point that term is “global warming” not “America warming”: “Placing caps and taxes on the U.S. alone just drives manufacturers in China and India and does little more than make Washington politicians feel welcome at the embassy cocktail parties.” When getting further into burdens put on automotive companies, including legacy costs, health care costs and taxes, he got a healthy applause for this: “You take off those burdens, and let’s show them how fast a Mustang will actually go.”
And he invoked McCain’s name for proposing, with Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman (I/D), a bill that he said “unilaterally imposes new high energy costs on U.S. manufacturers, with no safety valve.” He then dug up a few figures from the Energy Information Association that project the bill would “raise electric rates by as much as 25 percent and gasoline prices by 68 cents a gallon” and cost 300,000 jobs.
And although Romney has vowed to be the president that will slash spending, he volunteered the following: “I will make a five-fold increase -- from $4 billion dollars to $20 billion dollars – in our national investment in energy research, fuel technology, materials science, and automotive technology.” Of course, he didn’t offer any indication about how he would pay for the exponential bump.
He did take questions, which he hasn’t been doing much of lately. And although two of the questions were broad questions about the very topic he had just addressed and he referred the questioners to his remarks, he did get one about another topic dear to Michigan: the protection of the Great Lakes. Of course, with that, he explained that that was better left to the states.
Despite the policy-oriented nature of the address, Romney made certain to bookend it with personal appeals to the residents of his native state.
“I’ve got Michigan in my DNA, I’ve got it in my heart and I’ve got cars in my bloodstream,” he said at the beginning of his remarks before offering a few anecdotes about growing up in the state. That included “the biggest day in the year” for him, which was getting to go to the Detroit Auto Show with his father. “We were escorted from the hotel with a police escort motorcycles -- awfully cool -- even though we had to go in a rambler,” he said of the experience.
And he closed the speech by coming full circle with a preview of his visit later this afternoon to the well-timed auto show, where he will be accompanied by his eldest son, Tagg. “The next time I visit the Auto Show,” he said, “I look forward to doing so as your President.”
