Romney Tax Plan 'Mathematically Impossible'

Non-partisan analysis says numbers don't add up
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 3, 2012 11:41 AM CDT
Romney Tax Plan 'Mathematically Impossible'
This photo taken Aug. 2, 2012 shows Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney campaigning in Golden, Colo.   (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Mitt Romney has said that he has an economic plan and he's "not afraid to put it on the table." But the truth is that "the only thing he has put on table is dessert," writes Ezra Klein on Bloomberg. Romney says he'll cut all marginal tax rates 20% without increasing the deficit or reducing taxes paid by the top 1%. He's never explained how he would make this happen. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center tried, and came back with a two-word verdict: "mathematically impossible."

The Center bent over backward trying to make the numbers work, assuming the most favorable conditions, and even using Romney's own proposed "implausibly large" growth effect estimates. "Every simulation ended the same way: with a tax increase on the middle class," Klein writes. Eliminating loopholes for the rich simply won't pay for the tax cut they'd receive. That means the middle class and poor would have to pay for them, with tax hikes and spending cuts, in what Klein terms "a reverse-Robin Hood act." Click for his full column. (More Mitt Romney stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X