Mitt Romney did an interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News and revealed how totally disconnected his budget plan is from reality. He’s still living in the alternate universe where cutting taxes boosts federal revenue, which has been disproved time and time again.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You know Democrats are going to be wanting to get much more detail from you on how you’re going to pay for your tax cuts. We’ve heard that at the Democratic Convention. President Clinton said your math doesn’t work. I know you dispute what President Clinton said and what the Democrats that say that you’re going to have a $2,000 tax hike on middleclass families. I know you dispute that. You cite your own studies. But one of the studies you cite by Martin Feldstein at Harvard shows that to make your math work, it could work, if you eliminate the home mortgage, charity, and state and local tax deductions for everyone earning over $100,000. Is that what you propose?
MITT ROMNEY: No, that’s not what I propose. And, of course, part of my plan is to stimulate economic growth. The biggest source of getting the country to a balanced budget is not by raising taxes or by cutting spending. It’s by encouraging the growth of the economy. So my tax plan is to encourage investment in growth in America, more jobs, that means more people paying taxes. So that’s a big component of what allows us to get to a balanced budget.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: But his study, which you’ve cited, says it can only work if you take away those deductions for everyone earning more than $100,000.MITT ROMNEY: Well, it doesn’t necessarily show the same growth that we’re anticipating. And I haven’t seen his precise study. But I can tell you that we can lower our rates–
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you cited the study, though.
MITT ROMNEY: Well, I said that there are five different studies that point out that we can get to a balanced budget without raising taxes on middle income people. Let me tell you, George, the fundamentals of my tax policy are these. Number one, reduce tax burdens on middle-income people. So no one can say my plan is going to raise taxes on middle-income people, because principle number one is keep the burden down on middle-income taxpayers.
So he cites one study that he hasn’t seen, which actually says the opposite of what he claims — and his response when that is pointed out is to say there are other studies, which he also probably hasn’t seen. And all of this to make the clearly false claim that cutting taxes unleashes such a tidal wave of growth that it dramatically boosts federal revenue and we can balance the budget with that magically appearing money. Except it’s been done before and it never actually works.
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Zinc Avenger (Sarcasm Tags 3.0 Compliant)
September 18, 2012 at 9:43 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Studies are like theories, facts, reason, and compassion. No reputable conservative will have any truck with anyone who deals in any of them.
weaver
September 18, 2012 at 9:46 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
3 of the 5 “studies” he cited were editorials or articles in the media – one of which was written by his supporters.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/sep/14/mitt-romney/romney-claims-5-studies-back-his-tax-plan/
blorf
September 18, 2012 at 9:52 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“…number one, don’t reduce– or excuse me, don’t raise taxes on middle-income people…”
Paging Dr Freud, Paging Dr. Freud…
Dunc
September 18, 2012 at 9:57 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Of course, when he says “middle-income people”, he means people earning $250,000 pa…
John Hinkle
September 18, 2012 at 9:58 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The study, which presumably includes facts and conclusions, says: if you do X then you’ll get Y.
Romney, via a fact free assertion, says: If I do X then I’ll get not Y.
Hmm, whom to believe… whom to believe…
Marcus Ranum
September 18, 2012 at 10:19 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Is that one of those tough “gotcha” softballs that the press are throwing him?
yoav
September 18, 2012 at 10:31 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well since it’s on the talking points it must be true. Who need math when we have Mitten’s word, it’s not like he has a history of lying or something.
raven
September 18, 2012 at 11:28 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I’ve yet to see a coherent explanation for Romney/Ryan’s economic plans. I suspect because if we really knew, no one sane would vote for them.
1. Ryan has a magic plan to save money on Medicare. It seems to be to just drastically reduce what Medicare pays for. This is going to be real popular for 65′s and older on…Medicare.
2. Romney is going to cut taxes and balance the budget. Which is impossible.
Bush tried it and wrecked the economy for a generation with trillion dollar per year deficits. The fed says the Great Recession will end around 2018. Insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.
Reginald Selkirk
September 18, 2012 at 11:33 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Study: Tax Cuts for the Rich Don’t Spur Growth
eric
September 18, 2012 at 11:39 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Even Romney wouldn’t vote for it. We saw this with the AMT (a form of flat tax) debate and now with the sequestration debate. When GOP economic concepts for balancing the bugget go from hypothetical to real, they suddenly oppose them.
The reality is very simple: they want to decrease taxes for some people and decrease spending in some areas, and don’t really care if this leads to a balanced budget or not. Reagan and Bush II ran up huge deficits; balance was never a priority.
mikmik
September 18, 2012 at 12:22 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
No, no, you guys don’t get it. It’s the lower income people that get shafted. Not us middle class, so it’s okay! We can just buy more insurance if we need it, anyways, and so can the poor!
Brilliant, just fucking brilliant!
Modusoperandi
September 18, 2012 at 12:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
It’s all part/of my supply side fantasy.
Who knew that Romney was in Bad Company? Besides Bain, I mean.
fifthdentist
September 18, 2012 at 1:28 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
raven said: “I’ve yet to see a coherent explanation for Romney/Ryan’s economic plans. I suspect because if we really knew, no one sane would vote for them.”
It’s just like the last election cycle. I’d be at an event where some teabagger candidate was bitching and moaning about all that government waste and how we need to seriously need to balance the budget. Immediately.
Afterwards when I interviewed them I’d ask how, specifically, they would balance the budget and what wasteful spending they would cut.
This, invariably, brought on a look of deer in the headlights and sputtering about how he needs to get into office so he can look at the budget and identify yada yada yada.
(As if no non-member of Congress has access to the federal budget).
So next I’d ask the candidate to name one thing — one single thing — that he believes should be cut or eliminated. Again they refused. Every time.
Handy how with no specifics each voter could imagine that the “waste” the candidate would cut is something that does not impact that individual voter. Which is easy if your teabagger base thinks that simply eliminating NPR and foreign aid would balance the budget all by itself.
Area Man
September 18, 2012 at 1:36 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The irony is that Romney/Ryan are following today’s orthodox right-wing economic policy almost exactly: cut taxes for the rich, claim they’ll magically be revenue neutral, and when deficits inevitably appear or get worse, use that as an excuse to gut entitlements and programs that benefit the poor. Then do it all over again.
This policy has virtually zero support beyond the plutocrats and hardcore ideologues that came up with it, and you are correct that this is why Romney’s plans are so poorly articulated. In focus groups, people actually refused to believe that Romney would do these things. And yet when he loses, the blame will be on his insufficient fealty to right-wing dogma, not the inability of that dogma to win votes.
=8)-DX
September 18, 2012 at 2:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Um.. so what’s a tax curve actually look like? I mean at 0% tax you get 0 dollars federal income and at 100% tax you get 0 income in later years because people stop using money. Shouldn’t this be something like a bell curve? There’ll be a point when taxation over a certain amount will stifle the economy, but I guess where that is will change for each country..
=8)-DX
September 18, 2012 at 2:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Ah.. wiki calls it the “Laffer curve”. Got some reading to do now. Big question – uphill or downhill?
mikmik
September 18, 2012 at 3:08 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That’s why the polls are so close. Romney carries the insane vote, plus the brainwashed, the incredibly stunned, and the racist block, and finally, the psychotics.
Anyways, if he should get in and it all goes to hell in a handcart, it’s all Obama’s fault for screwing everything up in the first place.
lofgren
September 18, 2012 at 3:25 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I don’t know why people on the radio keep talking about this like it is Romney’s election to lose. As long as the economy keeps chugging along in basically the right direction and Israel keeps its nukes to itself, neither being anything that either Obama or Romney have any control over, Romney doesn’t have a chance in hell.
Yes, it’s true that the numbers on Obama’s economic progress are not great. But they are inching in the right direction. You cannot pick a single number like unemployment rate, as NPR did for about a week straight, and declare that because no president has been reelected when this one metric was so low means that Obama is bound to lose.
But the Obama team has more than sufficiently challenged the Romney campaign to show how they would have done better, at least for anybody who gives a shit about reality. The Randies, the suits, the 1%, the racists, the fundies, and the jingoists will never come over to Obama’s side no matter what, but they are not enough to carry the election unless voter turnout is particularly dire.
The rest, the slab of habitual voters in the middle who won’t make up their minds until a week before election night, are not won over by economic policies, judicial appointments, or civil rights infringements. Barring an unexpected catastrophe in the last month of the campaign, those votes are nabbed by one thing: charm. And that’s something that Obama has been stockpiling for decades, while Romney appears to have never had a use for it at all.
This election is not Romney’s to lose. Absent dumb luck of a very poorly-timed economic disaster or ugly foreign entanglement, Obama is holding all the cards simply because he doesn’t look like he might retch when he shakes your hand, even if you make under a mil a year.
Improbable Joe
September 18, 2012 at 3:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
lofgren,
This is a point that bears repeating… or, in the case of the mainstream media, bears stating for the first time ever. The “undecided” aren’t people who look at politics and policy, weigh both sides fairly, and simply have a difficult time deciding which candidate will best deliver specific actions to advance specific policy goals. They are know-nothings who probably won’t bother voting but if they do it will be for the guy they like more. And NOBODY likes Romney.
oranje
September 18, 2012 at 3:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@lofgren: There are people who believe this is Romney’s to lose? Every time Romney gets to speak, this is shaping up more and more to be an ass-kicking. Nate Silver has this being, shall we say, not close. Nor should it be.
lofgren
September 18, 2012 at 4:13 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@oranje
Yep. Most of my mainstream news consumption is of NPR, and all they keep talking about is how the raw numbers in this economy predict that Obama should lose. It’s absolutely baffling. Looking at raw numbers is useful and important, but it needs to be kept in the context of the two people actually running. Every single a time a new report is released, they’re like “So what does this mean for Obama’s reelection campaign?” Then some pundit spends five minutes pontificating on how more foreclosures/unemployment/jobs shipped to China shows that Obama is really having a very tough campaign and he should probably lose. As if the voters who have not yet made up their minds are going to look up a job report from three months ago before they decide who to vote for the night before election day. It’s asinine. If you are paying close enough attention to the economy that a bad job report in August is going to change who you vote for in November, you are either a genius who is more adept than the best economists in the universe at somehow tracing the complex web of responsibility back to Obama, or you are a moron who will probably be swayed six or seven more times before election day based on fresher reports.
Gum stuck to the sidewalk is up 67% since June? Well screw whatshisname in the White House! I’m voting Republican!
Bullshit. Nobody acts like that. The only value these hard numbers have at this juncture is that those of us who do pay attention can rationalize the choices we’ve already made.
Modusoperandi
September 18, 2012 at 5:57 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
lofgren “Most of my mainstream news consumption is of NPR, and all they keep talking about is how the raw numbers in this economy predict that Obama should lose.”
Pah, typical Liberal Media!
Improbable Joe
September 18, 2012 at 6:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
NPR stands for “Nice Polite Republicans”… you can hear the same nonsense on NPR as you hear on Fox “News” with barely a hint of pushback from the “journalists” on staff, when they aren’t themselves presenting lies as fact.
lofgren
September 19, 2012 at 2:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
My interpretation is that everybody in the media needs the race to be a corker, because otherwise nobody will give a shit enough to read about it endlessly through November. They’ve done the same thing every race that I have ever been aware of.
Dunc
September 19, 2012 at 9:22 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Given that incumbents usually fare badly in tough economic times, it certainly should be Romney’s to lose… Fortunately, he seems like just the man to do so.