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2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumUS News World Report (Conservative) - The Romney-Ryan Tax Loophole Fantasy
Even a relative conservative publication like U.S. News and World Report can't seem to buy into Romney's $6 trillion secret sauce.
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2012/10/12/why-romney-and-ryan-wont-answer-the-tax-loophole-question?google_editors_picks=true
To recap: Romney has proposed a 20 percent across the board income tax cut, to cut corporate taxes, and repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, among other things. He claims that he will make up the lost tax revenue by closing unspecified loopholes in the tax code. This is where the $5 trillion dispute comes from about Romney's tax planhis tax cuts are projected to cost around $5 trillion. He argues that it's not fair to characterize his proposal as a $5 trillion tax cut becauseyou'll have to take his word on thishe's going to offset it by closing loopholes.
* * *
Romney's math doesn't work. Tax loopholes have become the modern equivalent of wasteful spending--a generic and vastly overestimated pool of money politicians can cite as offsets for their expensive policies. The Congress's nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that if you repealed all itemized deductions from the tax code (as in goodbye mortgage interest deduction), it would only pay for a 4 percent cut in tax rates.
And more specifically to Romney's plan, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (whose findings the Romney campaign used to tout), has run the numbers and figured out that the wealthy don't currently get enough breaks in the tax code to pay for the Romney tax cuts. In order to pay for the cuts middle class taxpayers would have to lose expendituresmore than offsetting the tax breaks they would see.
* * *
And while Romney and Ryan have talked about a half-dozen independent "studies" which defend his tax plan, they are actually not studies at allrather they're three blog posts, an op-ed, and a couple of white papers, one of which was written by Romney's own economic advisers. Oh, and they don't actually back up his plan, according to The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien.
So understand that while Romney's goal sounds good, it's straight out of campaign fantasy land.
* * *
Romney's math doesn't work. Tax loopholes have become the modern equivalent of wasteful spending--a generic and vastly overestimated pool of money politicians can cite as offsets for their expensive policies. The Congress's nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that if you repealed all itemized deductions from the tax code (as in goodbye mortgage interest deduction), it would only pay for a 4 percent cut in tax rates.
And more specifically to Romney's plan, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (whose findings the Romney campaign used to tout), has run the numbers and figured out that the wealthy don't currently get enough breaks in the tax code to pay for the Romney tax cuts. In order to pay for the cuts middle class taxpayers would have to lose expendituresmore than offsetting the tax breaks they would see.
* * *
And while Romney and Ryan have talked about a half-dozen independent "studies" which defend his tax plan, they are actually not studies at allrather they're three blog posts, an op-ed, and a couple of white papers, one of which was written by Romney's own economic advisers. Oh, and they don't actually back up his plan, according to The Atlantic's Matthew O'Brien.
So understand that while Romney's goal sounds good, it's straight out of campaign fantasy land.
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US News World Report (Conservative) - The Romney-Ryan Tax Loophole Fantasy (Original Post)
TomCADem
Oct 2012
OP
It's worse than I thought -- I figured the 'studies' were from RW "think" tanks.
eppur_se_muova
Oct 2012
#2
Skittles
(153,164 posts)1. I am reminded of this cartoon....
yes INDEED
?w=640
eppur_se_muova
(36,264 posts)2. It's worse than I thought -- I figured the 'studies' were from RW "think" tanks.
They don't even come up to that standard.