WSJ: Romney Needs to Explain How He Will Revive Growth

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney needs to articulate a plan of his own for restoring economic growth beyond spending cuts, according to a Wall Street Journal editorial.

“Our view has long been that Republicans have the best chance of winning when they make the growth message their top priority,” the editorial states. “That's especially true this year. The Reaganites had it right: Rapid economic growth causes the deficit and debt to fall, not the other way around.”

Spending cuts or tax increases will do nothing to balance the budget without GDP growth of at least 3 percent, The Journal’s editors argue.

“Consider what would happen if economic growth increased today to what it would be in a normal economic expansion — about twice what Mr. Obama has delivered,” they write. “That return to prosperity would raise far more revenue for Uncle Sam than the panoply of Mr. Obama's planned estate, capital gains, dividend and income tax hikes.”

The Journal editors approve Romney’s plan to slash government spending to 20 percent of GDP and vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plan.

“But none of this will be possible politically without the ballast of faster growth and rising incomes,” the editorial states. “And that is why Mr. Romney and the GOP need to resist what former Buffalo Congressman and supply-side evangelist Jack Kemp used to call ‘root canal’ Republicanism.”

Bottom line: “what they [Americans] need to hear from Republicans in this election campaign are specific pro-growth policies and a message of optimism that they know how to regain America's lost prosperity,” the editorial says.