Our Economic Reality
Noam Neusner’s effort to make Mitt Romney a greater champion of tikkun olam than Barack Obama (“Making the Jewish Case for Mitt Romney,” September 7) and therefore more worthy of Jewish support reminds me of what Davy Crockett is supposed to have said about the rhetoric of a political opponent: “It don’t even make good nonsense.”
Neusner writes as though the incumbent inherited a robust free-enterprise system that his administration has willfully and perversely endangered by preferring statism, as though President Obama deliberately intended to enlarge the populace relying on food stamps so that citizens can become dependents of government largesse. Has Neusner forgotten so quickly how dangerously the economy was veering in late 2008 toward a repeat of the Great Depression, and how much Obama did to enable the nation to escape that fate? Neusner’s concern for indebtedness would be more convincing if he noted that Governor Romney has every intention, if elected, of reproducing the failed and reckless Republican policies that Democrats have been struggling to correct. The last president to produce balanced budgets and to give his successor an actual surplus was Bill Clinton, and he is, of course, supporting President Obama.
Even the Ryan budget plan, which Romney has praised as “marvelous,” would not bring federal income into alignment with federal spending for at least two more decades, because of the GOP desire to dramatically increase the bloated Pentagon budget and to reduce taxes even further upon the very wealthy. Neusner seems to lament that “half of Americans pay almost no income taxes.” Has his candidate for the presidency been among them? And how would we as voters know the answer to that question?
Stephen Whitfield
Lexington, Mass.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
