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Mitt's Mythical Massachusetts Miracle

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By DEROY MURDOCK

Published: January 24, 2008

Republican White House contender Willard Mitt Romney is stumping Florida after his victory in the Jan. 15 Michigan primary. He won there largely by posing as a high-priest of prosperity.

"I understand how the economy works," he reassured voters. "There's a lot we can do to strengthen Michigan." He now is peddling that message in the Sunshine State.

One could take Romney seriously as an architect of economic redevelopment if he had displayed such skills as Massachusetts governor. Instead, his reign was a parade of economic stagnation and retreat.
Andrew Sum and Joseph McLaughlin of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Boston's Northeastern University placed Romney's rule beneath their statistical microscope. Let's hope what they discovered is not contagious.

"Our analysis reveals a weak comparative economic performance of the state over the Romney years, one of the worst in the country," the researchers wrote in the Boston Globe. Specifically, they found:

•As U.S. real output grew 13 percent between 2002 and 2006, Massachusetts trailed at 9 percent.

•Manufacturing employment fell 7 percent nationwide those years, but sank 14 percent under Romney, placing Massachusetts 48th among the states.

•Between fall 2003 and autumn 2006, U.S. job growth averaged 5.4 percent, nearly three times Massachusetts' anemic 1.9 percent pace.

•While 8 million Americans over age 16 found work between 2002 and 2006, the number of employed Massachusetts residents actually declined by 8,500 during those years.

Romney also doomed Massachusetts by hiking taxes and fees, which fouled that state's business climate.

"Tax rates on many corporations almost doubled because of legislation supported by Romney," Boston Science Corp. chairman Peter Nicholas wrote in the January 6 Boston Herald. Romney boosted taxes on subchapter S corporations owned by business trusts from 5.3 percent to 9.8 percent, a four-fifths increase. Nicholas called this "an important disincentive to investment, growth, and job creation."

"Corporate taxes went up $210 million under Romney," the Herald editorialized. "And we wonder why companies look north, south, east and west, anywhere but Massachusetts, to expand?"

Romney did speed a $275 million capital-gains tax rebate and secure a two-day, tax-free shopping holiday. But he also imposed $283 million in business "loophole closures" and $501.5 million in increased fees on marriage licenses, gun registrations, gasoline deliveries, real-estate transfers, and more. During his tenure, the Tax Foundation calculated, Massachusetts fell from America's 29th most business-friendly state to No. 36.

As Florida voters consider Mitt Romney's prescription for economic renewal, they would be wise to repeat these words: Don't try this at home.

New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace at Stanford University.

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