Mitt Romney, I love you.

This picture has nothing to do with my post. Just wanted to spread the Christmas cheer.

It's normal for Mitt Romney to be in your dreams at night, right? Ok good. I didn't think I was the only one. 

I'm not sure if I am enamored with business decisions, efficiency, and cost-cutting because I majored in business management or if there is something in my DNA that causes such an infatuation.

But really, who cares? How can you not appreciate the following story about Mitt Romney?

In Massachusetts, he explains, he inherited a projected $3 billion deficit when he became governor in 2003 and proceeded to pore over line-item budgets looking for reductions. “Now, I wasn’t going to cut homeless support. But I wanted to see if the money was well-spent,” he says, and he came upon an unexpected category: hotels.

“And they said, ‘Well, Governor, you have to understand, if someone shows up for shelter and the homeless shelter is full, we simply tell them to go check into a hotel and we’ll pick up the bill.’ And I thought to myself” — and here he pauses before his punch line — “I bet the word gets around.” His audience chuckles.

So Romney made a simple change: The newest arrival got a shelter bed, and the person there the longest went to a hotel. Before, the state was renting an average of 500 hotel rooms a night, at a cost of $20 million per year. Afterward, that line item fell to zero. “And the tens of millions of dollars we saved we were able to use to get people into permanent housing.” This did provide a pathway to a stable, independent life, homeless advocates said.

“Incentives,” Romney exclaims, “have impact.”