Tax Policy Center says Romney CAN'T Keep Tax Reform Promises

[Zaac]

WASHINGTON — A small nonpartisan research center operated by professed “geeks” has found itself at the center of a rancorous $5 trillion debate between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

No white paper or policy manifesto put out during the presidential campaign has proved more controversial than an August study by the Washington-based Tax Policy Center, a respected nonprofit that issues studiously detailed tax analyses.

That study found, in short, that Mr. Romney could not keep all of the promises he had made on individual tax reform: including cutting marginal tax rates by 20 percent, keeping protections for investment income, not widening the deficit and not increasing the tax burden on the poor or middle class. It concluded that Mr. Romney’s plan, on its face, would cut taxes for rich families and raise them for everyone else.

...
Researchers including Martin Feldstein of Harvard and Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton have argued that Mr. Romney’s tax math might work if he raised taxes on families making more than $100,000 a year — not $200,000 to $250,000 a year, as he currently promises — or if his plan gave a strong jolt to economic growth.
...
Tax Policy of Romney /Tax Policy center in Spotlight

SO why exactly is Romney complaining about President Obama's tax raises on the evil 1% if, according to this study, his plan is to raise taxes on the same people?

 

[targus]

The study makes assumptions about what Romney would change in the tax code that Romney has not articulated.

The best that they can say is that under the assumptions that they make it would not work...

Not that Romney can not make changes that would work.

It also ignores the possibility of reducing spending to cut the deficit.

This has already been rehashed here on the board several times already.

 

[Zaac]

The study makes assumptions about what Romney would change in the tax code that Romney has not articulated.

The best that they can say is that under the assumptions that they make it would not work...

Not that Romney can not make changes that would work.

It also ignores the possibility of reducing spending to cut the deficit.

This has already been rehashed here on the board several times already.

any tax assessment always makes assumptions as it generally hasn't taken place yet. But this is a non-partisan group from the looks of it. They look to have done their homework on the subject.

But again, why is Romney planning to raise taxes?

 

[targus]

any tax assessment always makes assumptions as it generally hasn't taken place yet. But this is a non-partisan group from the looks of it. They look to have done their homework on the subject.

But again, why is Romney planning to raise taxes?

Reading comprehension problem?

The assumptions that they are making are their own - about what the specifics of Romney's plan are.

They are not analyzing Romney's plan.

And you don't know if Romney will raise taxes.

 

[Zaac]

Reading comprehension problem?

My reading comprehension is fine, thank you much. But as usual, you start with the digs.

The Tax Policy Center said that it had sought as many details as possible from the Romney campaign. (Its economists said it has a cordial back-and-forth with the economic policy teams in both campaigns, as it did in 2008.) Given the numbers available, it had tried to perform the analysis in the most generous way possible, and still did not see how Mr. Romney’s rate cuts could square with his other goals.

“We wrote a technical, accurate paper given the available information,” said William G. Gale of the Brookings Institution, one of the paper’s main authors, in a recent interview. “The criticism that you can’t analyze the Romney tax plan because there isn’t one? That hasn’t stopped other economists from analyzing its growth effects. I like to have substantive discussions about tax policy. The uproar about the paper has not been substantive.”

The assumptions that they are making are their own - about what the specifics of Romney's plan are.

They are not analyzing Romney's plan

.

They analyzed his plan the same way the folks who determined its growth effects did.

And you don't know if Romney will raise taxes.

According to the the TPC it does. And folks can call it a tomato or a tomoto. It's still the same.

 

[targus]

I notice that you also glossed over spending cuts as part of the plan.

Not to mention limiting itemized deductions.

 

[InTheLight]

SO why exactly is Romney complaining about President Obama's tax raises on the evil 1% if, according to this study, his plan is to raise taxes on the same people?

But again, why is Romney planning to raise taxes?

Romney claims he's not going to raise taxes. You're taking the word of one of the experts in the article you linked to. Read some more from the article:

Others have argued that the Tax Policy Center filled in too many of the holes in Mr. Romney’s light-on-detail proposal — making a full analysis impossible and skewing the center’s paper’s results.

“It is not an analysis of Governor Romney’s plan,” said Scott A. Hodge, the president of the Tax Foundation. a nonprofit research group also based in Washington.

“It has been, I think, mislabeled as such and misinterpreted as such. We don’t think there are enough details to analyze,” he said, adding that he believed that it was possible to devise a distributionally neutral, revenue neutral tax reform that cut rates in the way Mr. Romney described.

So why believe Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton over Scott A. Hodge? Especially when Romney says he won't raise taxes?

 

[Zaac]

I notice that you also glossed over spending cuts as part of the plan.

Not to mention limiting itemized deductions.

Does that mean he's not going to raise taxes?

 

[Zaac]

Romney claims he's not going to raise taxes. You're taking the word of one of the experts in the article you linked to. Read some more from the article:

Others have argued that the Tax Policy Center filled in too many of the holes in Mr. Romney’s light-on-detail proposal — making a full analysis impossible and skewing the center’s paper’s results.

“It is not an analysis of Governor Romney’s plan,” said Scott A. Hodge, the president of the Tax Foundation. a nonprofit research group also based in Washington.

“It has been, I think, mislabeled as such and misinterpreted as such. We don’t think there are enough details to analyze,” he said, adding that he believed that it was possible to devise a distributionally neutral, revenue neutral tax reform that cut rates in the way Mr. Romney described.

So why believe Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton over Scott A. Hodge? Especially when Romney says he won't raise taxes?

ITL, what I was referencing was the following:

Researchers including Martin Feldstein of Harvard and Harvey S. Rosen of Princeton have argued that Mr. Romney’s tax math might work if he raised taxes on families making more than $100,000 a year — not $200,000 to $250,000 a year, as he currently promises — or if his plan gave a strong jolt to economic growth.

Does he promise in his plan to raise taxes on those people?

 

[InTheLight]

Does he promise in his plan to raise taxes on those people?

No, Romney has stated many, many times that he wants to lower tax rates 20% for everyone but keep net taxes paid by the wealthy 2% the same by closing loopholes and deductions.

 

[Zaac]

No, Romney has stated many, many times that he wants to lower tax rates 20% for everyone but keep net taxes paid by the wealthy 2% the same by closing loopholes and deductions.

Interesting. Was just wondering why this guy was saying "as he promised".

 

[InTheLight]

Interesting. Was just wondering why this guy was saying "as he promised".

It doesn't make any sense. Romney has never promised to raise taxes. The only time I've heard Romney allude to the $200,000 income figure was his promise to eliminate capital gains taxes for people that make less than $200,000.

 

[SolaSaint]

I'll trust the plans of a conservative candidate over the poor results of the liberal now in office who promises to keep doing the same thing.

 

[LadyEagle]

Amen to that. If some people would spend some time listening to Romney instead of bashing him, they would be better informed.

 

[InTheLight]

Amen to that. If some people would spend some time listening to Romney instead of bashing him, they would be better informed.

I heard Romney's new stump speech today on POTUS radio on SiriusXM. Very good speech. Much more info and better delivery than any debate performance, TV ad, or interview. He talks about the big problems that he and Ryan are willing to tackle but that Obama shrank away from.

Found this:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/26/excerpts-romney-economic-speech/comment-page-1/

 

[LadyEagle]

Thanks, ITL: From your link: "We have had four presidential and vice-presidential debates. And there is nothing in what the President proposed or defended that has any prospect of meeting the challenges of the times. Raising taxes will not grow jobs or ignite the economy–in fact, his tax plan has been calculated to destroy 700,000 jobs. "

 

[Zaac]

Amen to that. If some people would spend some time listening to Romney instead of bashing him, they would be better informed.

Well, I guess you need to relay that to the non-partisan TPC. :laugh:

Then, slowly, right-leaning economists and outlets began releasing their own studies showing that, if you made some really, really questionable assumptions, you could kinda sorta make Romney’s math look like it might add up. And so you might have heard Romney say this to David Gregory on “Meet the Press”:

The good news is that five different economic studies, including one at Harvard and Princeton and AEI and a couple at The Wall Street Journal all show that if we bring down our top rates and actually go across the board, bring down rates for everyone in America, but also limit deductions and exemptions for people at the high end, while you can keep the progressivity in the code, you could remain revenue neutral and you create an enormous incentive for growth in the economy.

The Harvard study was done by economist Martin Feldstein, and he makes a very important decision in his paper. He writes, “I think it is very reasonable to say that people in that high-income group” — by which means people making over $100,000 — “are not the ‘middle class.’”

And so, under really, really unrealistic assumptions, he shows that the math can kind of work, but that Romney’s policies would mean a really big tax increase for people making between $100,000 and $250,000 in order to pay for a big tax cut on people making more than $250,000.

But that’s okay, because people making over $100,000 are not in the middle class.
And Romney has been all over the place trumpeting this study, saying this study shows his math works out. But then ABC’s George Stephanopoulos caught him out:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Is $100,000 middle income?
MITT ROMNEY: No, middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less.

For the record, I’m actually with Feldstein on this one: I think it’s reasonable to say households making more than $100,000 are not middle income. But Romney disagrees with me, and with Feldstein.

So the study Romney is promoting — the one he says is the study you should be looking at — actually shows even under the most favorable assumptions possible, he’s going to have to raise taxes on the people he defines as the middle class. In saying that that study is credible, he has admitted he can’t make his tax promises add up. And yet he constantly, repeatedly says the opposite.

Romney has clearly calculated that there aren’t many people who read these analyses. If he just keeps saying his tax plan can cut taxes on the rich while cutting taxes on the middle class while not cutting taxes on the rich while not costing a dime, eventually, his version of this will come to be seen as the truth. And perhaps he’s right. But the numbers show what they show.

Romney Admits He'll raise taxes

 

[Arbo]

Zaac, why don't you just show some honesty and admit that you are an Obamaite? Most people here know it already. You haven't fooled many people so far because you're too obvious.

 

[Zaac]

Zaac, why don't you just show some honesty and admit that you are an Obamaite? Most people here know it already. You haven't fooled many people so far because you're too obvious.

Arbo, why don't you and your friends just admit what everybody here knows:that you have Romnesia and you hate Obama.

 

[Revmitchell]

Arbo, why don't you and your friends just admit what everybody here knows:that you have Romnesia and you hate Obama.

Yep ans Obama supporter. Most likely a DNC operative.