Mitt Romney is wrong about the stimulus.

According to most economists, the stimulus created about 3 million jobs and helped stabilize a slumping economy.

Romney doesn’t understand the purpose of the stimulus: To create short-term employment and to provide time to heal the economy. The stimulus is a success, but the healing process is taking longer than expected.

Romney is also wrong about the debt problem. He proposes fixing the debt problem first by cutting federal spending. He doesn’t understand that fixing the economy also will help the debt problem by generating more tax revenues.

Large federal spending cuts will shrink the economy and create another recession. leading to reduced tax revenues, more deficits and more debt. We should not cut federal spending until the economy is healthier.

Our economic problems are not new. Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower faced similar problems after World War II. The debt level at the time was higher than today’s debt when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, and they needed to create jobs for millions of soldiers returning home from the war.

They raised the marginal tax rate paid by the wealthiest Americans and launched spending programs and tax policies designed to educate returning soldiers and rebuild infrastructure. We now call that period America’s Golden Age.

What happened to the World War II debt? The economy grew faster than the debt, so the debt is relatively small by today’s standards.

We are the future generations to which Romney refers. Today, with our $16 trillion economy, the $260 billion post-war debt is one of our least significant problems.

We have a choice this year between bad economics and hope. I choose hope.

Peter Konieczko

Augusta

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