Mitt Romney has vowed to put America on the path to a balanced budget.  Mitt Romney has not only endorsed the Ryan Budget, but he’s signed the Grover Norquist Pedge to oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax in any way.

More specifically, Mitt Romney has promised a Washington lobbyist that he will never, ever:

• make the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share
• make huge corporations pay their fair share (or even any taxes at all in some cases)
• end the unfair tax loopholes that allow millionaires like himself and the billionaires funding his campaign to pay a lower tax rate than middle class Americans
• end the unfair handouts to hedge fund and private equity managers (like Mitt Romney himself)
• end tens of billions of dollars in handouts to Big Oil
• end unfair tax loopholes that pay companies to ship jobs overseas
• end unfair tax loopholes for vacation homes and yachts
• end unfair and ridiculous tax loopholes for things like wealthy horse breeders or corporate jets

He’s also said he wants to increase military spending to 4% of GDP … that’s a huge increase, yet he says he wants to cut an entire array of taxes.

UH … how’s he going to do that?  Did Romney flunk his math and accounting classes?  Balance means that you have an equal amount of revenue which then balances out against expenses.  Why does he need to dramatically and explosively increase military spending, plus increase our active-duty force by 100,000 additional military personnel?  Is he that insecure of is foreign policy skills?  Is he planning to turn those troops on American citizens anticipating that we’ll revolt when we learn his true intentions? Or worse, would his first act as President be to declare war on the Iranians … so he can “teach Iranians the meaning of American resolve”?

But his pledges don’t stop there … it goes on …. Let’s see, he’s pledged to

• extend the Bush Tax cuts in perpetuity,
• repeal health care reform,
• repeal financial reform, voucherize Medicare, privatize Social Security,
• eliminate estate and capital gains taxes (pretty much the only tax many millionaires and billionaires pay),
• eliminate entire departments like the EPA and Education.

And then just for good measure, he’s also pledged to

• safeguard America’s 2^nd Amendment rights that he believes are somehow under attack by liberals (excuse me?  President Obama signed a bill into law that allows those yahoos to carry guns damn near everywhere, including in our national parks … I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of poaching taking place in those parks any day now),
• ensure that Planned Parenthood receives absolutely NO federal funding,
• ensure that not one of those undocumented aliens now living on U.S. soil is granted a path to citizenship,
• “stand up” for the rights of hunters and sportsmen and vowed not to create burdens for gun owners,
• sign any bill presented to him that would amend the U.S. Constitution such that marriage is recognized only between a man and a women (thus ensuring institutional government-mandated discrimination against the LGBT community in accordance with NOM directives), and last but not least,
• he’s vowed to sign a “personhood” amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would not just ban any abortion (including for the health of the mother, rape or incest), but would pretty much outlaw other reproductive health care as well, like contraception and in-vitro fertilization.

So does any of that balance it out?  Hardly.  It makes things drastically worse.  That’s not going to “balance” the budget, but it’s going to make the budget deficit worse as well as our overall debt.  And, it’s going to decimate the social safety net.

Dismantling entire chunks of our government and parting it out to the states and the private sector means enormous increases in unemployment as public sector employment collapses and vaporizes into thin air.  Millions will be without employment, without health care, and without a safe net.  Any moron should understand that that means less revenue to pay for all those pledges.

The states don’t have the funds to pick up those responsibilities Romney claims is slash.  So, they’re either going to go away entirely, or our state tax rates are going to have to rise. But one thing’s for sure, you can most likely bet your last dollar that “your” federal taxes, those $$ withheld from each paycheck earned by 99% … they aren’t going to get cut.  Hey, if the rich and the multinational corporations, the real “looters” in this game the Republiban is playing, aren’t going to be paying into the revenue base, somebody has to pay for transportation infrastructure, all the border guards, the military and all the endless wars they want to declare.

Who is Romney?  Does he even have a core set of principles?  Why would someone who wants to lead this nation need to sign and attest to so many pledges?  Isn’t that something like the tail wagging the dog routine?

Frankly, if it weren’t for all the pledges from this group or that, from this lobbyist or that … I would venture to say we’d know absolutely nothing about the man.  So I ask you … if the Electoral College elects him as our next President, who’s going to lead our country?  Can he stand up and articulate a real vision for America?  Or, are we destined to wait for him to be led by the nose sequentially by one right-wing group after another, who just happen to have a hair up their butt tickling their adam’s apple?