Our guest bloggers are John Griffith, a policy analyst with the economic policy team at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Julia Gordon, Director of Housing Finance and Policy at CAPAF.

Housing barely came up in last night’s presidential debate. When it did, Mitt Romney didn’t discuss his much-maligned housing “plan,” nor his vow to let the foreclosure process “run its course and hit the bottom.” Instead the Republican candidate focused on a little-known consumer protection from the president’s financial regulation law:

Dodd-Frank correctly says we need to have Qualified Mortgages and if you give a mortgage that’s not qualified, there are big penalties. Except they didn’t ever go on and define what a Qualified Mortgage was. It’s been two years. We don’t know what a Qualified Mortgage is yet. So banks are reluctant to make loans…It’s not that Dodd-Frank always was wrong with too much regulation. Sometimes they didn’t come out with a clear regulation.

Romney is alluding to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law’s “ability-to-repay” rule, which requires lenders to consider whether a borrower can afford a mortgage before giving it to them. Lenders get special protections from liability if they make loans that are presumed to be safe and sustainable based on certain features, known as “Qualified Mortgages.”

We’re thrilled to hear Romney give such a full-throated defense of the ability-to-repay rule. It’s a welcomed about-face from his recent calls to repeal Dodd-Frank and dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency that’s responsible for enforcing the rule. That said, Romney has a few key facts wrong.

As Romney points out, the ability-to-repay rule has not yet taken effect as regulators are still defining the “Qualified Mortgage” exemption. But the Republican candidate neglected to mention that the final rule isn’t due until January 2013 — a deadline regulators appear to be on pace to meet. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau submitted its proposed rule back in April and is currently hashing through public comments.

Romney seems to imply some sort of negligence or malfeasance from the Obama administration that is preventing the rule from being completed. Alas, no scandal here. The Dodd-Frank law is actually quite clear about what type of loan should be considered a “Qualified Mortgage.” The loan must be well-underwritten with verified income, employment, and debt information. Loan payments can’t exceed a certain percentage of the borrower’s net monthly income. The loan can’t contain risky feature like negative amortization, interest-only payments, or balloon payments. The list goes on.

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Our guest blogger is Michael Linden, Director of Tax and Budget Policy at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Tax cuts for the rich are unpopular, unaffordable and have repeatedly failed to deliver any measurable economic benefits to the rest of the country. So it’s no wonder that during last night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney didn’t want to embrace a policy of massive new tax cuts for the rich. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans,” Romney said.

It would be nice if Romney really was abandoning the failed theory of “supply-side” economics, but his actual tax proposals tell a very different story. Below is a screenshot from Romney’s own website, taken this morning:

Tax proposals that would disproportionately benefit rich households are underlined. As you can see, that’s almost all of them. And what would all these tax changes mean for the bottom line at America’s ritziest kitchen tables? The Tax Policy Center estimates that the richest 0.1 percent of Americans would reap a $725,000 tax cut from these proposals.

Now, Romney has also said that he’d like to close some loopholes that favor the rich, but TPC has also found that there simply aren’t enough of them make up the entire difference. And even if there were, Romney has refused to say which ones he’d eliminate.

The fact is that Romney has proposed some very clear and specific tax policies, and nearly every one of them would result in a tax cut for the rich.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s tax plan would be a boon for the wealthiest Americans, a fact Romney himself admitted in GOP primary debates.

Now, though, Romney has decided that cutting taxes for the rich isn’t what his plan will do, and he insists that he won’t support any tax plan — even his own, apparently — that provides the rich with a massive tax cut. “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans,” Romney said in last night’s presidential debate.

The last Republican president used a similar argument to sell his tax proposal when he was running for election. At a debate on October 3, 2000, George W. Bush made the exact same claim, telling debate moderator Jim Lehrer that once his tax plan became law, “the wealthiest of Americans” would “pay more taxes”:

BUSH: Let me tell you what the facts are. The facts are, after my plan, the wealthiest of Americans pay more taxes on the percentage of the whole than they do today. Secondly, if you’re a family of four making $50,000 in Massachusetts, you get a 50% tax cut.

Watch it:

Bush’s tax cuts eventually became law, and as a result, the wealthy got a massive tax cut. In addition to rate cuts on income taxes, the Bush tax cuts included cuts to the capital gains rate and other investment taxes and an estate tax cut, all of which largely benefit the rich. The plan came at a cost of $2.5 trillion over its first decade.

And while Bush was technically correct that the rich did “pay more taxes on the percentage of the whole,” that is “a useless measure of tax progressivity,” as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden has explained. The share of taxes paid by the wealthy grew by 25 percent under Bush, but their share of income grew by 30 percent, evidence that they actually got a massive tax cut. Bush’s promise, just like Romney’s, is a vague misdirection meant to distract from the overall tax cut he planned to provide.

Romney’s plan, at a cost of nearly $5 trillion, is even bigger. And though Romney at least says he will cover some of the cost, the closure of loopholes wouldn’t offset the cuts for the rich, and to avoid adding to the deficit, he would have to raise taxes on the middle class. Romney relies on another similar argument Bush used, insisting that economic growth will offset the remaining costs. But the Bush tax cuts were followed by years of tepid job and economic growth that blew a massive hole in the federal budget and left Bush flailing when it came to his promise to pay off the national debt in a decade.

A Republican National Committee spokesperson earlier this year said that Romney’s economic policies would be “Bush, just updated.” It turns out his arguments are too. (HT Chris Hayes)

The Nuns On A Bus tour is back, as the social justice lobbying group behind the tour that crisscrossed nine states this summer announced that it will resume next week with a 1,000-mile trip through Ohio. And this time, the nuns, who have highlighted the plight of the poor and how budget cuts would affect them, have invited both presidential tickets to join them.

Thus far, though, neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney has answered the invitations, which have been outstanding since Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the Catholic social justice lobby NETWORK, issued them in August. The nuns want Obama, Romney, Vice President Joe Biden, and GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan to join them in Cincinnati next Wednesday to hear about the struggles of America’s poorest citizens, and to learn about how budget cuts to different programs would make their lives even harder.

“My goal would be Governor Romney, President Obama, Congressman Ryan, Vice President Biden,” Campbell told ThinkProgress during a tour stop in New York City last week. “Let’s get all four of them there. Let’s have them listen to the people of our country.”

15 percent of Americans live in poverty, and the number has risen significantly since the beginning of the Great Recession. Recent studies have highlighted the lack of economic mobility and educational access available to lower-income Americans, and still the topic has been largely ignored during the presidential campaign.

Poverty wasn’t mentioned a single time in last night’s first presidential debate in Denver.

“It’s not getting talked about enough,” Campbell said. “I was able to tell President Obama that I was grateful that he mentioned poverty in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention. I don’t think he’s ever said that word. So it’s beginning to get some traction. But the fact is, people are struggling.”

That Romney and Ryan don’t want to accept the invitation might not be shocking, given that the message of the nuns’ tour has been largely aimed at the cuts to assistance programs like Medicaid and food stamps Ryan wrote into the House GOP budget, which Romney supports.

While they haven’t been as explicit about poverty as the nuns, Obama and Biden have been critical of the cuts contained in Ryan’s budget, and they jumped on Romney’s recent comments that he’ll “never convince” people who use government benefits “that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” And yet, neither Obama nor Biden has committed to joining the nuns to listen to the people they are defending.

DENVER, Colorado — When the United States goes to war, it has a long history of raising taxes to pay for it. That tradition ended under former President George W. Bush, who sent troops into Afghanistan and Iraq while implementing huge tax breaks skewed towards the wealthy. And it will not be revived under a potential Mitt Romney administration, according to a top adviser.

ThinkProgress spoke with Eric Fehrnstrom following Wednesday’s debate about how far the Republican nominee’s resistance to raising taxes would go. We asked whether Governor Romney would be willing to raise taxes to pay for a war. “He’s not in favor of tax increases,” Fehrnstrom replied. We reiterated the question a second and third time, but Fehrnstrom didn’t budge, even for a wartime scenario. “He wants to cut taxes. He has no plans to raise taxes,” Fehrnstrom said:

KEYES: Would Governor Romney, for instance if a war erupted, would that merit being willing to raise taxes?

FEHRNSTROM: He’s not in favor of tax increases. When he was Governor of Massachusetts, he cut taxes 19 times. You’ve heard that he wants to cut taxes for the middle class, the way he’ll do that is by allowing them to invest and save tax free. But again, it really is a myth, this idea that Washington never raises taxes and we need a balanced approach. They raises all the time, they raised taxes 18 times. [...] The Governor is not proposing any tax increases, in fact he wants to cut taxes for the middle class.

KEYES: Even in wartime? Even to pay for a war?

FEHRNSTROM: He wants to cut taxes. He has no plans to raise taxes. They raise taxes all the time.

Watch it:

Though Romney has made the national debt a centerpiece of his campaign, not paying for two wars — much less cutting taxes at the same time — was among the driving factors that ballooned the deficit under President Bush. Iraq alone added approximately $1 trillion to our debt. If Romney chooses to send the military on a new mission, the absence of tax increases would mean another deficit-financed war.

Fehrnstrom also reiterated Romney’s pledge from the Republican primaries that, as president, he would reject a deal that included $10 in spending cuts for every $1 in new revenue. “That’s his position,” Fehrnstrom told ThinkProgress.

Mitt Romney seemingly walked back his support of his own tax plan last night at the first presidential debate, telling President Obama and the American people that he would “absolutely not” support a plan that cuts taxes on the wealthy, raises taxes on the middle class, or adds to the federal budget deficit. Independent analyses have found that it is mathematically impossible for Romney’s plan, as written, to avoid either adding to the deficit or raising taxes on the middle class. And Romney himself said at a debate in February that he was “going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.”

After President Obama cited a report from the Tax Policy Center showing that Romney’s plan couldn’t uphold his three principles, Romney said he would not support such a plan, then reiterated the same three principles:

So — so if — if the tax plan he described were a tax plan I was asked to support, I’d say absolutely not. I’m not looking for a $5 trillion tax cut. What I’ve said is I won’t put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That’s part one. So there’s no economist can say Mitt Romney’s tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.

Number two, I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals. … I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.

And number three, I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families.

Watch the two remarks:

The first problem is obvious: Romney’s plan is a clearly defined tax cut for the wealthy. Even if he closed every loophole that benefits the wealthy, he wouldn’t generate enough revenue to make up for the rate reduction he would give them, and even if he does increase the share the wealthy pay, that doesn’t mean they won’t still end up with a tax cut.

The second problem is that the other two principles of his tax plan are mathematically incompatible, as the Tax Policy Center study Obama cited proved. There is not enough revenue to be gained from closing loopholes that only target the rich to make up the lost revenue from Romney’s rate cut, so if he were to uphold his principal point of not adding to the deficit, he would have to raise taxes on middle class families by as much as $2,000. If he were to maintain his third most important point and avoid raising taxes on the middle class, he would add a significant amount to the deficit. It is simply impossible to do both.

During last night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney tried to situate himself as the adversary of big Wall Street banks. He repeatedly invoked the necessity of regulations and criticized the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, which he wants to repeal, as a “kiss” to “New York banks.”

Romney singled out one provision of Dodd-Frank in particular — the ability of regulators to designate certain firms as “systemically signficant” — saying that it means the big banks are “effectively guaranteed by the federal government“:

Dodd-Frank was passed. And it includes within it a number of provisions that I think has some unintended consequences that are harmful to the economy. One is it designates a number of banks as too big to fail, and they’re effectively guaranteed by the federal government. This is the biggest kiss that’s been given to — to New York banks I’ve ever seen. This is an enormous boon for them. There’ve been 122 community and small banks have closed since Dodd- Frank…Look, we have to have regulation on Wall Street. That’s why I’d have regulation. But I wouldn’t designate five banks as too big to fail and give them a blank check. That’s one of the unintended consequences of Dodd-Frank. It wasn’t thought through properly. We need to get rid of that provision because it’s killing regional and small banks. They’re getting hurt.

This has been a common criticism of Dodd-Frank amongst conservatives, and it was invoked by Paul Ryan before he was named Romney’s vice presidential pick. But it is nowhere near the truth. Being designated as “systemically significant” is not a good thing for the biggest banks, as it means they have to abide by more stringent regulations. If it were a “kiss” for the biggest banks that guaranteed them federal funding, they would be clamoring to be named systemically significant; but they’re doing the exact opposite.

Romney also ignores that Dodd-Frank includes an entirely new process for unwinding failed big banks known as resolution authority. The provision gives the federal government the power to take apart a failing financial behemoth without resorting to ad hoc bailouts. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), whose names graces the Dodd-Frank law, called resolution authority a “death panel” for banks.

Ryan’s budget, which was passed by House Republicans, repeals resolution authority, which would ultimately leave the government in the same exact position it found itself in during the financial crisis: unable to do anything to prevent a complete financial meltdown other than rescuing the big banks. But to hear Romney tell it, he has it out for big Wall Street banks.