Mitt Romney says spending cuts will shrink economy and destroy jobs ... so why does he support them?

This comment by Mitt Romney flew under the radar during his town hall yesterday in Euclid, Ohio, but it's substantively important:

Now, I'm not going to cut a trillion dollars in the first year. And I heard a question. Why not? And the answer is: taking a trillion dollars out of a $15 trillion economy would cause our economy to shrink and would put a lot of people out of work.

As shocking as it is to hear Mitt Romney make the case against austerity, this is not entirely new from him. During the primary he said cutting federal spending would "slow down the economy." And as any decent economist (including Nobel prize winning ones) can tell you, Romney is of course right: Cutting spending when the economy is vulnerable is a recipe for economic trouble.

But here's my question: If Romney says spending cuts hurt the economy, why are spending cuts at the heart of his fiscal policy?

Romney might not be proposing a trillion dollar cut in year one, but he's endorsed Cut, Cap and Balance which would have established spending caps that would have cut spending by $637 billion had they been in effect for FY2011. Because the caps would have been phased in over five years, the FY2011 cut would have been "just" $111 billion, but the long-term policy would have led to massive spending cuts'the exact sorts of spending cuts that Romney says would hurt the economy.

Actually, given his spending proposals, maybe the real question is ask is this: Why does Mitt Romney want to destroy jobs?