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The Key Part Of Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan He Won’t Tell You About

2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney today again claimed that his tax plan — which would lower tax rates by 20 percent — would not disproportionately help the wealthy, because it would limit deductions for taxpayers at the top of the income scale. However, he has yet to lay out which deductions those would be, and he once again passed up an opportunity to do so during an interview with CBS’ Bob Schieffer:

SCHIEFFER: When are you going to tell us where you’re going to get the revenue? Which of the deductions are you going to be willing to eliminate? When are you going to be able to tell us that?

ROMNEY: Well, we’ll go through that process with Congress as to which of all the different deductions and exemptions…My view is that the right way to do that is to limit them for high-income individuals because I want to keep the progressivity of the code. One of the absolute requirements of any tax reform that I have in mind is that people who are the high end, whether you call them the 1 percent, 2 percent, half a percent, the people at the high end will still pay the same share of the tax burden they’re paying now. I’m not looking for a tax cut for the very wealthiest.

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Romney himself has admitted that his tax plan can’t even be scored due to its lack of specificity. The few deductions he has mentioned would come nowhere close to covering the cost of his massive tax cut for the rich.

And even if Romney did manage to close enough loopholes and eliminate enough deductions so that the rich were paying the same amount that they are today, the economy would have to grow at a record rate to keep his tax plan from adding to the deficit.

Romney Rules Out Compromise: I Won’t Accept $1 In New Taxes For $10 In Spending Cuts

Mitt Romney, who consistently advocates against taxing the rich, this morning reconfirmed that he would not accept one dollar in tax increases — even if it were paired with ten dollars of spending cuts.

Romney signed a pledge saying he would never raise taxes under any circumstances. And during the primary, he promised that he would reject a 10-to-1 cuts versus taxes deal.

Today on Face The Nation, Romney reconfirmed his commitment as the presumptive nominee not to take such a deal — or, it seems, to raise taxes at all:

SCHIEFFER: You were one of the vast majority of Republicans to signed the pledge circulated by the leading antitax advocate Grover Norquist, no new taxes under any circumstances. And I remember once back during one of the primaries, you were asked if you would agree to $1 in taxes if you could get $10 cut in spending cuts, and you said at that time, no, I wouldn’t even accept that. Do you still feel that way?

ROMNEY: Well, we all felt that way. And the reason is that government, at all levels today, consumers about 37% of our economy.

SCHIEFFER: But do you still feel–

ROMNEY: Let me go on and explain. The answer is I do feel that way. Government is big and getting larger, and there are those who think the answer is just to take a little more from the American people, just give us a little more. and there are places that have gone that way– California, for instance, keeps raising taxes more and more and more. and funny thing, the more they raise in taxes, deficits get larger and larger. The only solution to taming an out-of-control spending government is to cut spending and my policies reduce the rate of spending…

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To put the number in perspective, the government almost shut down over last year over a deal that would have provided $3 in spending cuts for every dollar in new revenue. Ten dollars in spending cuts to one dollar in new revenue would necessitate dramatic reductions in core government programs. Even conservative politicians like Jeb Bush have warned that extreme orthodoxy on taxes threatens to drive government revenues too low.

Romney has also faced harsh criticism over his inability to explain where he would get any revenue for the government, since he wants to drastically cut taxes on the top income earners. A lack of new revenue means deep, deep spending cuts — specifically to programs for the very poor.

NEWS FLASH

Average CEO Pay At Largest Companies Grew Twice As Fast As Worker Wages In 2011, Rising To $14.5 Million | Median pay for America’s 200 highest-paid chief executives rose to $14.5 million in 2011, a 5 percent increase over 2010, according to an analysis done by the New York Times. Worker pay, meanwhile, rose just 2.8 percent for the year. CEO pay on Wall Street rose even faster, growing by more than 20 percent in 2011. The average Fortune 500 CEO now makes 380 times more than the average worker, as CEO pay has grown more than 127 times faster than worker pay over the last 30 years. The growth in executive compensation that has contributed to skyrocketing levels of income inequality isn’t necessarily tied to performance of the top companies, however: while their pay continues to increase, average stock prices have remained flat, and many of the companies with the highest paid CEOs actually saw drops in their share prices over the course of the year.

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