Ezra Klein: Nine Takeaways on Romney’s Tax Plan
Nine takeaways on Romneys tax plan
Posted by Ezra Klein
August 2, 2012
1) The Tax Policy Center bent over backwards to make Romneys promises add up. They assumed a Romney administration wouldnt cut a dollar of tax preferences for anyone making less than $200,000 until they had cut every dollar of tax preferences for everyone making over $200,000. They left all preferences for savings and investment untouched, as Romney has promised. They even tested the plan under a model developed, in part, by Greg Mankiw, one of Romneys economic advisers, that promises implausibly large growth effects from tax cuts. The fact that they couldnt make Romneys numbers work even when they stacked all these scenarios on top of one another shows just how impossible Romneys promises are.
2) The reason Romneys plan doesnt work is very simple. The size of the tax cut hes proposing for the rich is larger than all of the tax expenditures that go to the rich put together. As such, it is mathematically impossible for him to keep his promise to make sure the top one percent keeps paying the same or more.
3) This is going to be a huge problem for the Romney campaign. The Romney team has tried to paper over the fact that its policy promises dont add up by withholding the crucial details that independent analysts need to do the math. But now independent analysts are filling in those details for them (the Tax Policy Centers look at Romneys tax plan should be read in tandem with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities effort to flesh out his spending promises). And, ultimately, thats worse, as actors with more credibility than the Romney campaign are showing what the Romney campaign was trying to hide.
4) Evidence the Romney campaign does not have a good counterargument, part one: If they thought releasing more details would make the plan look better rather than worse, they would have released them rather than letting outside organizations fill in the blanks. Its essentially the same theory as refusing to release the tax returns. But now the Romney campaign is receiving pressure including from conservatives to release those details, which they know they cant do. And unlike on the tax returns, no one can say that the details of Romneys plans for governing the country are irrelevant to this campaign.
The rest here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/08/02/nine-takeaways-on-romneys-tax-plan/