ROMNEY MISLEADS: "I'm going to bring rates down across
the board for everybody, but I'm going to limit deductions and
exemptions and credits, particularly for people at the high end, because
I am not going to have people at the high end pay less than they're
paying now."
THE FACTS: Romney is proposing to cut all income tax rates by
20 percent, eliminate the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax,
maintain and expand tax breaks for investment income, and do it all
without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden from the
wealthy to the middle class. He says he would pay for the tax cuts by
reducing or eliminating tax deductions, exemptions and credits, but he
can't achieve all of his goals it under the budget rules presidents must
follow.
The Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group, says in a study that
the tax cuts proposed by Romney would reduce federal tax revenues by
about $5 trillion over 10 years. The study concludes that there aren't
enough tax breaks for the wealthy to make up the lost revenue,
so the proposal would either add to the deficit or shift more of the tax burden on to the middle class.
Romney's campaign cites studies by
conservative
academics and think tanks that say Romney's plan will spur economic
growth, generating enough additional money to pay for the tax cuts
without adding to the deficit or shifting the tax burden to the middle
class. But Congress doesn't recognize those kinds of economic
projections when it estimates the budget impact of tax proposals.
___
ROMNEY LIES: "A recent study has shown that people in
the middle class will see $4,000 a year in higher taxes as a result of
the spending and borrowing of this administration."
THE FACTS: Romney's claim is based on an analysis by the
conservative
American Enterprise Institute that examines the amount of debt that has
accumulated on Obama's watch and in a potential second term and
computes how much it would cost to finance that debt through tax
increases. Annual deficits under Obama have exceeded $1 trillion for
each year of his term.
However, Obama is not responsible for all of the deficits that
have occurred on his watch. Most of the federal budget — like Medicare,
food stamps, Medicaid and Social Security — runs on autopilot, and no
one in a leadership position in Washington has proposed deep cuts in
those programs.
And politicians in both parties voted two years ago the renew Bush-era tax cuts that have contributed to the deficit. Even under the strict spending cuts proposed by Romney, the debt would continue to rise.
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