[Vision2020] Mr. Romney Needs a Working Calculator

[Art Deco]

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October 15, 2012
Mr. Romney Needs a Working Calculator

To the annoyance of the Romney campaign, members of Washington’s
reality-based community have a habit of popping up to point out the many
deceptions in the campaign’s blue-sky promises of low taxes and instant
growth. The latest is the Joint Committee on Taxation <https://www.jct.gov/>,
an obscure but well-respected Congressional panel — currently evenly
divided between the parties — that helps lawmakers calculate the effect of
their tax plans.

Last month, the committee asked its staff what would happen if Congress
repealed the biggest tax deductions and loopholes and used the new revenue
to lower tax rates. The staff started adding it up: end all itemized
deductions, tax capital gains and dividends as ordinary income, and tax the
interest on state and local bonds, along with several other
revenue-raisers.

The answer came last week<http://media.bloomberg.com/bb/avfile/r9DCbKWFmKdw>:
ending all those deductions would only produce enough revenue to lower tax
rates by 4 percent<http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-12/repealing-deductions-pays-for-4-tax-cuts-study-says.html>.


Mitt Romney says he can lower tax rates by 20 percent and pay for it by
ending deductions. The joint committee’s math makes it clear that that is
impossible.

The analysis doesn’t include every possible tax expenditure, leaving out,
for example, the tax break employers get for providing health insurance.
But because Mr. Romney refuses to raise capital gains taxes and wants to
end the estate tax, it is hard to see how he could do much better than 4
percent.

This is why Mr. Romney has refused to say which deductions he would
eliminate, just as Representative Paul Ryan refused when asked a direct
question in last week’s debate. Specify a deduction, and some pest with a
calculator will point out that it doesn’t add up.

Even Fox News isn’t buying it. Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to the Romney
campaign, said on Fox News
Sunday<http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/2012/10/14/david-axelrod-white-house-response-libya-attack-ed-gillespie-defends-romney-tax-plan>that
Mr. Romney would work out those details later with Congress. As the
program’s moderator, Chris Wallace, pointed out, that’s like offering
voters the candy of a 20 percent tax cut without mentioning the spinach
they will have to eat.

The Romney campaign claims it has six studies proving it can be done, but,
on examination, none of the studies actually make that point, or
counterbalance the nonpartisan analyses that use real math. Two of the
studies, for example, were done by the same Republican economist, Martin
Feldstein<http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/09/a-reply-from-martin-feldstein.html>,
an adviser to the Romney campaign, who said it would require ending all
deductions for everyone making $100,000 or more. But Mr. Romney has
explicitly said he would not do
that<http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/full-transcript-george-stephanopoulos-and-mitt-romney/>.


It is increasingly clear that the Romney tax “plan” is not really a plan at
all but is instead simply a rhapsody based on old Republican themes that
something can be had for nothing. For middle-class taxpayers without the
benefit of expensive accountants, the bill always comes due a few years
later.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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