George Will Questions The Arithmetic Of Romney’s Tax Plan

[DonViejo]

On ABC's "This Week" roundtable Sunday, conservative columnist George Will questioned the mathematical soundness of the Romney-Ryan tax cut plan.

-snip-

"There is uncertainty surrounding the Romney-Ryan tax cut plan, because they have not specified the deductions that will be closed," Will said. "And we know where the big money is: mortgage interest deductions, charitable deductions, taxing that's compensation, which it is, employee-provided health insurance, and state and local taxes. All of those, you either hit only the rich, in which case you don't get much money, or you hit the middle class."

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/george-will-questions-arithmetic-of-romneys-tax-plan

[subterranean]

1. I don't think they have any intention of eliminating deductions or loopholes.

At least not any significant ones. I believe their plan is to use the promise of closing loopholes later as a way of getting the tax cuts passed. After they get the tax cuts, they will not push very hard to eliminate deductions, which nobody will want to give up. Besides, everyone knows that deficits don't matter when a Republican is in the White House.

[cthulu2016]

2. You are right, however...

since Mit is currently proposing trillions of dollars in new taxes on the middle class I am willing to take him at his word for the time being.

[mick063]

3. I know a lot of folks don't like George Will around here but.

Know I will always give him my ear. You have seen the alternative. It is called Bill O' Reilly or Sean Hannity.

I fundamentally disagree with George Will on almost all issues, but I respect that he is a professional journalist, he will speak in an intelligent manner, and will call bullshit on his own party when he sees it. He is not Tea Party. He is old school GOP. Old school GOP will compromise. They will pass budgets and not hold the country hostage over a debt ceiling. They believe in a safety net. They are generally more pragmatic.

FOX News destroyed most of of the competent GOP pundits and George Will is one of the few remaining. He is an example of how I can fundamentally disagree with someone, but still respect them. The country needs more of this. It needs more mutual respect.

I despise FOX News, the Tea Party, and the GOP politicians of the modern era. I believe that George Will privately does as well. They threw mutual respect out the window and display pure ugliness in their discourse. They collectively are the biggest threat to our nation short of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

[Sherman A1]

4. +1

Well Said.

[JHB]

5. That is true, and not true

It's true that Will puts more effort into an intellectual argument, but calling him "old school GOP" erases the actual old school Republicans that you're talking about -- the Rockefeller Republicans. Or perhaps by that you mean he's an actual Reaganite, since the later generation of media vandals wave him around like a totem.

Will is old school Reaganite. He came out of the William F. Buckley wing of conservatism that worked hard to take the face of conservatism away from the Birchers and open antisemites. In his early 30s Buckley made him editor of National Review. Within a few years he became a syndicated columnist and a contributing editor for Newsweek. So he was always in the position of commentator, not of reporter, even though he kept his columns mostly factual.

The reason I'm disputing your point here is that Will is better than O'Reilly or Hannity because of the era in which he came from. He had to be more intelligent about how he went about it, because if he'd been the equivalent of O'Reilly or Hannity back then his biggest gig would be in the then-much-smaller market of AM radio ranting, alongside guys like Bob Grant.

He was still a conservative activist dressed up as a journalist. He was smarter about his spin, but he'd still fudge things to promote the conservative movement. He's been a prime vector for injecting conservative think tank (dis) information into mainstream media.

Yes, he's better than the alternative in that he's worth reading, if you read critically. But that alternative is the end result of all the things he was pushing for, and of the deals that were struck to get that done.