Report says Romney, Gingrich and Perry tax plans add billions to deficit

The tax plans put forward by Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the U.S. budget deficit, according to a series of analyses from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.

Click to expand...

Report says Romney, Gingrich and Perry tax plans add billions to deficit, favor the rich - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Interesting. Why do I get the feeling that nobody really cares about the deficit as much as they say the do?

I am still laughing over the notion the Tax Policy Center is nonpartisan.:lamo

This certainly shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Repbulicans don't care about deficits. They just care about cutting taxes for the rich. Gingrich's plan in particular is borderline insanity.

CriticalThought said:

Report says Romney, Gingrich and Perry tax plans add billions to deficit, favor the rich - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Interesting. Why do I get the feeling that nobody really cares about the deficit as much as they say the do?

Click to expand...

AdamT said:

This certainly shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. Repbulicans don't care about deficits. They just care about cutting taxes for the rich. Gingrich's plan in particular is borderline insanity.

Click to expand...

These are absolutely correct. The deficit was always a red herring. Otherwise revenue increases would have been central to the proposed solution. The debt ceiling nonsense was a completely politicized dramafest, which has, in the past, been a non-issue. And of course funneling more and more money into the pockets of a few people is going to make deficit worse. Why would anyone think that letting people skip out on paying the check would net the country more money? Dedicating the economy to making rich people richer doesn't make the country richer, just the rich people in it.

Republicans dont care about deficits. The were the ones that took us out of a surplus and created the great recession.

CriticalThought said:

Report says Romney, Gingrich and Perry tax plans add billions to deficit, favor the rich - Political Hotsheet - CBS News

Interesting. Why do I get the feeling that nobody really cares about the deficit as much as they say the do?

Click to expand...

The important point that it misses is that as economic productivity improves, so do government tax revenues. This was also the failure of the Bush tax cuts, which were based on the idea of having "too much revenue." Of course revenues were higher when Bush took office, the economy was growing! Then the economy went south taking tax revenue with it.

The problem with the current tax system is that the distinction between business profit and personal income isn't big enough. Corporations paying taxes simply means that everybody buying anything from them pays a higher price. Also, a small businessman is hurt when his business revenues -- with which he has to pay his expenses also -- are taxed as personal income.

conservativeguy said:

I am still laughing over the notion the Tax Policy Center is nonpartisan.:lamo

Click to expand...

With respect to Governor Romney's plan, the Tax Policy Center (TPC) notes, "Governor Romney would permanently extend all the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts now scheduled to expire in 2013 and continue to “patch” the alternative minimum tax..."

Even if one ignores the TPC's analysis, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) did a long-term analysis on those three specific provisions in 2008. That study reached a similar conclusion about reducing revenues and can be found at:

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/95xx/doc9568/07-17-AMTLetter.pdf

The big challenge for Governor Romney, if he intends to ensure that those tax changes would be budget neutral (at a minimum), would be to assure that there are offsetting revenue increases elsewhere e.g., via broadening the tax base from eliminating myriad deductions/preferences, spending reductions, or some combination.