Romney's "secret plan to balance the budget" tests press objectivity
by David Atkins
Via Greg Sargent at the Plum Line, behold the mendacity of Mitt Romney in an interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS defending his proposed $5 trillion in tax cuts:
SCHIEFFER: You haven’t been bashful about telling us you want to cut taxes. When are you going to tell us where you’re going to get the revenue? Which of the deductions are you going to be willing to eliminate? Which of the tax credits are you going to — when are you going to be able to tell us that?
ROMNEY: Well, we’ll go through that process with Congress as to which of all the different deductions and the exemptions —
SCHIEFFER: But do you have an ideas now, like the home mortgage interest deduction, you know, the various ones?
ROMNEY: Well Simpson Bowles went though a process of saying how they would be able to reach a setting where they had actually under their proposal even more revenue, with lower rates. So, mathematically it’s been proved to be possible: We can have lower rates, as I propose, that creates more growth, and we can limit deductions and exemptions.
A few questions. Is Mitt lying about his intended policies, saying whatever it takes to secure the support of his economic libertarian base and donors while knowing well that his budget has little chance of getting through the Senate? Does he really believe that $5 trillion in tax cuts combined with austerity and eliminating unnamed exemptions will spur economic growth? Or does he know how much damage it will cause, and simply doesn't care so long as the obscenely wealthy get an even greater share of the pie?
As Sargent says:
Romney went on to pledge, as he has in the past, that under his plan, the wealthy would continue to pay the same share of the tax burden as they do now. “I’m not looking to reduce the burden paid by the wealthiest,” he said. In other words, the disproportionally larger tax cut the wealthy would get from the across-the-board cut in rates he’s proposing would be offset by closing deductions and loopholes the rich currently enjoy. But asked twice by Schieffer how exactly he would do this, Romney refused to say, beyond noting that this has been mathematically proven to be possible. And in his first reply above, he confirmed that the details would be worked out with Congress when he is president — which is to say, not during the campaign.
As you may recall, Romney made big news when he was overheard at a private fundraiser revealing to donors a few of the specific ways he’d pay for his massive tax cuts. Since then, details have been in short supply. And today, Romney seemed to confirm that he sees no need to reveal those details until he becomes president.
The message, in a nutshell: No, the rich won’t make out better than everyone else under my plan. No need to say how this would work in practice. Just trust me!
The Romney 2012 campaign will be a big test for the national news media. Is it possible to stonewall and lie shamelessly throughout an entire presidential election campaign without being called on it in a significantly damaging way? It's the "secret plan to end the war", but with $5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich offset by a secret plan to balance the budget.
The Obama campaign has responded:
Mitt Romney has made clear that — for political reasons — he’s not going to disclose how he would pay for his $5 trillion tax cuts. So he’s either secretly raising taxes on a whole segment of the population he won’t disclose, making even more devastating cuts to programs essential to the middle class like education or exploding the deficit by 5 trillion dollars.
Nice. But the Obama campaign shouldn't have to say that as if it were a partisan attack. It's an observable fact that should be reported as an uncontroversial truth by an objective press.
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