Whoops: Romney Adviser Calls For Spending Plans Much Like Obama’s

Mitt Romney
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Updated 11/15/11 at 3:04 PM

The good news: Mitt Romney boasts an impressive stable of well-respected, non-partisan policy advisers. The bad news: they earned that non-partisan reputation for a reason. Now one of his top economic experts, Glenn Hubbard, is calling for a boost to infrastructure and education spending to turn around the economy even as Romney is proposing deep cuts.

Hubbard offered the advice unprompted in an interview with The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein after he was asked what the US could do to jumpstart growth.

“Right now, for instance, I could see a lot of arguments for targeted infrastructure investment,” he said. “What we don’t need is an industrial policy, but we do need to untie the hands of American manufacturers. Corporate tax reform. Regulatory issues. Litigation. None of it is a silver bullet, but it would help. At the same time, if you added an infrastructure plan and kept education and research funding at a high level, we could turn this around.”

He added that with some changes to capital gains taxes, Republicans should have adopted the Bowles-Simpsons plan as a viable option even as it relied on higher tax revenues to close the deficit. Romney has said he would not accept any revenue increases in a deficit deal even if the ratio was 10:1 in favor of spending cuts. He’s also come out in favor of a GOP budget plan that would make significant cuts to education and workforce training programs.

In a separate interview with the American Enterprise Institute, Hubbard also called for mass refinancing of mortgages to help handle the foreclosure crisis. Romney has said that the foreclosure process shouldn’t be slowed and that the housing market should hit rock bottom in order to ensure a natural recovery, though he has opened the door to possible refinancing programs.

A disclaimer on the Hubbard interview indicated that he was only speaking for himself, but the Obama campaign is jumping on his comments, saying they echo the White House’s call for an infrastructure bank and his insistence that education and research funds be spared from any budget cutting deals.

“Top Romney economic adviser Glenn Hubbard today made clear that he doesn’t agree with Mitt Romney that we can just cut our way to prosperity,” spokesman Ben LaBolt said in a statement. “While Mitt Romney’s budget plan doesn’t ask millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations to pay a dime to create jobs or reduce the deficit, Hubbard argued that Republicans should support revenue increases. Glenn Hubbard believes we should invest in an infrastructure plan and keep funding education and research at a high level – but Mitt Romney has opposed the President’s plan to invest in infrastructure and endorsed a budget plan that would wipe out investments in education and research and development. It’s clear that Mitt Romney is allowing the Tea Party, rather than sensible ideas from his own advisers, to drive his economic agenda.”

As TPM has documented, Romney’s deep bench of relatively moderate advisers have a history of undercutting his more conservative campaign positions.

Update: Hubbard, through the Romney campaign, responds in a statement:

“The Obama campaign’s obsession with Mitt Romney reached a new low today by selectively quoting and misrepresenting my comments to the Washington Post. The campaign is trying to imply that I might support President Obama’s so-called ‘American Jobs Act,’ which was nothing more than another attempt at ‘stimulus’ without understanding the economy’s structural problems and how those problems have been exacerbated by the Administration’s own policies. Unlike President Obama, Mitt Romney has laid out a compelling plan to restore the foundations of economic growth and prosperity in this country and I am proud to have helped him formulate it.”

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