A senior adviser for Mitt Romney’s campaign is defending the GOP nominee against criticisms that his tax-cutting plan lacks specifics about which deductions and loopholes he would close.
Romney has vowed to cut income tax rates across-the-board by 20 percent but has not provided details about which specific deductions and other tax code provisions he’d seek to scuttle to pay for the plan.
“To start negotiating in a campaign environment, you are going to lock in Republicans, you are going to lock in Democrats,” Romney adviser Ed Gillespie said on Fox News Sunday.
He said Romney, if elected president, would instead work with Democrats to flesh out specifics. “Gov. Romney has a proven record of being able to work across the aisle,” Gillespie said.
This is stupid on a couple of levels. First, what Gillespie (and Romney, when you can pin him down at all) is saying is that he can’t give specifics because there aren’t any specifics. He’s going to have to work with congress and see what they can come up with. The problem here is that Romney has some very specific numerical claims in terms of jobs created and reductions to the deficit and economic growth so on. To boil it down, Team Romney is saying that Mitt doesn’t have a tax plan, but don’t worry because Mitt’s tax plan — which he doesn’t have — is awesome. Check out these lovely numbers from the unborn tax plan from the unknowable future! It both does and doesn’t exist. Freakin’ pick one already. You can’t have both.
The second is related to the first. To back up his assertion that his plan (when he’s not arguing that he doesn’t have one yet) is the best thing ever, the campaign cites “six studies” to back them up. Paul Ryan cited these in the debate. The problem here is that these aren’t really “studies” so much as blog posts and spin by Romney backers. Is it possible for those citations to come from more biased sources than that? You wouldn’t think so, but Romney’s the freakin’ Mozart of dishonesty and where there’s a will there’s a way. Check out Romney’s sixth “study” showing his tax plan to be a guaranteed success (courtesy of The Atlantic):
6. Romney Tax Reform White Paper. This is just his advisers arguing by assertion that the plan works.That’s right, the Romney campaign knows that Mitt’s ideas are great because they checked with the Romney campaign and they said it was fantastic. Why does anyone take these clowns seriously? Even Fox News is starting to catch on.
