Tax Idea Romney Pitched During Debate Doesn’t Make His Plan Add Up

By Pat Garofalo on Oct 17, 2012 at 4:50 pm

Mitt Romney and his campaign have consistently refused to divulge the loopholes and deductions that Romney would supposedly eliminate in order to cover the cost of his massive tax cuts for the rich and corporations. One adviser even responded “energy independence” when asked for a specific tax loophole.

During Tuesday night’s debate, Romney continued his ducking and dodging. Instead of naming any deductions, he merely re-upped on a proposal to cap the total amount of deductions that taxpayers are allowed to use:

And so, in terms of bringing down deductions, one way of doing that would be say everybody gets — I’ll pick a number — $25,000 of deductions and credits, and you can decide which ones to use. Your home mortgage interest deduction, charity, child tax credit, and so forth, you can use those as part of filling that bucket, if you will, of deductions.

Romney has floated a few versions of this plan — in a previous statement he set the deduction cap at $17,000 — but it doesn’t make his tax plan add up. As the Tax Policy Center explained today:

Eliminating all itemized deductions would yield about $2 trillion of additional revenue over ten years if we cut all rates by 20 percent and eliminate the AMT. Capping deductions would generate less additional revenue, and the higher the cap, the smaller the gain. Limiting deductions to $17,000 would increase revenues by nearly $1.7 trillion over ten years. A $25,000 cap would yield roughly $1.3 trillion and a $50,000 cap would raise only about $760 billion. [...]

Suggesting limits on deductions was Governor Romney’s first public statement about how he might offset the revenue lost by cutting tax rates. Without more specifics, we can’t say how much revenue such limits would actually raise. But these new estimates suggest that Romney will need to do much more than capping itemized deductions to pay for the roughly $5 trillion in rate cuts and other tax benefits he has proposed.

The Tax Policy Center in August released what economists have called the “definitive” study of Romney’s tax plan, which showed that he can’t possibly cut all income tax rates by 20 percent, prevent a middle class tax increase, and not add to the deficit. Assuming he’s committed to the 20 percent reduction, he will have to either increase middle class taxes or increase the deficit. And capping deductions doesn’t change that inescapable fact.

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NEWS FLASH

Black, Hispanic and Elderly Voters Hit With Deceptive Voter Suppression Calls | In an apparent effort to trick voters into not showing up at the polls, several Florida and Virginia voters received calls from unidentified individuals who read the voter’s name, address and party affiliation over the phone and then falsely informed the voter that they can vote by phone. The calls appear to target African-Americans, Spanish-speaking voters and the elderly.

Health

GOP Rep. Contradicts Romney, Says Uninsured Do Die From Lack Of Coverage

By Scott Keyes on Oct 17, 2012 at 4:00 pm

Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV)

HENDERSON, Nevada — Last week, Mitt Romney justified his desire to repeal Obamacare by arguing that “we don’t have people who die because they don’t have insurance.” And so on Monday, ThinkProgress spoke with Tea Party freshman Rep. Joe Heck (R-NV), a former emergency medicine doctor, at a candidate forum and asked him whether Romney’s comments jibe with his past experience. Heck took issue with Romney’s assertion that emergency room care for individuals without health insurance is a real solution. “I’ve seen people presented later in the course of their disease because they didn’t health insurance,” Heck said. At that point, “it’s certainly much more difficult for them and it’s much more costly to the system”:

KEYES: You’re a doctor. Mitt Romney took a little heat the other day for saying that there aren’t any folks in the United States who have died because they don’t have health insurance. Is that something you agree with in your experience? What have you seen personally?

HECK: I’ve seen people presented later in the course of their disease because they didn’t health insurance. So they put off getting help until they’re far along and then it’s certainly much more difficult for them and it’s much more costly to the system.

Heck’s two-fold point — that individuals without health insurance put off getting care, and that delayed treatment in the hospital or elsewhere ends up costing everyone more — is one of the overarching reasons why lawmakers passed Obamacare. In addition to the 45,000 Americans who die every year — one person every 12 minutes — because they don’t have insurance, 50 million Americans are unable to receive proper care because they lack coverage.

When they visit the emergency room, as Romney touted, for care that could have been prevented or better handled elsewhere, such as an asthma attack, those costs are passed on to everyone else through higher premiums.

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Economy

How The U.S. Is Squandering As Much As $430 Billion In Corporate Tax Revenues

By Travis Waldron on Oct 17, 2012 at 3:40 pm

The Cayman Islands is a popular offshore tax haven.

Multinational corporations based in the United States shelter $1.5 trillion in profits in other countries, and because the U.S. doesn’t tax offshore profits, that money is not subject to the corporate income tax. Corporate profits kept offshore don’t face American taxation until they are repatriated — that is, brought back to the United States.

When companies repatriate money, they are supposed to pay the difference between the U.S. corporate tax rate and the rate they presumably paid to the country where the money was kept. But Congress has little knowledge of how, or whether, those overseas profits are taxed by other nations.

Some companies, however, disclose their overseas tax rates, and when Citizens for Tax Justice analyzed 47 such companies, it found that many pay a low tax rate that would force them to pay close to, if not all of, the 35 percent repatriation rate. The top 10 companies, CTJ found, would all pay at least a 32 percent upon repatriation, meaning they have paid very little in other countries:

The 47 companies CTJ analyzed would pay an average rate of 27 percent on the money they hold overseas if they had to face the corporate income tax. If the other 235 Fortune 500 companies that offshore profits paid the same average rate, it would result in $328 billion in revenue for the U.S. government. “Added to the $105 billion tax bill estimated by the 47 companies who did disclose, this means that taxing all the ‘permanently reinvested’ foreign income of the 285 companies could result in $433 billion in added corporate income tax revenue,” CTJ found.

President Obama has proposed implementing a minimum tax on overseas profits that would help recover much of the lost revenue. Such a tax would limit corporations’ ability to stash profits overseas, and combined with other corporate tax reforms he has proposed, it would raise between $200 billion and $300 billion.

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Security

Defendant In Plot To Assassinate Saudi Ambassador To US Pleads Guilty

By Hayes Brown on Oct 17, 2012 at 3:32 pm

Manssor Arbabsiar at the time of his arrest

Manssor Arbabsiar, aka Mansour Arbabsiar, pleaded guilty today in federal court to taking part in a plot to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States. Arbabsiar is a naturalized citizen who holds both U.S. and Iranian passports. The charges stated that Arbabsiar served as an intermediary between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an elite Iranian paramilitary group, and a third-party who would carry out the killing.

Arbabsiar claimed to be acting on the behalf of his cousin, a “big general” in the Iranian army, in arranging for a meetings during several trips to Mexico in 2011. Arbabsiar believed that he was speaking with a member of the Zetas, one of Mexico’s most feared drug gangs. Instead, he was meeting with an undercover Drug Enforcement Agency agent. In the course of several interactions with this source, Arbabsiar agreed to pay $1.5 million to carry out the assassination, $100,000 of which Arbabsiar wired to an FBI bank account as a down payment.

Arbabsiar was later arrested and agreed to make monitored phone calls to Iran. The speaker on the other end, identified as Gholam Shakuri, told Arbabsiar to move forward with the assassination attempt against the ambassador. Both men were charged with attempting to hire an assassin and plotting to commit terrorism.

Shakuri is a member of the Quds force, the special operations wing of the IRGC, and was charged in absentia. The Department of Justice has stressed that Shakuri remains innocent until proven guilty.

“Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost,” FBI Director Mueller said at the time charges were filed last year. Reaction to the plot then ranged from incredulity to relief, with one commentator arguing that the alleged missteps made a feared force in the Middle East look “like a bunch of miscalculating buffoons.”

The United States tightened sanctions against Iran in retaliation and Saudi Arabia passed a resolution at the United Nations condemning Iran.

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LGBT

Maryland To Collect LGBT Data As Part Of Health Reform

By Kellan Baker, Guest Blogger on Oct 17, 2012 at 3:30 pm

What do LGBT people experience when they’re trying to access health insurance or health care? Does it matter? If so, how do we collect information about these experiences?

LGBT data do matter, because the future of health care is built on data. Data create our understandings of how healthy Americans are. They are the points on the map showing us where health gaps exist between different population groups, such as the health disparities affecting LGBT Americans. And they are the building blocks that create the foundation for effective efforts to close these gaps and achieve better health for all.

Maryland is one of the states leading the way in advancing LGBT data collection efforts. The Maryland Health Care Commission, which protects the interests of consumers in Maryland’s health system, is driving an effort to incorporate LGBT consumer input into quality of care and consumer satisfaction evaluations by adding questions about sexual orientation, gender identity, and relationship status (including options for identifying a same-sex partner or spouse) to its evaluation of the state’s patient-centered medical home program.

Maryland’s patient-centered medical home program is a groundbreaking statewide effort to coordinate better care for predominantly lower-income, high-need individuals while lowering costs. Evaluating the experiences of LGBT people in this program — which requires high patient trust in providers and good patient-provider interactions — is an ideal opportunity for the state to develop the tools it needs to extend LGBT-inclusive data collection efforts into other areas of its health system.

One such area will be the state’s oversight of health plans sold through its health insurance exchange. The exchanges, which are new state-based marketplaces where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for affordable health insurance starting in 2014, have the potential to be new sources of vital data on the health needs and experiences of people across the country.

As CAP explains in a new FAQ on collecting sexual orientation and gender identity data, the exchanges offer a key opportunity to collect information that will help LGBT people benefit from health reform.

In particular, the exchanges must have the capacity to connect a diverse applicant population with appropriate health insurance coverage. To assess how effectively exchange outreach and enrollment programs are connecting with underserved groups of people seeking coverage, exchanges should collect voluntary information from enrollees on a range of demographic factors associated with health disparities, including race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and primary language.

Exchanges must also certify participating insurance plans and oversee their activities. To monitor how well participating plans are serving different groups of consumers, exchanges should require plans to have the capacity to collect and report the same range of demographic information. To ensure this information is not misused, federal regulations governing the exchanges in every state already prohibit discrimination on any of these bases by exchange employees, contractors, and qualified health plans.

Collecting better and more comprehensive data is a fundamental component of effective health reform. Any efforts to ensure that all Americans have access to insurance and the care they need must include LGBT Americans – and the first step in crafting these initiatives is collecting LGBT data.

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Climate Progress

Obama Slams Romney For Letting ‘Oil Companies Write The Energy Policies’

By Rebecca Leber on Oct 17, 2012 at 3:30 pm

Climate change was a no-show at the second presidential debate. But the candidates did get into a heated exchange over oil policies, prompted by a question on how to lower gas prices. Mitt Romney never answered how he would help with high gas prices because his solution to expand oil and gas drilling enriches oil but does virtually nothing to lower gas prices or protect consumers from price shocks.

At the debate, Obama pointed out that Romney’s energy plan “is to let the oil companies write the energy policies.” That is literally the case; from oil billionaire Harold Hamm to oil lobbyist Jack Gerard, Romney’s energy team is dominated by oil executives and lobbyists — and his energy policy is almost identical to the American Petroleum Institute’s.

Here’s what Obama said:

Now, Governor Romney will say he’s got an all-of-the-above plan, but basically his plan is to let the oil companies write the energy policies. So he’s got the oil and gas part, but he doesn’t have the clean energy part. And if we are only thinking about tomorrow or the next day and not thinking about 10 years from now, we’re not going to control our own economic future, because China, Germany — they’re making these investments. And I’m not going to cede those jobs of the future to those countries. I expect those new energy sources to be built right here in the United States.

After a year of disparaging American clean energy industries, Romney claimed the sector “will be an important part of our energy mix.” But Romney officially opposes policies like the wind production tax credit, which helps supports 37,000 wind jobs and has led to billions in private investment in the industry. Meanwhile, Romney favors oil industry tax credits and has endorsed the Republican plan to maintain $4 billion worth each year.

Romney has opened the door to the oil industry, which has rewarded him with financial support and campaign ads.

Groups backed by the oil industry have spent heavily, according to a ThinkProgress analysis of independent advertisements from Kantar Media’s CMAG system. These groups, American Energy Alliance, American Future Fund, Americans for Prosperity, Crossroads GPS, and Let Freedom Ring, have purchased at least $11.4 million worth in ads since April attacking Obama’s energy policies. The oil industry’s lobby, American Petroleum Institute, bought over $1.3 million ads since September 1, to promote fossil fuel policies. The Kochs have also personally pledged at least $60 million on Romney’s behalf.

Days before Romney released his drilling plan in New Mexico, he raised nearly $10 million campaigning for Texas oil money. That same plan included 154 mentions of oil, but just 24 mentions of wind and solar — 9 of them negative.

Justice

Why Romney Doesn’t Support Equal Pay For Women, In One Picture

By Ian Millhiser on Oct 17, 2012 at 2:57 pm

Mitt Romney’s campaign just can’t figure out whether he supports equal pay for women or not. When asked last April about Romney’s view on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored equal pay rights the Roberts Court cut back in 2007, Romney’s campaign responded with an awkward six second silence followed by a promise to “get back” with an answer to the question. The campaign never answered whether Romney supports the law, merely stating that he is “not looking to change current law.” That is, of course, until last night, when Romney’s senior adviser Ed Gillespie said that Romney “was opposed to it at the time” and would not have signed the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. And that admission lasted all of a few hours. Gillespie now claims that Romney “never weighed in on it.”

The truth, however, is that we do not have to wonder about what Romney’s view on equal pay for women is. We do not even have to wait for his campaign to reveal Romney’s unspoken view on this issue, because the question can be answered in just one picture. This one:

That’s Justice Samuel Alito, the author of the Ledbetter opinion stripping many women of their right to equal pay for equal work. When asked how he would select his Supreme Court appointments if elected president, Romney named Alito, along with Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia and Thomas, as his models. All four of Romney’s model justices voted against Lilly Ledbetter and against equal pay for women.

Romney’s promise to place more Alitos on the Supreme Court matters much more than his claim that he is not currently interested in enacting anti-woman legislation. Indeed, it would matter even more than if Romney affirmatively promised to sign pro-woman legislation if elected president. Here is why:

Federal law requires many employees who face pay discrimination to meet a very brief deadline—often as short as six months—or else they lose their ability to challenge their employer’s unlawful actions. The flip side of this, however, is that this clock starts anew every time an employee receives a lower paycheck than her or his coworkers due to unlawful discrimination. As a unanimous Supreme Court explained in its 1986 decision in Bazemore v. Friday, “[e]ach week’s paycheck that delivers less to [an African-American] than to a similarly situated white is a wrong actionable” under federal law. Because gender discrimination is banned by the same law that prohibits race discrimination, Bazemore’s holding also benefited women.

Or, at least, it did until Justice Alito got his hands on it. Alito’s majority opinion in Ledbetter established that, if a woman’s employer makes a decision early in her career that undermines her earning power for decades, the woman must challenge that decision almost immediately or her rights are lost—and they are lost even if she did not discover she was a victim of pay discrimination until years later. Notably, in reaching this decision, the 5-4 majority relied heavily on a 1989 decision, Lorance v. AT&T Technologies, even though Lorance was overruled by an Act of Congress in 1991.

So Justice Alito’s Ledbetter opinion did not simply reject a woman’s claim that could enforce her right to equal pay, it thumbed its nose at a unanimous Supreme Court precedent and relied, at least in part, upon a precedent that had been overruled by an Act of Congress. The sort of justice that would do this does not care whether Congress enacted a law protecting equal pay for women, and Romney wants to put even more of them on the Supreme Court.

So Romney can say what he wants to say about equal pay. He can even outright endorse the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and promise to never, ever sign a law repealing it. Until he takes back his promise to give America more Sam Alitos, anything else he says about equality is empty words.

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Health

Romney Surrogate Calls Contraception A ‘Peripheral’ Issue

By Annie-Rose Strasser on Oct 17, 2012 at 2:50 pm

Former Lt. Gov. Kerry Healey (R-MA) On MSNBC Wednesday, Kerry Healey, Mitt Romney’s Lieutenant Governor and a current surrogate for his campaign, called contraception a “peripheral” issue, and referred to women being denied contraception coverage because of religious objections a “hypothetical.”

Instead, she said, the focus of the campaign should be on the economy, because that’s “what women care about.” When pressed by host Andrea Mitchell on whether contraception is a “pocketbook issue,” Healey refused to say whether Romney supported employers’ right to deny their employees contraception coverage on religious grounds:

HEALEY: These are the issues we should be talking about. The question of whether or not we should force someone to give up their religious freedom to provide insurance coverage in some hypothetical situation, is not really the point most, and women out there — there are 5.5 million unemployed women in the country. Did we have a discussion last night? Did President Obama put out his plan about how to get those women back in the workforce last night? He did not. He has an empty binder when it comes to proposals about women in America.

MITCHELL: With all due respect, is it not a pocketbook issue for millions of women who depend on their insurance, their medical insurance that they get at work? If their employer says I have a moral or religious objective then they do not have access to contraceptives as Mitt Romney said last night they should have. That is a pocketbook issue. It’s dollars and cents. [...]

HEALEY: He made it clear that he believes in enforcing religious freedom in this regard but he also strongly supports women’s access to contraception and any effort to say he doesn’t –

MITCHELL: If they can pay for it on their own. If the women can pay for it on their own, if they have the means.

HEALEY: The problem here is that we are talking about these peripheral issues. We need to really be talking about employment, jobs, that’s what women care about.

Watch it:

Contraception, of course, is a critical economic issue for the many women who struggle to afford their birth control costs, as well as the women who struggle even more to support the children that result from unintended pregnancies. One in three women has reported struggling to pay for birth control at some point in their lives — and Mitt Romney’s policies would make it significantly harder for women, especially lower income women, to have easy access to affordable contraception that allows them to put off having children they cannot afford.

Healey’s comments echo those of Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife, who refused to comment on the topic of contraception, pivoting again and again back to the economy without connecting the two issues.

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Election

Islamic Inscriptions On Obama’s Wedding Ring, And Other Things I Learned At A Romney Debate Watch Party

By Scott Keyes on Oct 17, 2012 at 2:47 pm

Scene at the Las Vegas debate watch party

LAS VEGAS, Nevada — If I learned anything from watching last night’s presidential debate in a room full of Mitt Romney supporters, it’s that President Obama cannot speak English, wanted Americans in Benghazi to die, hopes America will be taken over by the Islamic world, carries a literal Communist Party card, and should be sent back to Mexico.

These were among the accusations flying at a Romney debate watch party Tuesday night in southeast Las Vegas, where approximately 75 Nevadans crowded into a small room to watch the debate and trade jabs at Obama.

Surprisingly, one gentleman I spoke with before the debate was less than sanguine about Romney’s prospects in the election. He didn’t cite the improving economy, or Obama’s foreign policy successes, but rather “all those people collecting welfare checks have a vested interest.”

Scattered boos were heard when Obama took the stage for the debate, but the murmurs grew to shouts as soon as he began. “He doesn’t speak English!” one woman in the audience yelled when Obama first responded to a question.

Nearly every time Obama spoke thereafter, jeers erupted. People groaned when he made debatable claims, like the cost of Romney’s tax plan. People groaned at undeniable facts, like when Obama mentioned that “Osama bin Laden is dead” and that immigrants “start companies like Intel.” People groaned at inexplicable moments, like when the president said “we need to create jobs here” and after he mentioned that he “was raised by a single mom.” (One onlooker even took issue with Obama making as banal a statement as his mother “worked hard.” “No she didn’t!” the woman responded.)

At times, their anger turned to the audience, who supposedly contained “Democratic plants”, and to the host, CNN’s Candy Crowley. “Boy, she’s really gotten on,” one man said of Crowley in the middle of the debate. “Oh, she’s gotten ugly,” another agreed.

As the debate entered its final third and it became increasingly clear that this debate would not be a repeat of Denver’s, debate watchers became even more brazen in their taunts. “Let’s cook Big Bird!” one man yelled after Obama said that Romney hadn’t “mentioned any specifics except Big Bird.” When the discussion turned to the four Americans who were recently killed in Benghazi, a man nearby said that Obama “wanted them dead.” “They were ordered not to have loaded weapons,” he said, parroting a widely debunked claim.

Finally, when Obama and Romney discussed the Assault Weapons Ban — described by multiple people sitting nearby as “socialism” — one audience member scoffed when the president proclaimed his respect for the 2nd Amendment. “Tomorrow we run to the gun store,” he said, worried that firearms would soon be banned. When Romney brought up the Fast & Furious operation, one woman couldn’t help herself: “send him to Mexico!” she yelled, referring to the president.

It wasn’t until after the debate ended that the room hit peak-conspiracy theory.

“Did you notice the Muslim Islamic marriage inscription on Obama’s wedding ring?” a woman nearby asked me. I said I hadn’t. “He’s got an Islamic wedding ring that he got when he turned 16 from the head of the Islamic church,” she explained. “Michelle doesn’t have that because she’s not Muslim but he is.”

Why does he hide his supposed-faith, I asked. “He wants America to go broke, because he doesn’t want America to succeed. He wants America to be taken over by the Islamic world,” she told me.

The conversation then turned to Obama’s family. “Did you know his grandmother, his mother, Michelle, and him are all card-carrying members of the Communist Party?” she asked. “We’ve got copies of their cards and the numbers,” offering to email a scanned copy when I expressed skepticism.

“You haven’t done much research on Obama,” the woman told me. I asked what websites I could visit to learn more; she recommend WND.com, a birther-haven whose editor-in-chief has blamed natural disasters on the growing acceptance of homosexuality.

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