Romney Camp Calls Tax Study ‘A Joke,’ But Won’t Release Their Own Analysis (updated)

Romney Camp Calls Tax Study ‘A Joke,’ But Won’t Release Their Own Analysis

Benjy Sarlin

A new study describing Mitt Romney’s tax cut proposals as an average tax increase for 95% of Americans is “a joke,” according to Romney adviser Eric Ferhnstrom. But policy aides offered no indication they plan to offer more details on Romney’s plan in order to clarify how it would be paid for and what they assumed its effects would be.

The Romney camp has decried the report by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center as “biased,” suggesting that their own expectations are that an explosion of economic growth thanks to their policies will make up any revenue gaps in the plan that indicate it will be a drag on middle class Americans.

But asked on a conference call whether the Romney campaign would offer up any more details on how they believe their plan would work instead, policy adviser Jonathan Burks demurred, saying it would be up to Congress to help fill in the blanks.

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Working within the broad goals Burks outlined, the Tax Policy Center concluded there simply was no way to keep Romney’s plan “progressive” and “revenue neutral” without majorly reducing tax deductions that benefit the vast majority of Americans. They added that this held true even if they took Romney’s word and imagined that his plan would spark higher growth than expected.

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http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/08/romney-tax-policy-center-study-joke.php

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I’ll be curious to see how all this gets reported. The TPC results are ironclad; there is no valid Romney counterargument except to say that he doesn’t really mean all that stuff about actually making up for lost revenue. My guess is that the stories will nonetheless be he said/she said, but maybe I’ll be favorably surprised.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/dooh-nibor/

Romney campaign calls tax plan study a 'joke' ... but can't explain why

by Jed Lewison


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As BuzzFeed's Zeke Miller notes, on February 22 of this year, Romney promised to release a dynamic scoring for his plan to show how his numbers add up—but nearly six months later, they still haven't done so.

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/08/02/1116016/-Romney-campaign-calls-tax-plan-study-a-joke-but-can-t-explain-why