Romney discusses debt during Iowa stop

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DES MOINES, Iowa – Warning of a "prairie fire of debt," Mitt Romney chose swing state Iowa on Tuesday to accuse President Barack Obama of failing to tame federal deficits.

By Charlie Neibergall, AP

Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop in Des Moines on Tuesday.

By Charlie Neibergall, AP

Mitt Romney speaks during a campaign stop in Des Moines on Tuesday.

"I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno," the presumptive Republican nominee said during a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, with a banner stretched behind him that blared "CUT THE SPENDING."

"We can't spend another four years talking about solving a problem that we know we are making worse every single day."

Romney's ideas for cutting the $15.67 trillion national debt -- don't raise taxes, reform entitlement programs, limit spending -- were met with strong applause from the crowd of more than 300 people. An additional 100 people stood in an overflow area.

On his first trip to Iowa since the caucuses when he was initially declared the winner, Romney didn't offer new proposals, but the way he framed his argument was fresh and probably telegraphs a strategy to chip away at Obama's credibility on his pledge to cut the deficit in half.

GOP strategists said this message -- that the government can't keep carrying on this way or the country's going to go out of business -- is a winning issue for Romney. Worries about the size of the debt drive polling numbers on the question of whether people think the nation is on the wrong track, and polls show voters trust Romney more than Obama on the economy.

Democrats reminded voters that the debt is linked to expensive wars and national defense, as well as the tax cuts, financial crisis and recession that stemmed from Republican George W. Bush's administration.

"Mitt Romney would like Americans to forget that when President Obama took office, we were in the middle of an economic crisis and losing 750,000 jobs a month," said Erin Seidler, a spokeswoman for Obama's Iowa campaign. "But because of the president's focus on getting us out of the crisis and strengthening the middle class, we've seen over 4.2 million private sector jobs created over the last 26 months."

Romney chose a one-time prairie-covered state -- and a crucial presidential battleground, where unemployment is a relatively healthy 5.2 percent -- to compare the federal debt to a prairie fire.

"When the men and women who settled the Iowa prairie saw a fire in the distance, they didn't look around for someone else to save them or go back to sleep hoping the wind might blow another direction. They knew that their survival was up to them," he said.

"A prairie fire of debt is sweeping across Iowa and our nation, and every day we fail to act that fire gets closer to the homes and children we love," he said.

Tuesday's speech was part of a week-long offensive by Republicans nationally to hammer Obama on national debt. They are repeating over and over that the president has broken his promise to rein in what they call out of control spending.

Excess spending is the main culprit for annual deficits and the national debt, said Patrick Louis Knudsen, who studies the federal budget for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

The main culprits are entitlement programs, which make up nearly 60 percent of the budget.

By 2050, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- including the subsidies for the federal health care reform law Romney calls "Obamacare" -- will consume about 19 percent of the gross domestic product, Knudsen said.

To reduce the debt, Romney said he would improve Medicare to slow the rate of growth in health care costs and decrease the growth rate of Social Security benefits for high-income retirees.

"I'm not going to insult voters by pretending that we can just keep putting off entitlement reform," Romney said.

"As a start, I will lower federal spending to 20 percent of GDP within four years' time -- down from the 24.3 percent today," he said.

He said he would move programs for the poor to the states or to the private sector.

Romney laid the blame for the deficit on the federal health care law and the federal stimulus money meant to kick-start the economy.

Democrats offered a different perspective on the reasons for the debt -- two ongoing wars and a decade of tax breaks that reduce revenue.

"Either the politicos lack any hindsight whatsoever or are merely hopeful that voters will forget if told the same thing over and over. It's really simple," said Robert Bailey, a small business owner who worked for the state of Iowa during Democrat Chet Culver's administration. "The nation can't launch 10-year wars without paying for them, somehow. I really am not that partisan -- just have an intolerance for Mitt's mendacity. He is an accomplished stretcher of the truth."

A mix of Iowa Republicans attended Romney's speech -- backers of Texas Rep. Ron Paul, Santorum, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, businessman Herman Cain and Texas Gov. Rick Perry -- in a sign of healing wounds after a caucus/primary season marked by GOP knife-fighting.

Romney avoided talking about same-sex marriage, a topic that is deeply divisive in Iowa, a swing state that Republican George W. Bush won in 2004. Democrats reclaimed it in 2008 with an Obama win. Although the Hawkeye State has just six Electoral College votes, both sides are working nonstop to claim them.

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