Mr. Romney Addresses Foreign Aid (The New York Times)

Six weeks before the election, Mitt Romney has finally made a substantive contribution to the national security debate, offering ideas about how he would handle foreign aid. For a campaign troubled by fumbles and incoherent proposals, this counts as progress. But, even here, there are details he needs to flesh out.

In a speech to the Clinton Global Initiative on Tuesday, Mr. Romney acknowledged the value of foreign aid and its purpose: providing humanitarian assistance, improving security and encouraging economic growth. He did not call for slashing aid, as many in the Republican Party have.

But we don’t know whether he would really protect the current budget — $54.9 billion in 2012 — from further cuts if he is elected. He had earlier endorsed ending foreign aid to countries that “oppose America’s interests,” a fuzzy term that could affect many recipients. The budget drafted by his running mate, Representative Paul Ryan, would cut foreign affairs spending by 10 percent in 2013 and even more in 2016.

Mr. Romney focused most of his attention on overhauling aid programs. The George W. Bush and Obama administrations and the development community have worked on this for years, so Mr. Romney will find little argument when he says aid has too often been ineffective.

Mr. Romney’s call for more public-private partnerships on aid projects makes sense. The Obama administration has made this a priority. The United States Agency for International Development this week announced a joint initiative with several banks and technology companies to promote the use of cellphones to get aid payments to people in poor and rural communities. Another American initiative links donors and private companies in providing clean cook stoves for impoverished women so they don’t risk their lives gathering firewood in conflict zones or being asphyxiated by smoke from fires in closed spaces. It’s unclear what more Mr. Romney would do.

His talk about the potentially transformative nature of American assistance and the need to invest more in small and medium-size businesses that will create jobs and lift ailing economies is also sensible and in line with administration policies. His plan to condition aid on a country’s promise to make reforms, including reducing barriers to American trade and investment, seems to add a twist to initiatives put in place by the Bush and Obama administrations. Mr. Romney needs to explain more fully how this might affect countries that receive the bulk of aid: Egypt, Israel, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There were also gaps in Mr. Romney’s speech; there was no mention of foreign aid’s critical role in health, agriculture, education and poverty programs. On the whole, though, Mr. Romney’s remarks were encouraging. Foreign aid is badly misunderstood. Many Americans believe it consumes a large part of the federal budget when it really is less than 2 percent. It is a crucial security asset that should be increased, not reduced.

Sadly a homeless man sleeps outside our main San Francisco Office on Market Street last night. San Francisco Democrats we to stamp out our city’s homelessness:

Deportation Deferrals Put Employers of Immigrants in a Bind

By JULIA PRESTON (The New York Times)

Manuel Cunha has been fighting for three decades to persuade the federal government to provide more legal immigrant workers for farmers in California’s verdant San Joaquin Valley. So he was initially excited when President Obama announced in June that he would suspend the deportations of hundreds of thousands of young illegal immigrants.

But after reading the program’s fine print, Mr. Cunha is telling the growers and small-business owners he organizes to proceed with caution.

Immigrants applying for two-year deportation deferrals can ask employers to verify their job status as one way to meet a requirement showing that they have lived for at least five years in the United States. But employers who agree to those requests could be acknowledging that they knowingly hired an unauthorized worker — a violation of federal law. Mr. Cunha fears that the enforcement authorities could one day use the information in their files to prosecute the employers.

The Department of Homeland Security “is not friendly at all to us,” said Mr. Cunha, the president of the Nisei Farmers League, which is based in Fresno, Calif. “We have seen agriculture being audited and targeted. For the workers, after two years this program could end. And then the agency could go after the employers for hiring illegal aliens.”

Mr. Cunha said the message from Obama administration officials was “Just trust me.” His reply: “No, no, there is no more trust.”

The minefield for employers is one of the hazards that have appeared in the deferred deportation program since the agency in charge, Citizenship and Immigration Services, began receiving applications on Aug. 15. In the first month, the agency, which is part of the Homeland Security Department, logged in more than 82,000 applications, a figure that officials say shows that the program is advancing at a fast pace.

But with more than 1.2 million young immigrants estimated to be immediately eligible, some immigrant organizations say the application numbers are lower than they expected, in part because of unexpected pitfalls.

To qualify, illegal immigrants must have been under 31 years old on June 15, when Mr. Obama announced the program. They must show that they came to the United States before they were 16, have been here for at least five years and were in the country on June 15. They must also be enrolled in school or have a high school diploma or be honorably discharged from the military, and pass criminal background checks.

If approved, immigrants are granted what is officially known as deferred action, and separately they receive legal work permits. But they do not gain any legal immigration status.

A particularly tricky dilemma is facing farmers and other businesses nationwide that rely on low-wage labor. Many young immigrants work part time to help pay for college. Others are working after dropping out of college, unable to get tuition discounts or financial aid because of their status. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a research group, about 740,000 immigrants eligible for deferment are in the work force.

“If you have actual knowledge that an employee is not authorized to work, you can’t employ them,” said Greg Siskind, an immigration lawyer in Memphis who has advised businesses on how to respond to job verification requests.

A lot depends on how an employee poses the question, said Tamar Jacoby, the president of ImmigrationWorks USA, an organization of small businesses that employ immigrants. Those who ask for verification for deportation deferrals are admitting to being unauthorized workers. They might eventually obtain a permit to work legally, but in the meantime, the employer might have to fire them, Ms. Jacoby said.

The immigration agency issued new guidelines this month confirming that businesses could provide verification for deferred deportation applicants. This information will not be shared with the enforcement authorities “unless there is evidence of egregious violations of criminal statutes or widespread abuses,” the guidelines say.

Peter Boogaard, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman, said the agency is seeking to focus enforcement resources on threats to public safety. He said officials would investigate if workers’ applications pointed to “widespread patterns and practices of unlawful hiring” or “abusive employers who are violating other criminal laws.”

Neither Ms. Jacoby nor Mr. Cunha was comforted. “That’s a safety net with a lot of holes in it,” Ms. Jacoby said. She urges advocates to tell applicants not to mention the deferment program when asking for job verification.

The immigration service also clarified a section of the application that had asked immigrants to list Social Security numbers they had used. It is common for them to use fake Social Security numbers, or sometimes real numbers belonging to another person. On an official application, such numbers could be evidence of fraud or even identity theft.

The form is asking only for numbers “that were officially issued to you by the Social Security Administration,” the new guidelines say.

Department of Homeland Security officials “are not conferring immunity on anyone,” an administration official said. “But they are not interested in using this as a way to identify one-off cases where some individual may have violated some federal law in an employment relationship.”

Romney’s tax plan, by the numbers

By Ruth Marcus (The Washington Post)

There are three fallacies and two dangers at the heart of Mitt Romney’s tax policy.

Romney has been appropriately chided for dangling the promise of lower rates — with unpleasant details left intentionally blank. But there are even more fundamental flaws with his approach.

An editorial writer specializing in politics, the budget and other domestic issues, she also writes a weekly column and contributes to the PostPartisan blog.

The first is the argument that cutting personal income tax rates would lead to economic growth robust enough to help pay for a big chunk of the cuts. The second, related, fallacy is the contention that raising rates on top earners would hurt growth. The third is that raising capital-gains rates would be even more harmful.

There is scant reliable evidence for any of the above, yet Romney and fellow Republicans hitch their entire economic argument to them. And their rabid pursuit of lower taxes leads to two dangers: further ballooning the national debt and further increasing income inequality.

To be clear: Holding everything else equal (ignoring, for example, the economic drag of bigger deficits), lower tax rates are better than higher ones. A simpler tax code would be far preferable to the current byzantine mess. Lowering rates and broadening the base is a dandy idea — when done in a way that also raises badly needed new revenue.

Not done the way Romney proposes, with the goal of merely avoiding greater debt. Even that hinges on the faith-based assertion that this revenue neutrality can be achieved through the ensuing miracle of faster economic growth.

History counsels against counting on tax miracles.

First, would lower rates, as Romney claims, produce economic growth? “Past changes in tax rates have had no large clear effect on economic growth,” the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in a December review.

Consider: The economy grew at 3.9 percent from 1950 to 1970, when the average top marginal income tax rate was 84.8 percent. From 1987 to 2010, when the average rate was less than half that (36.4 percent), economic growth was far less robust, 2.9 percent.

This comparison might be misleading because multiple factors affect the economy, so the CRS looked at a shorter, more recent time span.

From 1987 through 1992, the top average marginal income tax rate was 33.3 percent. Economic growth averaged 2.3 percent.

From 1993 through 2002, after taxes increased under President Clinton, the average top marginal rate was 39.5 percent. Economic growth averaged 3.7 percent.

Finally, from 2003 through 2007, after the Bush tax cuts, the average top marginal rate was 35 percent. Economic growth averaged 2.8 percent.

If you were going to make a causality argument from these figures, it would be that lower taxes correlate with lower growth. Such a leap isn’t justified — but where is the proof supporting Republicans’ insistence that lower rates fuel growth?

Second, and this is at the heart of the current debate over letting the Bush tax cuts expire, would raising rates on upper-income taxpayers threaten growth?

A new CRS report suggests not — but it underscores the risk of the other danger, increasing income inequality. Lower top rates do not correlate with increased savings, investment or productivity, the CRS found. Top tax rates, it concludes, “appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.”

But lower top rates do help the rich serve themselves a heftier slice of that pie. Reducing top rates, the CRS noted, appears “associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top.”

Which leads to the final question: whether lower capital-gains rates, whose benefits flow overwhelmingly to the wealthiest, are justified.

Romney told CBS News’ “60 Minutes” that his own 14 percent effective income tax rate in 2011 was fair because lower taxes on investment are, repeat after me, “the right way to encourage economic growth.”

Evidence, please? Leonard Burman of Syracuse University’s Maxwell School looked at capital-gains rates over six decades and found no correlation with economic growth. Look at his graph and you’ll see: The two lines — capital-gains rates and growth — bear no relation to each other.

Burman tried adjusting for time lags, of up to five years, and looking at moving averages of tax rates and growth. Still no correlation. “There is no apparent relationship,” Burman told the Senate Finance Committee last week. “Cutting capital gains taxes will not turbocharge the economy, and raising them would not usher in a depression.”

At a moment that demands seriousness about the debt, the country is trapped in a tax debate premised on unproven assertions and flawed history. It risks producing fiscal chaos and social instability. You’d think a numbers guy would at least look at the numbers before taking this dangerous tax leap.

From BBC America: President Barack Obama has told American TV network ABC that he wants to return to education when he leaves the presidency.

“I love teaching, I miss teaching,” he said, adding that his priority was to win a second term in the White House.

President Obama lectured at the University of Chicago’s law school for 12 years before he joined the Senate.

His appearance with First Lady Michelle Obama on daytime talk show “The View” is seen as an appeal to women voters.

Six weeks before the election, Republican presidential rival Mitt Romney’s campaign team has criticised Mr Obama’s decision to fit in the recorded TV interview during a short visit to New York for the UN General Assembly.

Unlike in previous years, President Obama has not scheduled meetings with any other international leaders, notably Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr Romney said on Monday he found that “very troubling”.

Continue reading the main story

Start Quote

“I’m not sure it would necessarily be in the classroom, but the idea of being able to go around in various cities and helping to create mentorships and apprenticeships”

End Quote

President Barack Obama

‘Different vision’

Although the US president and first lady were given a mainly easy ride, one of the four co-hosts – Elisabeth Hasselbeck – pursued the president on foreign policy and asked whether he had failed America’s middle class.

“Everything that we’ve done has been designed to deal with not only the immediate crisis, but make sure that the middle class, which had been struggling for a decade before that, is feeling more secure,” he said.

He had a “different vision” from Mr Romney on taxation, he said, criticising his opponent’s belief that it was “fair that he pays a lower tax rate than somebody who’s making $50,000 a year”.

Asked by another of the hosts, Barbara Walters, what he saw himself doing after the presidency, he singled out “working with kids”.

“I’m not sure it would necessarily be in the classroom, but the idea of being able to go around in various cities and helping to create mentorships and apprenticeships, and just giving young people the sense of possibility and opportunity,” he said.

When Ms Walters suggested that his wife should run for the White House, the president agreed that she would be “terrific, but temperamentally I just don’t think that…”. At which point Michelle Obama intervened: “It’s absolutely true,” she said, explaining that she did not have the patience to be president of the United States.

The taped programme, to be broadcast on Tuesday, will be followed a few hours later by Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, who is due to appear on Jay Leno’s “Tonight Show” on NBC.

Romney campaign hits a financial snag

By Dan Eggen (The Washington Post)

The financial tide has turned against Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his key allies, who spent more than they brought in and were outraised by President Obama during the month of August, according to disclosures filed Thursday.

Romney’s presidential campaign committee raised nearly $67 million last month — a strong figure — but spent about the same amount building its campaign organization and responding to a barrage of attack ads from Obama and his allies. Even so, the campaign spent just $13.7 million on ads, which was less than the $15 million it spent in July.

Romney was also forced to take out a $20 million loan because the campaign had run out of money raised during the primary season. The campaign also fell behind in its attempts to reach grass-roots donors despite the addition of tea party favorite Paul Ryan to the ticket, records show.

The spending left the campaign with about $50 million cash on hand at the start of September, not including the remaining debt, according to the disclosures.

Obama’s campaign account, by contrast, had nearly $90 million on hand going into September, even after spending $83 million in August. Officials said Obama had 1.19 million donors last month — more than a third of its total for the 2012 cycle.

The main super PAC supporting Romney, called Restore Our Future, spent nearly three times as much as it raised in August, devoting more than $20 million to broadcast ads, filings show. The group reported having $6 million left on Aug. 31.

On Aug. 31, Romney handed out more than $200,000 in bonuses to top employees, including $37,500 to national political director Richard Beeson and $25,000 each to a half dozen others, the records show.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC devoted to helping Obama that has lagged far behind its conservative rivals, posted its strongest month in August by raising $10.1 million, including $2 million from hedge-fund manager Jim Simons. The group spent $9.5 million and had $4.8 million in cash.

The numbers signal a financial shift away from the Republicans after a summer of Democratic hand-wringing over fundraising. The Obama campaign argues it is likely to be outmatched by conservative super PACs and nonprofit groups, which can raise unlimited funds from wealthy individuals and corporations and are working to build a ground game to match them.

The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee had outraised Obama and the Democratic National Committee for three months starting in May. But the Obama team edged out Romney and the GOP last month by $114 million to $112 million, according to general numbers announced earlier this month.

In addition to his cash-flow problems, Romney had more trouble raising money from grass-roots donors in August, with just 14 percent of his total coming from contributions of $200 or less — a significant drop from the month before. Obama collected about 30 percent of his August haul from donors giving $200 or less.

Romney, however, continued to do well among the wealthiest donors who are able to legally give more than $70,000 to the Romney campaign, the RNC and associated committees. Romney and the RNC say they had a total of $170 million in cash on hand at the end of August.

Most of that money, however, went to allied committees and remains outside Romney’s direct control, which could have serious ramifications for ad purchases and other strategy in the last six weeks of the campaign. Party committees and outside groups do not qualify for the lowest ad rates, meaning their money does not go as far in media spending.

Romney’s class warfare

By Eugene Robinson (The Washington Post)

Now, at least, there can be no doubt about who is waging class warfare in this presidential campaign. Mitt Romney would pit the winners against the “victims,” the smug-and-rich against the down-on-their-luck, the wealthy tax avoiders against those too poor to owe income tax. He sees nearly half of all Americans as chumps who sit around waiting for a handout.

When Romney disclosed those views at a $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton, Fla., this year, he and his audience had no idea they were being surreptitiously recorded. Romney obviously believed he was among friends who shared his worldview, which I would translate as: “We must stop coddling the servants.”

I am not exaggerating. Thanks to whoever leaked the recording to Mother Jones magazine, we know what Romney really thinks about the nation he seeks to lead:

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right? There are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that — that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they’re entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. . . . These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax.”

This analysis is not only grossly offensive but astonishingly ignorant. Romney suggests that nearly half of Americans are layabouts who leave the house only when they need to cash a government check — or when it’s time to vote for President Obama. Greetings, lazy bums, I’m Mitt Romney. Vote for me!

The truth is that Romney is mixing apples, oranges and bananas. The three groups he mentions — those who support the president, those who receive payments from entitlement programs and those who are not required to pay federal income tax — are not the same people. Quite a few senior citizens who receive Social Security and Medicare are Republicans. Quite a few working-class voters are not charter members of Team Obama.

But Romney’s ignorance is not as shocking as his callousness. Here’s what he says next about the 47 percent: “And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

To all the single parents holding down two minimum-wage jobs to make ends meet, all the seniors who saw their savings dwindle and had to go back to work part time, all the breadwinners who lost their jobs when private-equity firms swooped down to slash and burn — to all struggling Americans, it must come as a surprise to learn how irresponsible they’ve been. And it must be devastating to learn that, try as he might, Mitt Romney will never be able to show these unfortunates the error of their ways.

Romney might as well have quoted Cee Lo Green: “Forget you!”

In Romney’s view, as expressed at that fundraiser, the key to victory is winning the 7 percent or so who voted for Obama in 2008 but do not belong to the incorrigible 47 percent who should be thought of as lost souls. His explanation of how he intended to reach these people made me think of what early European explorers must have told the folks back home about communicating with the Native Americans they encountered:

“You see, you and I, we spend our day with Republicans. We spend our days with people who agree with us. And these people are people who voted for him [Obama] and don’t agree with us. And so the things that animate us are not the things that animate them.”

Maybe he should just try handing out shiny beads.

In an elegant dining room where the self-satisfaction was thick enough to cut with a knife, Romney made clear that he sees this election as “us” vs. “them” — wealthy Republicans vs. the unwashed hordes, makers vs. takers. Romney believes half of America is lazy, dependent and, frankly, not too bright.

Voters will soon have the opportunity to show him we’re not as stupid as he thinks.