Mitt Romney: Giving Everybody Equal Opportunity To Vote 'Is An Outrage'

   One job sector in America which will certainly see some growth if Romney and the Koch brothers can steal his way in to the White House will be the late-night talk show and “ comedian “ industry.

The Jed Report on Mon Aug 06, 2012

Mitt Romney's latest harebrained outrage:

Mitt Romney attacked a lawsuit brought by President Obama’s campaign seeking the restoration of early voting rights for Ohio voters by falsely implying that Obama is trying to take away the early voting privileges for members of the military.

“President Obama’s lawsuit claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period is an outrage,” Romney said in a statement Saturday.

Actually, the Obama campaign’s lawsuit, filed by the campaign in mid-July, explicitly asks a federal court to restore in-person early voting rights to all eligible Ohio voters on the three days preceding Election Day.

The suit does not seek to prevent members of the military from voting in person during that period, rather it seeks to force Ohio to give other voters (including, for instance, cops and firefighters) the same opportunity to vote.

Before last year, voters in Ohio were allowed to cast their ballots early at voting places throughout the state, starting 35 days before the election and running right up to election day. Then, in June of 2011, the Republican state legislature dramatically curtailed access to the ballot, limiting the early voting period to 16 days before the election and ending it the Friday before the vote. In May, facing the prospect of a ballot initiative overturning their overreach, Ohio Republicans partially restored early voting, restoring the start of early voting to 35 days before the election.

The partial repeal, however, maintained the arbitrary cutoff for early voting of the Friday before the election. Military personnel, however, were given a special exemption to the cutoff, giving them three extra days to vote. The Obama campaign's lawsuit supports maintaining their ability to vote early, but asks that all voters be given the same opportunity to vote. This position, according to Romney, "is an outrage."

In Romney's view, only military personnel should be allowed to vote in the final three days before the election, even though everybody had that right in 2008 and 2010. Of course, Romney didn't complain about it back then. That's no shock—after all, he wasn't running for office, for Pete's sake. And the only thing that Romney is genuinely outraged about now is that he might not be able to rig the election to his advantage.

Technorati Tags: Mitt Romney,Barack Obama,Ohio Voting,Early Voting,2012 Elections,Current Events

 

Tax Breaks For Businesses Led To State Unemployment Funds Going Broke

By Laura Clawson

Over the past four years, a whopping 36 states have had to borrow from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance benefits. Obviously a recession with high unemployment has a lot to do with that, but not as much as you might think. Tax breaks for businesses (PDF) are once again a hidden culprit for state budget problems.

A new report from the National Employment Law Project shows that, recession or not, many states could have avoided borrowing for unemployment payments if they hadn't spent a decade weakening their unemployment insurance trust funds by slashing employer contributions:

Between 1995 and 2005, 31 states reduced employer contribution rates by at least one‐fifth (Henchman 2011, 16), causing the nation’s average employer contribution rate over the decade leading up to the Great Recession to fall to its lowest point in the program’s 75‐year history.

As a result, going into the recession, state unemployment insurance funds were short of recommended minimum solvency standards by a combined $38 billion, and 30 of the 34 states not meeting that minimum standard ended up borrowing, combined with just six of 19 states that started the recession with adequate funds. Adequate unemployment insurance reserves could have reduced borrowing to 13 states borrowing $9 billion rather than what ended up happening, with 31 states borrowing $42 billion.

But while the funding shortfalls came from employers contributing less than at any point in the previous 75 years, it's been jobless people who've gotten the blame and felt the pinch, with "At least ten states [passing] legislation to reduce the number of weeks of benefits available, severely restrict eligibility, or impose measures designed to discourage people from filing UI claims." Taxpayers, too, are paying, since states have already paid $3 billion in interest and penalties on what they've borrowed for unemployment, with more to come.

Businesses paid less when the economy was decent (not even good for many of the years of contribution cuts). Then the bad economy hit unemployed people first when they lost their jobs, second when their benefits were cut despite ongoing high unemployment. Again and again we're told that a bad economy is not the time to raise taxes on businesses or the wealthy—apparently it's never the moment for that, always the moment to cut another hole in the safety net.

Originally posted to Daily Kos Labor on Fri Aug 03, 2012

Technorati Tags: The Economy,Tax Cuts,Unemployment Insurance,State Deficits,Current Events