While the Republicans pan President Obama's tax reform proposal as "not serious," another candidate for president introduced a tax reform proposal of his own this week that's even more fantastical than his last one.
While Mitt Romney originally stumped pundits with his talk about the "1 percent paying their share," a closer look finds that what Romney was actually referring to was the 1 percent paying the same percentage in relation to others as they do now, but still significantly less.
According to preliminary analysis of that tax plan, though, Romney’s assertions are as absurd as they were the first time. According to Center for American Progress Tax and Budget Policy Director Michael Linden, Romney’s tax plan contains budget-busting tax breaks for the richest Americans in the form of a permanent 20 percent across-the-board cut to marginal rates and a repeal of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which prohibits the wealthy from artificially lowering their tax rates. “The enormity of these tax cuts is mind-boggling,” Linden said. “Even more unbelievable is how skewed they are to those the very top of the income ladder.”
Romney’s claim that his plan would promote job and economic growth while reducing the deficit is also likely false. The Bush tax cuts were promoted under the same guise, only to blow a $2.5-trillion hole in the federal budget that was accompanied by worst performance of any post-war expansion” for growth in investment, GDP, and job creation. Romney’s tax cuts are even more expensive, clocking in at a cost of more than $10.7 trillion over the next decade and reducing revenue to a paltry 15 percent of GDP, according to Linden. Balancing the budget on those terms, as Romney claims he will do, would be next to impossible.
$10.7 trillion over the next decade. An across the board reduction roughly triple the size of the Bush Tax Cuts. And President Obama is the one with the "not serious" proposal?
Needless to say Romney's proposal would do the exact opposite of "balance the budget," and no amount of spending cuts would be able to make up the difference without obliterating society as we know it. And virtually no one would be spared. The small businesses Republicans claim to worship would vanish, and all but the most uncompromising corporations would go bankrupt or leave the country since no one here would be left to buy their shit.
I'm not sure who Romney is trying to impress with this plan. We already know he's Wall Street's candidate. Has he really become so insecure, now trailing Santorum nationally, that he felt the need to reiterate it? Did he feel the need to reiterate that he's just as fiscally reckless, if not more so, than any of the other candidates?