When asked about offsets to their 20% across-the-board tax cuts that will keep the package revenue neutral, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a stock explanation for not providing details: they want to confer with their congressional colleague and achieve bipartisan consensus. They don’t want to dictate. I’m not sure how it plays to the persuadable, but the line is beginning to make my brain hurt.
Obama, Biden, and every surrogate needs to ask a simple question: Why is it acceptable to dictate the specific tax cut, but not acceptable to dictate the offsets that will deliver on the promise of revenue neutrality? There are a lot of ways to have revenue-neutral tax reform, the nature and extent of tax cuts is an important part of the puzzle. Why isn’t that something Romney wants to avoid appearing to dictate?
The obvious answer is math. They don’t really care about bipartisanship. But, the numbers don’t add up. So, they seek shelter under the cover of bipartisanship. It’s time to take on the fig leaf of bipartisan amity.
To his credit, last night Joe Biden did an excellent job of citing historical precedent for a president proposing a quite specific package of cuts and offsets to congress as the starting point for the search for a bipartisan solution. But, he never put Ryan on the defensive about the contradiction between the specificity of tax cuts and the excuse for no specifics on offsets.
And, surrogates ought to hammer fact-check nation that a $5 trillion tax cut is exactly an accurate way to describe Romney’s package. Enumerated $5 trillion in cuts minus $0 in enumerated offsets = $5 trillion. If Romney and Ryan want to bring the number down, they need to show us how they propose to do it. Dan Kennedy absolutely nails it on this point.
And, the media need to treat as recurring news that Romney and Ryan continue not to provide specifics despite repeated entreaties from Democrats and the press. I’m sure it bores Glen Johnson to tears to have to write again that Ryan was pressed for specific offsets and once again provided none. Haven’t we been here before? But, economic leadership is the principal justification for the Romney candidacy and the tax cut is his signature policy proposal. You can’t write up the VP debate and not mention the question to Ryan and his non-answer on offsets. It may not be new, but it’s news.
Cutting rates by 20% across the board means the plan starts with a nearly $5 trillion reduction in revenue. Little dispute there, except from Romney himself at the first debate. But it will be revenue-neutral, they say. And they will add a trillion or two to defense, they say. And they will get us out of our current deficit situation and balance the budget, they say.
If all that is true, they have to offset at least $7 trillion, maybe 8 or 9, over 10 years. So they say they’ll do that mostly by eliminating or capping deductions. It’s more than fair to ask how, specifically, that will work. Particularly since every reputable analysis of this plan shows that hitting only the top earners will not raise anywhere near $5 or 7 trillion.
They float $17,000 as a deduction cap. Maybe it’s $25,000 instead. My aunt and uncle, who are struggling to pay every bill every month despite two spouses working full time, deducted over $35,000 last year. Mortgage interest, (very high) property taxes, state and local income taxes, medical costs, tuition for their kids. They deserve to know if any of those deductions will be cut. All we know is that the carried interest deduction for people like Romney won’t be.
The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh
Re: Promising a 20% across the board tax cut without explaining how they would do it.
A huge tax cut for the top 1%, two wars, not many offsets, and a huge increase in the deficit. We should be mentioning the name George Bush every chance we get. The Republicans will not do it because he is toxic to them. Romney’s plan is really George Bush’s on steroids – his tax cuts for the wealthy are even bigger than Bush’s were. And Romney will either eliminate important middle class deductions – like the mortgage interest deduction – or allow the deficit to balloon even more. Why can’t we say this more often?