Last edited Fri Oct 12, 2012, 09:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Even if Romney was willing to close some loopholes and eliminate some deductions (and he isn't willing to identify a single one) that comes nowhere close to making up the $5 trillion.

The elephant in the room is that both Ryan and Romney are really arguing (under their breath) that cutting taxes results is so much growth that we would be swimming in additional tax revenues.

The CNN article barely mentioned that in the LAST 2 SENTENCES:

Can't economic growth help pay for the tax cuts? Yes, but it's impossible to know by how much.
For one thing, it matters how quickly one assumes the economy will grow.

Rosen also depends on aggressive assumptions about macro-level dynamic effects, where taxes rise not because individual taxpayers report more taxable income but because the economy grows as a whole. In other words, he is depending on rosy -- and not necessarily warranted -- economic assumptions to make the numbers pencil.

where decreased tax rates magically bring in more revenue.

I always thought that idea was aptly named. It certainly was laughable.