Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Romney Tax Plan on Table. Debt Collapses Table.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/romney-tax-plan-on-table-debt-collapses-table-.html
 
 
Romney Tax Plan on Table. Debt Collapses Table.
 
By Ezra Klein Aug 2, 2012 7:10 PM GMT+0200
 
I can describe Mitt Romney’s tax policy promises in two words: 
mathematically impossible.
Those aren’t my words. They’re the words of the nonpartisan Tax Policy 
Center, which has conducted the most comprehensive analysis to date of 
Romney’s tax plan and which bent over backward to make his promises add 
up. They’re perhaps the two most important words that have been written 
during this U.S. presidential election.
About Ezra Klein
 
If you were to distill the presumptive Republican nominee’s campaign to 
a few sentences, you could hardly do better than this statement of 
purpose from the speech Romney delivered in Detroit, outlining his plan 
for the economy: “I believe the American people are ready for real 
leadership. I believe they deserve a bold, conservative plan for reform 
and economic growth. Unlike President Obama, I actually have one -- and 
I’m not afraid to put it on the table.”
 
The truth is that Romney is afraid to put his plan on the table. He has 
promised to reduce the deficit, but refused to identify the spending he 
would cut. He has promised to reform the tax code, but refused to 
identify the deductions and loopholes he would eliminate. The only thing 
he has put on the table is dessert: a promise to cut marginal tax rates 
by 20 percent across the board and to do so without raising the deficit 
or reducing the taxes paid by the top 1 percent.
 
The Tax Policy Center took Romney at his word. They also did what he 
hasn’t done: They put his plan on the table.
 
Favorable Conditions
 
To help Romney, the center did so under the most favorable conditions, 
which also happen to be wildly unrealistic. The analysts assumed that 
any cuts to deductions or loopholes would begin with top earners, and 
that no one earning less than $200,000 would have their deductions 
reduced until all those earning more than $200,000 had lost all of their 
deductions and tax preferences first. They assumed, as Romney has 
promised, that the reforms would spare the portions of the tax code that 
privilege saving and investment. They even ran a simulation in which 
they used a model developed, in part, by Greg Mankiw, one of Romney’s 
economic advisers, that posits “implausibly large growth effects” from 
tax cuts.
 
The numbers never worked out. No matter how hard the Tax Policy Center 
labored to make Romney’s promises add up, every simulation ended the 
same way: with a tax increase on the middle class. The tax cuts Romney 
is offering to the rich are simply larger than the size of the 
(non-investment) deductions and loopholes that exist for the rich. 
That’s why it’s “mathematically impossible” for Romney’s plan to produce 
anything but a tax increase on the middle class.
 
The Romney campaign offered two responses to the Tax Policy Center’s 
analysis, one more misleading than the other.
 
First, the campaign called the analysis “just another biased study from 
a former Obama staffer.” That jab refers to Adam Looney, one of the 
study’s three co-authors, who served in a staff role on the White House 
Council of Economic Advisers under President Barack Obama. But the Tax 
Policy Center is directed by Donald Marron, who was one of the 
principals on George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers. Calling the 
Tax Policy Center biased simply isn’t credible -- a point underscored by 
the fact that the Romney campaign referred to the group’s work as 
“objective, third-party analysis” during the primary campaign.
 
Then the Romney campaign said, “The study ignores the positive benefits 
to economic growth from both the corporate tax plan and the deficit 
reduction called for in the Romney plan.” There’s a reason the study 
ignores those “positive benefits”: Romney has called for a 
revenue-neutral corporate tax plan that brings the rate down from 35 
percent to 25 percent while also promising to balance the budget. He has 
not said how he will achieve either goal. Until he does, those positive 
benefits -- if they exist -- are impossible to calculate.
 
Regressive Cuts
 
If Romney tries to pay for his tax cuts by reducing spending, the 
results, as the Tax Policy Center notes, would be even more regressive. 
Romney has promised to increase defense spending and hold benefits 
steady for the current generation of seniors. The only remaining big 
spending programs are those that help the poor; that’s where Romney’s 
cuts would have to be concentrated. Paying for tax cuts for the rich by 
curtailing programs for the poor is even more of a reverse-Robin Hood 
act than paying for tax cuts for the rich by cutting the tax 
expenditures (deductions and the like) of the middle class.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities produced its own analysis of 
Romney’s plan, based on an assumption that Romney pays for half of his 
tax cuts through spending cuts. The conclusion: By 2022, Romney would 
need to cut all non-defense, non-Social Security programs by 49 percent. 
That is not plausible, to say the least.
The Romney campaign has not provided good answers to the questions 
raised by its own math. But we already knew the Romney campaign didn’t 
have good answers. If Romney had good answers, he would have made good 
on his rhetoric and put his plans on the table.
It would be great if Romney could fulfill his promise to cut taxes by 
trillions of dollars, increase defense spending, keep entitlement 
spending on pretty much its current path for the next decade, and 
balance the budget. But as Tyler Cowen, the George Mason University 
economist, put it in a pithy tweet (though perhaps “pithy tweet” is a 
tautology), “The proposed Romney fiscal policy just doesn’t make any sense.”
 
This is not a surprise. Even some Republican policy experts admit in 
private that Romney’s promises simply don’t add up. To twist Abraham 
Lincoln’s famous formulation, the Romney campaign has decided it’s 
better to remain silent and be thought evasive than to reveal your plan 
and remove all doubt that you’re cutting taxes on the rich while 
increasing the deficit, raising taxes on the middle class and cutting 
programs for the poor.
 
Unfortunately for the Romney campaign, the Tax Policy Center’s analysis 
has removed all doubt. Romney needs to come up with a way to make his 
promises mathematically possible -- and quick.
-- 
Namib
--
I have examined maps of the city with the greatest care, yet have never 
again found the Rue d'Auseil (HPL)

 
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/romney-tax-plan-on-table-debt-collapses-table-.html
 
 
La campagna per le primarie repubblicane del 2 016 è già iniziata...
 
 
-- 
*Sunspot*
Luckily I'm adhering to a pretty strict drug regimen to keep my mind limber.
 

 mathematically impossible.
 
Inizio a sperare che vinca.
Un altro turno di presidenza neocon e gli USA precipiteranno in quel 
baratro sul quale Bush Jr li ha solo fatti affacciare.
Chissà che in questo modo non trovino la forza di tornare ad essere un 
paese civile, con rappresentanti degni dei suoi cittadini.
 
-- 
Sostieni Rete ECO
 
http://rete-eco.it/it/sostienici.html
 
 

 Un altro turno di presidenza neocon
 
È appena il caso di notare che Persio non ha la più vaga idea di cosa e chi
siano i neocon e dove siano piazzati nella mappa del potere repubblicano
(attualmente, non molto in alto)
 
 
-- 
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of  freedom, must, like men,
undergo the  fatigues of supporting it.”  - North Idaho 21st Batallion of
Light Foot