From Today’s Washington Post

Mr. Romney’s ‘garbage’

By Editorial Board, Published: August 18

FORMER GOVERNOR Mitt Romney, the presumed Republican nominee for president, promises to lower everyone’s income tax rate without reducing revenue. This sounds terrific. Why didn’t we think of it sooner?

Mr. Romney says that he can achieve this seemingly magical result by “broadening the base” for income tax collection. This, too, sounds great. In principle, everyone favors “broadening the base,” also known as closing loopholes. But everyone favors closing someone else’s loopholes: those of oil companies, say, or of plutocrats who park their money in the Cayman Islands.

Unfortunately, such inviting targets, to the extent they exist, don’t cost the government much in the overall scheme of things. The “loopholes” that cost most are deductions and other tax provisions that most Americans consider sensible, if not God-given, rights: tax breaks for employer-provided health insurance, which according to the Congressional Budget Office will cost $2 trillion over the next 10 years; for pension and retirement savings ($1.8 trillion); for mortgage interest ($1.6 trillion) and charitable giving ($600 billion). Mr. Romney hasn’t said which of these he would trim or by how much.

Recently the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, showed that Mr. Romney’s plan would by necessity help the rich and hurt the middle class. In an interview with Fortune magazine last week, Mr. Romney took strong issue with this conclusion. “They made garbage assumptions and they reached a garbage conclusion,” he said. Contrary to the center’s assumption, he said, he would not take away middle-class tax breaks for “homeownership, charitable giving and health care.”

Trimming those breaks for the wealthy, as Mr. Romney implies he would do, is a good idea. President Obama has been proposing to do so, by capping total deductions allowed in top brackets, through most of his term, and the idea has gone nowhere in Congress. But here’s the catch demonstrated by the center (and confirmed in an update last week, responding to criticisms from some conservative economists): Even if you take away every dollar of tax breaks the wealthy enjoy, you won’t get as much back as Mr. Romney proposes to give in tax cuts. So you would either have to go after the middle class or abandon the promise of revenue neutrality.

If these are “garbage assumptions,” why doesn’t Mr. Romney let us in on his own? If he can be specific about how much he would lower the tax rate, why not be as specific about how he would pay for that? A spokeswoman responded: “Governor Romney has announced clear and specific principles for his tax reform plan and will work with Congress to write a bill that achieves them.”

In reality, his principles are mutually exclusive: You can’t simultaneously lower tax rates, take in as much money as before and protect the middle class. There may be no politically feasible way, and there’s certainly no politically popular way, to “broaden the base” enough to pay for Mr. Romney’s tax cuts. It’s reasonable to assume that his cuts would, as did President Bush’s, worsen the nation’s deficit.
Until he’s willing to explain how he would avoid such a result, he has little standing to criticize Mr. Obama’s fiscal shortcomings.

stopped reading after I saw Washington Post

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I read from as many sources as possible and from both sides of the aisle in order to form an independent opinion. The Liberal/Left bias of the Washington Post is a given.

This piece points out a glaring logic hole - if Romney cuts tax revenues, and/or leaves tax revenues the same, there is no way to fix the nation's debt/deficit problem. Couple that with even more cuts in Government spending and Fairfax's economy is going to dive into the toilet.

Obama's plan is just as bad for the country and for Fairfax.

Ergo Gordon Blvd should run for President. Just Sayin....

stopped reading after I saw loss of deductions for mortgage interest, property taxes, and state and local income taxes. the plan will never fly, and it'll crash the property market.

it'll crash the property market and the private equity funds will pick up properties for 50 cents on the dollar.

Who'd a thunk - Romney's Plan will benefit Private Equity at everyone else's expense?

I'm voting for Gordon Blvd!

indie voter Wrote:
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> it'll crash the property market and the private
> equity funds will pick up properties for 50 cents
> on the dollar.


Sharpies are already doing that in Florida. Homes are starting to move. You can pick up a decent 3 bedroom with a pool for less than 150k in a gated community.

The government and the banks have been selling off REOs in bulk to large funds at 25-30% discounts, thereby avoiding disclosure to the MRIS as sales and artificially keeping up the median price of sales. The plan appears to be to release about 20% of their REO inventory each year over the next five years. The homes are rented so they won't be immediately flipped.

"Recently the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution..."

I like how the UI and Brookings declares its own JV as "nonpartisan" and then the Post just repeats it as if that's real. lol

So if they created a JV of the Heritage Foundation and ALEC, as long as they describe it themselves as "nonpartisan" then it magically becomes so and the Post would report it as such. Hahahahahaha, right.

Independent Wrote:
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> This piece points out a glaring logic hole - if
> Romney cuts tax revenues, and/or leaves tax
> revenues the same, there is no way to fix the
> nation's debt/deficit problem. Couple that with
> even more cuts in Government spending and
> Fairfax's economy is going to dive into the
> toilet.


The debt problem wont be fixed by taxes alone. You could take all the money everyone has and not be able to pay it off. Bill gates and all his money can pay for 3 days of interest on it. The only way to fix it is being more fiscally sound spending. Plus if you create a better business atmosphere and get more people back to work the increased revenue from more people working and not being on assistant will more than offset most cuts.


Youre also correct Obamas plan certainly isnt going to fix the problem either. The reality is its now so high and so bad well never pay it off short of fending off an alien invasion and everyone being so thankful they forgive our debt. That said if the government stops throwing around money like candy like it is now in a couple presidents we can see and improvement on it

From Today’s Washington Post...stopped there. I am still voting for Romney. All the Wash Post wants to do is suck Obama's junk and get him reelected.

Irrelevant thread.