I got the following over at Benen’s place:
President Obama will be in Mansfield, Ohio, today, and according to remarks prepared for delivery, he’s going to take full advantage of the new revelations:
“[T]he centerpiece of my opponent’s entire economic plan is a new, $5 trillion tax cut. A lot of this tax cut would go to the wealthiest 1% of all households. Folks making more than $3 million a year — the top one-tenth of one percent — would get a tax cut worth almost a quarter of a million dollars. A quarter of a million dollars.
“But it gets worse. Under my opponent’s plan, guess who gets the bill for these $250,000 tax cuts? You do. And you don’t have to take my word for it.
“Just today, an independent, non-partisan organization ran all the numbers. And they found that if Governor Romney wants to keep his word and pay for his plan, he’d have to cut tax breaks that middle-class families depend on to pay for your home, or your health care, or send your kids to college. That means the average middle-class family with children would be hit with a tax increase of more than $2,000.
“But here’s the thing – he’s not asking you to contribute more to pay down the deficit, or to invest in our kids’ education. He’s asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a tax cut.”
The simple way of looking at this is that Romney proposes to create a very large tax break for super rich people, and he promises that this won’t increase the deficit. So, the only way to make that happen is to eliminate tax credits used by middle class people. Or, I should say that the only way to try to do it is to go after middle class tax credits. It turns out that it’s not possible to accomplish what Romney is suggesting:
Mitt Romney’s plan to overhaul the tax code would produce cuts for the richest 5 percent of Americans — and bigger bills for everybody else, according to an independent analysis set for release Wednesday.
The study was conducted by researchers at the Brookings Institution and the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, who seem to bend over backward to be fair to the Republican presidential candidate. To cover the cost of his plan — which would reduce tax rates by 20 percent, repeal the estate tax and eliminate taxes on investment income for middle-class taxpayers — the researchers assume that Romney would go after breaks for the richest taxpayers first.
They even look at what would happen if Republicans’ dreams for tax reform came true and the proposal generated significant revenue through economic growth.
None of it helped Romney. His rate-cutting plan for individuals would reduce tax collections by about $360 billion in 2015, the study says. To avoid increasing deficits — as Romney has pledged — the plan would have to generate an equivalent amount of revenue by slashing tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, education, medical expenses, state and local taxes, and child care — all breaks that benefit the middle class.
“It is not mathematically possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that preserves current incentives for savings and investment and that does not result in a net tax cut for high-income taxpayers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers,” the study concludes.
Even if tax breaks “are eliminated in a way designed to make the resulting tax system as progressive as possible, there would still be a shift in the tax burden of roughly $86 billion [a year] from those making over $200,000 to those making less” than that.
What you are seeing here is the con-game exposed. Cutting taxes is easy. Cutting tax credits for the middle class is hard. Romney could conceivably get his tax cuts passed through Congress, but he could never attack the middle class with this kind of ferocity. The end result would be very similar to what happened when Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush slashed taxes on the rich. We wound up with enormous deficits, the rich got richer, and everyone else saw their wages stagnate.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on you. Fool me three times, shame on you.
I’ve been hoping to see Democrats point out that Republicans want to raise taxes on working people ever since the Wall Street Journal’s original “Lucky Duckies” column from 2003.
I hope he links this to the “half of all Americans pay no taxes” line that has become so popular among Republicans.
R’s will say that they will pay for it by cutting welfare and foreign aid. That’s what they always say.
This year they may aid cutting pay and pension of drone civil servants. Issa is particularly fond of this approach actually entering a bill to sever and forbid all union contracts, end pensions, end health insurance, abolish COLA’s and cut pay severely. The public laps this stuff up.
con-game indeed.
tell it, BooMan
If we had a rational progressive tax system (like we had until Reagan), I’d join the conservatives in trying to dump all the special tax breaks that have built up, especially the mortgage deductions. All of them would be unnecessary or marginal if we had economic justice, and we could get rid of some of the “social engineering” that they end up boosting in the name of some “American dream” that no longer makes sense. The subsidies to house buying, for example, constitute an unfair tax on renters, and encourage growth that’s no longer environmentally sustainable.
But we don’t have such an economic system, so we’re stuck cheering for marginal fixes that cost too much, create unnecessary government functions while more important work is starved, and favor some Americans over others for no good reason. The way things are we have no choice but to work for Dems as hard as we can, but somewhere along the line, if we want long-term survivability, we’re going to need much stronger socialist and progressive action.
Yeah, middle-class tax credits are like a Pandora’s box. Once you implement them there’s no way to end them without massive howls of pain that would lead to electoral defeat. The only progressive way forward is some kind of massive structural shift that probably won’t happen unless things get really really bad.
Remember the problem with being honest about the Ryan “plan”? Voters refused to believe anyone could be so evil meaning no ground could be gained.
Will this happen again?
The study was independent of the campaigns, hence it “broke the ice” as it were on the topic. -that’s my reading anyway. Also the more speculation there is about Willard’s taxes, the more ppl see that he’s only interested in his personal wealth.
Didn’t fool me the first time. Indeed, fool me once… Fuck You!
The Biker’s (the leather wearing, not-dentists biker’s) Credo: Don’t fuck with me I won’t fuck with you. Fuck with me, I’ll fuck you up.
Fool me once: Fuck You!
I have one question in my mind that When the con man is finally caught and his game exposed, you would think that he’d be arrested, charged, and jailed..?
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