…
OFA: “You work hard, stretch every penny, but chances are you pay a higher tax rate than him: Mitt Romney made $20 million dollars in 2010, but paid only 14% in taxes—probably less than you. Now he has a plan that will give millionaires another tax break and raises taxes on middle class families by up to $2000 dollars a year. Mitt Romney’s middle class tax increase: he pays less, you pay more.”
Ezra Klein: “The reason Romney’s plan doesn’t work is very simple. The size of the tax cut he’s 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.”
The Brookings Institution backs this up:
“For some time, Mitt Romney has been promising to reduce income tax rates and then pay for these cuts by closing loopholes. But he’s never specified which loopholes he’d close and now we know why. A new analysis from the Brookings Institution (and first reported by Lori Montgomery in the Washington Post) suggests that, in order to lower tax rates without increasing the deficit, Romney would have to close loopholes that benefit middle-class Americans as well as the wealthy. The end result, if I’m reading the report correctly, would be lower taxes for the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans but higher taxes on everybody else. (See the graph below, which Steve Benen of Maddowblog constructed based on the report’s findings.)
“[...] For the record, reducing or eliminating tax breaks like the home interest mortgage deduction is a perfectly worthy idea, even if it means the middle class pay higher taxes. In the long run, most if not all of us need to pay more taxes. But Romney isn’t proposing to raise taxes on everybody. He’s proposing to raise them on the poor and middle class, while reducing them for the rich.
“Keep in mind that, even as Romney is proposing to taxes on most Americans, he is proposing to cut programs on which most Americans rely. His proposal to cap federal spending at 20 percent of gross domestic product, with a fifth of that set aside for defense spending, would inevitably require dramatic cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other vital public services.
“Figuring out the impact of campaign promises can be difficult. But if you’re like 95 percent of Americans, understanding what Romney’s plan means for you is simple: You’ll pay higher taxes and get fewer public services, so that Romney and his friends can keep more of their money. “
And the rubes in the GOP voting base allow themselves to be distracted by gays and abortion. It would be funny if they were the only ones to suffer the consequences.
