Mitt Romney Doubles Down on Broken Economy Rigged for the Wealthy Few

In an effort to revive his floundering campaign, Mitt Romney today unveiled an updated tax plan that includes even more budget-busting, inequality-increasing, non-job-creating tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans.  This updated tax plan panders to a right-wing base that is divorced from economic reality — and math.

Here’s the rundown.

Previous Romney Giveaways to the Wealthy

• Abolishes the estate tax — a tax paid only by the wealthiest one-quarter of one percent of Americans.
• Maintains the special low tax rates on investments put in place by President Bush that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and would otherwise expire at the end of this year. Romney himself takes advantage of these special low rates on a considerable portion of his sizable income.
• Maintains special loopholes for hedge fund and private equity managers — loopholes Romney himself takes advantage of.
• Maintains the Bush marginal tax rates for the wealthy which would otherwise expire at the end of this year.

New Romney Giveaway to the Wealthy

• Cuts tax rates on the wealthiest Americans by another 20 percent below Bush tax rates.  Under President Obama, the wealthiest Americans will pay a top income tax rate of 39.6 percent in 2013; under Romney, they would pay just 28 percent.

Magic Math

• Jobs: Mitt Romney promises his expansion of the Bush tax cuts will create jobs; however, the Bush tax cuts resulted in the weakest job growth in decades.  There’s no reason to think that cutting taxes on the wealthy even more will result in a different outcome.
• Deficits: The Romney campaign promises that his massive new tax cuts “do not expand deficits” because of “stronger economic growth and reductions in spending.”  The Heritage Foundation promised the exact same thing about the Bush tax cuts in 2001, even going so far as to claim that the federal debt would be paid off by 2010.

Real Math

• Romney’s proposed tax cut would cost FOUR TIMES MORE than the Bush tax cuts.
• According to the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Michael Linden, Romney’s plan would shrink tax revenues by an astounding $10.7 TRILLION over the next ten years and reduce taxes as a share of GDP to a paltry 15 percent. The only way to run the U.S. government on that level of revenue is to run massive deficits and undertake program-ending cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all discretionary programs. Since Romney refuses to make cuts to defense — and indeed has proposed increasing defense spending — the deficits and the cuts would both be all the more massive as a result.  All of course done in the name of giving more and larger tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.

IN ONE SENTENCE: Instead of helping to create an economy that works for everyone, Romney’s tax plan simply quadruples down on a broken economy that is rigged for the benefit of a wealthy few.

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