Mitt Romney has a multi-trillion dollar tax cut plan that he says won’t add to the deficit. How does that work? He won’t say, other than to pledge that he’d close some loopholes and deductions, but that none of those would harm “middle-class” Americans. Analysts have argued that this is not mathematically possible.
So how do you factcheck that? That was the task for CBS Evening News last night (10/15/12). And their answer seemed to boil down to: Well, maybe.
CBS reporter Wyatt Andrews explained: “Romney argues that lower rates will stimulate the economy and he is emphatic the middle-class will not pay.”
Andrews goes on to say the Romney/Ryan campaign “won’t say” which loopholes and deduction they’d close, “but they promise they will only target the rich.”
Andrews notes that this doesn’t appear workable, since “the most valuable deductions don’t just benefit the rich,” including the deduction for mortgage interest.
So where does this all wind up? Here’s Andrews’ muddled conclusion:
Romney’s argument that this can be done rests on two assumptions: The first is that the lower rates themselves will help grow the economy. But the other big assumption, Scott, is that the bipartisan deal is possible when they’re trying to lower some very popular tax deductions.
The bigger assumption, actually, is that there exist sufficient deductions that could be eliminated to make Romney’s tax plan work out. Tax experts say they don’t. It’s a checkable fact, but CBS declined to check it.
In a better world, of course, journalists would demand that candidates reveal how they intend to carry out their campaign promises. The Romney campaign has done the opposite with its tax plan, making assurances without even the slightest attempt to explain how this would work in the real world–insisting that they will not offer such explanations, actually.
But the corporate media factcheckers seem willing to give them an “incomplete” grade, as CNN‘s Tom Foreman did after the first debate. If that’s going to be the response, why should the Romney campaign bother to offer any details?
Rolling Stone‘s Matt Taibbi offered some thoughts on what the appropriate media response should have been:
Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can’t report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.
The Romney/Ryan ticket decided, with incredible cynicism, that that they were going to promise this massive tax break, not explain how to pay for it, and then just hang on until election day, knowing that most of the political press would let it skate, or at least not take a dump all over it when explaining it to the public. Unchallenged, and treated in print and on the air as though it were the same thing as a real plan, a 20 percent tax cut sounds pretty good to most Americans. Hell, it sounds good to me.
Ooh I love to dance a little sidestep, now they see me now they don’t-
I’ve come and gone and, ooh I love to sweep around the wide step,
cut a little swathe and lead the people on. – Best little whorhouse in Texas…
LOL, Padre, but Lewis Carroll has that Romney/Ryan tax plan number.:
…..”It seems a shame the Walrus said, to play them such a trick,
After we’ve brought them out so far, and made them trot so quick!
The Carpenter said nothing but, the butter’s spread too thick!”
“I weep for you the Walrus said, I deeply sympathize.
With sobs and tears he sorted out those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket handkerchief before his streamig eyes.”
“Oh Oysters, said the Carpenter, you’ve had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again? But answer came there none—
And this was scarcely odd, because, they’d eaten every one.”……..
We are all oysters now. : (
The Romney campaign is the Funhouse, just as his presidency will be (and Bain Capital was under Romney — imagine all the happy talk and goofy rides and distorting mirrors people in acquired companies experienced before they exited, blinking and naked, onto the cheap, grubby midway of an American industrial zone or office park).
One reason the corporate media keeps giving Romney/Ryan a pass when they claim something wildly implausible like a five-point plan to create 12 million jobs and four-percent annual growth, or that they understand how to create jobs in small businesses, is that they recognize two of their own—fellow flimflam artists, illusionists, mountebanks, for whom the show is far more important than the content, and the velocity of the illusion wipes away all but the emotional memory of it, a light, statically charged impression best summed up by the twelve points of the Boy Scout’s Law starting Trustworthy and Loyal and ending Clean and Reverent. They are at least as good at this as your local news anchor with a mid-six-figure salary. It’s therefore no surprise that those who like Romney-Ryan also comfortably lose themselves in conventional TV fare, the stuff of primetime entertainment. It’s unthreateningly subreal yet recognizable, asks nothing but that one sit through the commercials too. Mitt and Paul, such unassumingly nerdy names, let them beguile their way into the White House, save us the trouble of thinking about what might actually matter—exactly what those alter egos are doing for us in those fast-moving, quick-cutting, beautifully propped TV dramas and newscasts.
“I will present a tax plan that will cut loopholes, and lower the tax rate,igniting the economy “(Ronald Reagan pre election promise)Reply from the left…….”It does not explain how we will make up for the shortfall in taxes” See people it works every time.Has never failed.Cut taxes …make money.Further, to explain at this point what deductions he would make before going before a bi partisan commission ,simply would show a lack of executive experience.Of course he has his favorites,and has spoken of them.But at this point to actually present that to Congress is idiocy similar to Obama care being touted as a mandate, instead of a tax -as it was early on in the process..I would like at this point …before Romney gets elected that the people contributing here make their predictions.What promises the Romni is making will he fall flat on?Certainly I did this on Obama and ding ding ding I was right on EVERYTHING!My favorite crystal ball guess……….i said in four years gas would be double the extremely high rate we were dealing with at the end of Bush (1.87).People called me nuts.I came to “fame”(if thats what you call it)on a national show be cause of my predictions of what would be- after two years of Obama.I guess I won the booby prize….because I could read the presidents booby math.Now it is your turn.I will keep your predictions.By the way…. I predict the market reacts less(positively) to Mitts election than I at first thought.He will shut down printing,spending.Short term the market will get pissed by that.Because they THINK short term.
Dear michael e.:
The Mitt and GOPer playbook is taken word for word from Jack London’s IRONHEEL. : )
There would be a small “elite” of 1 % and a small percentage of military police; however everyone else would be “the great unwashed.”
As awful as this would be, please remember the 30 tyrants of Athens; even they couldn’t last forever. : )
P.S. Chevron had a major disaster by not taking care of their transport pipes, and the city of Richmond, CA still suffers from this. Every other gas company else raised their gas prices because Chevron did( to pay for not investing in their own infrastructure.) The government does not control gas prices, and no president does either.
Wall St. doesn’t think because the computers are doing it for them; this explains what happens when the “machine” becomes the rage. : )
I think even on of the few journalist’s I particularly admire, Matt Tabbi is even being to nice to fellow journalists, by pointing out they seem to be just taking the objectivity things too far. I suspect a lot of them are both afraid/lazy/into that old Washington attitude/supportive of the GAME to remember what their real jobs are to truly point out the facts–not muddle the water. We should remember what CBS did to Dan Rather–again attacking a small part of the information, to hide the truth of the story, and now they have hired Frank Lutz as one of their team to cover the election—Frank Lutz no less–a Fox pundit was not avaiable? I cannot watch David Gregory without picturing him from a few years ago, dancing with Karl Rove–he is now one of NBC’s top fair haired boys.
The CBS factcheck is worse than “muddled.” The first of the two Romney “assumptions” CBS mentions, that “lower [federal income tax] rates themselves will help grow the economy,” has been proven false by thirty years of experience. Yet CBS declines to mention it.
Ronald Reagan first invented the “trickle-down economics” theory when he was a candidate for president in 1980. He claimed (just as Romney now claims) that lowering the income tax rate for the richest Americans would cause them to expand their businesses, create new businesses, and hire more employees, and that all the new economic activity would cause tax REVENUES to go up in spite of the lower tax rates. (“Trickle-down” refers to Reagan’s claim that tax cuts for the rich would spur job growth, thus helping average Americans.) Critics called it “voodoo economics,” but Reagan fooled the voters and got elected.
Of course, trickle-down didn’t work! Reagan cut the highest marginal tax rate from 70% to 28% (as promised), but tax revenues FELL, the rate of job growth FELL, and federal budget deficits QUADRUPLED (for each of Reagan’s eight years in office.) The CBS factcheck doesn’t breath a word of this.
But that’s not all! The next president, George H.W. Bush continued Reagan’s trickle-down policies and we suffered four more years of enormous deficits and slow job growth. It took a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, to put the brakes on the voodoo “trickle-down” policies. Clinton raised the billionaires’ tax rate to 39.5%, and that increased tax revenues and turned deficits into surpluses. Job growth skyrocketed, and we had the lowest unemployment rate in 60 years. Again, the CBS factcheck is silent.
What have we learned? Not only that trickle-down doesn’t work, but that the opposite, trickle-UP, DOES work! When government changes it’s focus from tax cuts for billionaires to balanced budgets, infrastructure spending, education spending, public safety and health spending, raising the minimum wage, and allowing unions to collectively-bargain for higher wages, average people do better and that increases DEMAND. It’s the increased demand that causes businesses to expand and hire more people, and that has a snowball effect on the entire economy.
btw, I think Matt Taibbi is excellent, but journalism’s failure is not “objectivity.” Objective reporting is what I just laid out. What Taibbi criticizes is called “balanced” reporting, and balance is why CBS believes it’s “factcheck” must omit the most important facts. A better word for balance is bullshit.
Matt Taibbi is gaining popularity which will inevitably lead to opportunities for a higher salary and better access. The propagandists are always looking to hire a talented journalist who has a reputation for telling the truth because a trusted reporter can be turned into a very convincing liar. One only need look at the cases of Chris Hedges and Robert Parry to get a sense of how reporters are manipulated into obfuscating the truth for ideology, by threatening their livelihood. These two ultimately refused to compromise and were ostracized. They are now fighting a losing battle for truth in reporting from the margins.