Another Thing ‘You People’ Don’t Need to Know: Romney’s Tax Plan

Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 12:18 am


There’s something else “You People” don’t need to know in addition to not seeing Romney’s tax returns, the Romney campaign announces by repeatedly refusing to answer questions — and that is his tax plan.

Sure, you might have gleaned the deets from reporters who overheard Romney speaking at a private fundraiser in Palm Beach, Florida, wherein we learned that he’s coming for us middle class folks with his tax plan that will enrich people like him. But the Romney campaign is ducking and dodging the question; while claiming those “ideas” were just being kicked around, when asked by the media for specifics, they say Romney will work it out with Congress.

Translation: You people don’t need to know.

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A few of the details – the Department of Education will take a huge hit, HUD might not be around, and he’ll go after unions to pay for his even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy and investment income (as in, the primary way Romney earns money):

The Wall Street Journal
reported then:

I’m going to probably eliminate for high-income people the second-home mortgage deduction,” Mr. Romney told supporters at the event Sunday. His plans could allow him to keep the same level of tax revenue but to lower rates, which he said would allow small businesses to keep a larger share of their earnings and expand their payrolls.

Mr. Romney previously has said he would cut or limit deductions for high-earners but hadn’t offered specifics. Some previously announced elements of his tax plan target their benefits to middle-income people, such as his proposal to eliminate capital gains taxes for taxpayers with adjusted gross income of less than $200,000 a year.

On Sunday, Mr. Romney said he would look to the education department and HUD for potential cuts. “That might not be around later,” Mr. Romney said of HUD. Mr. Romney said he would either consolidate the education department with another agency or make it “a heck of a lot smaller.” “I’m not going to get rid of it entirely,” he said.

He also vowed to stand up to teachers unions and warned that unions would funnel dues to Mr. Obama’s reelection campaign. “The unions will put in hundreds of millions of dollars,” Mr. Romney said. “There’s nothing like it on our side,” he said, and he encouraged attendees to get their friends to donate, as well.

Yes, nothing like it on “Romney’s side” save for the huge superPACs, corporations, and the NRA that take the people’s money and funnel it back to the Republican Party — though it’s true that since some of them do it in the dark, it might not count like a union due that happens in the light.

Don’t expect Romney to pony up to these “ideas” publicly. Romney touts his tax plan as a “massive tax cut” but he isn’t going to tell us how he would pay for these tax cuts.

CNN Money reports:

Romney has proposed a 20% across-the-board cut to income tax rates. He also wants to scrap the Alternative Minimum Tax, eliminate the estate tax and chop the tax rate paid by corporations from 35% to 25%.
All those cuts mean the government would collect far less revenue. Romney claims his plan will make up the difference in-part by limiting deductions, exemptions and credits currently available to top-level income earners.

But he hasn’t lifted the curtain on which deductions he is planning to curtail.

Of course, as I covered earlier, the Center on Budget and Policy sifted through Romney’s tax plan and concluded that it “(T)he Romney plan would significantly exacerbate the already serious problem of income inequality in America, conferring extraordinarily large tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans while raising taxes on people making less than $30,000 a year.”

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes that Romney’s tax plan will increase the deficit. Even Romney’s own material never claims his budget to be revenue neutral, meaning he knows it will raise the deficit, though they claim that lowering taxes on the rich will increase prosperity which will somehow fill the coffers with revenues. Experts are baffled as to how this would happen. For example, the Tax Policy Center projected that Romney’s plan would actually add $4.9 trillion to the deficit.

What we can’t absorb for the rich will get tacked onto the deficit. Get it? It’s fiscal conservatism 2012 style – don’t pay your bills, don’t do your part, and punish the majority. If they ask any questions, accuse them of being “jealous” of your success, as if somehow people like Mitt Romney were granted the right by God to be privileged.

See, “you people” don’t need to know the details. You can’t handle the truth. Also, you don’t understand the great mysteries of big business, because you are lazy. While Mitt Romney was raising himself up by his bootstraps from the silver spooned entitlement of his prep school to even more entitlement, you are like most Americans – like Romney, in fact – a product of your environment. Very few Americans rise up out of poverty or manage to be upwardly mobile these days, because that American dream is dead.

How did it die? Well, through a variety of trickle down policies that involve keeping the rich rich and the rest of “you people” where you are — policies like the secret Mitt Romney tax plan.

It’s ironic that Romney views himself as a success, for as I’ve said before, it would be more remarkable had he failed given all of the privilege he was born into. Sadly, like many who are born to the manor, Mitt failed to absorb the moral lessons of his father. George Romney had been poor. He had seen great failure after great effort. He knew that it took more than hard work – sometimes it takes luck combined with hard work; luck and a good economy and policies that enable the hard worker to succeed. He knew that people weren’t poor out of choice. And though he was a Republican, he was the old school kind of Republican – a person who expected everyone to pitch in and pull their weight, CEOs included.

But Mitt Romney doesn’t see “you people” as his own father did. See, George Romney was once a “you people”, too. But his son Mitt Romney has never been a “you people.” Thus, he attributes his wealth to his own inherent worth; and it follows, your lack of wealth to your lack of worth. He doesn’t think you deserve to know anything before voting — “you people” should just elect him because it’s “his turn.”

He’s told you people all you need to know: He is Mitt Romney, a wealthy white male who is, therefor, entitled to the White House.

Image: Dogs Against Romney



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