Mitt Romney’s Math Becomes Even Harder

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

A few days ago I suggested that if Mitt Romney wasn’t willing to tell us which tax deductions he’d eliminate to make up for his across-the-board tax rate cuts, somebody should at least ask him if there were any deductions that were off the table. Today, Paul Ryan answered exactly that question after a woman at a town hall event told him she was frustrated by his lack of specifics:

RYAN: If you subject more of their income to taxation — more of their income is taxed — and that allows us to lower revenues for everybody across the board. That means middle class taxpayers have lower tax rates, and there’s plenty of fiscal room to keep these important preferences for middle class taxpayers — you know, like charitable donations, or buying a home, or health care. Every time we’ve done this, we’ve created economic growth.”

Hoo boy. Now I really want to see that famous math that Ryan said he didn’t have time to go through on Sunday. Greg Sargent comments:

By seeming to take some middle class deductions off the table, Ryan made the math even more hallucinatory. This might be good politics — Ryan is getting more specific in promising not to raise middle class taxes — but it further confirms that Romney and Ryan have completely jettisoned deficit neutrality as a goal of their plan, and that they are selling people a fiscal bill of goods that doesn’t pass the laugh test.

It’s worth noting that Ryan didn’t categorically promise never to touch the tax deductions he mentioned above. But he sure did come close, and he’s plainly opened himself up to legitimate questions about whether these deductions are off the table in a Romney administration. If they are, Romney’s plan becomes simply impossible to take seriously. After all, those three deductions, along with the tax preference for capital gains, account for about a third of all tax expenditures — and if those aren’t going to be touched you have to somehow pay for the rate cuts out of the remaining two-thirds. At that point Romney’s plan becomes not merely garden-variety impossible, but one of the all-time most laughable political panders of all time.

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate