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Romney’s Problematic Jobs & Tax Plans

This site sees a fair amount of traffic for the search query, “what does Mitt Romney believe”. We’ve done our best to answer the question, but recent analyses of Romney’s actual policy positions show that any attempt to do so may prove to be futile.

Over the past couple of months, there has been a concerted effort on the part of interested parties to uncover specifics of Romney’s tax plan. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that Team Romney has declined to offer specifics, and instead, made broad statements describing “loopholes” they claim will foot the bill. Josh Barro over at Bloomberg recently took a closer look at Romney’s tax plan as well as the studies the former governor cites as support.

The Romney campaign sent over a list of the studies, but they are perhaps more accurately described as “analyses,” since four of them are blog posts or op-eds. I’m not hating — I blog for a living — but I don’t generally describe my posts as “studies.”…

…Finally, I would note one item that the Romney campaign does not cite in support of its tax plan: Any analysis actually prepared for the campaign in preparation for announcing the plan in February. You would expect that, in advance of announcing a tax plan, the campaign would commission an analysis to make sure that all of its planks can coexist. Releasing that analysis now would be to the campaign’s advantage, helping them put down claims like mine that their math doesn’t add up.

Why don’t they release that analysis? My guess is because the analysis doesn’t exist, and the 20 percent rate cut figure was plucked out of thin air for political reasons without regard to whether it was feasible.

Mitt Romney claims that he isn’t concerned with 47% of the American electorate. He also seems to believe that 100% can’t do math.

As for Romney’s “jobs plan”, the fact checkers at the Washington post described this morning how his numbers don’t add up, and gave the Romney plan Four Pinocchios. It is important to note: this isn’t fact checking a single statement. Rather, the entire alleged basis for the Romney campaign, job creation, is based on a bogus plan. Whether you describe Romney’s policy positions as “fraudulent”, “flim-flam” or squishy, one thing remains clear: Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign is based upon the assumption that nobody will take a close look at his proposals and that he can run out the clock without anyone noticing.

Romney’s Tax Plan Changes the Conversation

A group whose reports were recently praised by Mitt Romney as providing “an objective, third-party analysis”, has issued a report that could be devastating to Romney’s White House ambitions.

The independent, third-party Tax Policy Center issued a report this week highlighting the tax burden shift from the wealthy to the middle class proposed by Romney. The new study basically concludes that, under the Republican’s plan, taxes will be cut for the very wealthy while increased for most middle and lower income taxpayers.

Several months ago, Romney cited the accuracy of the Tax Policy Center when the group analyzed the tax plan of Romney primary opponent Rick Perry.

Romney’s middle class tax hikes would come in the form of the elimination of the mortgage interest deduction, as well as health care and education deductions relied on by a large portion of middle class families.

Tax Graph

Romney's plan would raise taxes on middle income earners, while providing deep cuts for the very wealthy.

Naturally, President Obama seized upon the report’s findings and translated the numbers to mean that the average middle class family would pay and additional $2,000 per year in taxes, while the average family earning over $1,000,000 per year would save about $250,000 via tax breaks.

The Obama campaign provided an online tax calculator to help individuals determine what it would mean to them.

Additionally, team Obama released a new ad whose theme will likely now become the centerpiece of his campaign against the former Massachusetts governor.

Obama has 8 Questions for Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney sat down for five interviews on Friday to discuss his role, or lack thereof, at Bain Capital from 1999 onward. Naturally, the candidate handled the softball-questions thrown his way with relative ease. This morning, the Obama campaign chose to help out reporters in search of hard-hitting questions by issuing a list of their own:

1. Are you contending that an individual can simultaneously be the CEO, president, managing director of a company, and its sole stockholder and somehow be “disassociated” from the company or accurately classified as someone not having “any” formal involvement with a company?
2. You have stated that in “Feb. 1999 I left Bain capital and all management responsibility” and “I had no ongoing activity or involvement.” It depends on what the definition of “involvement” is, doesn’t it? Clearly you were involved with Bain to the extent that you owned it. Are you defining “involvement” in a uniquely specific way that only means “full-time, active, 60-hours-a-week, hands-on manager?”
3. You earned at least $100,000 as an executive from Bain in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings according to filings with State of Massachusetts. Can you give an example of anyone else you personally know getting a six figure income, not dividend or investment return, but actual income, from a company they had nothing to do with?
4. What did you do for this $100,000 salary you earned from Bain in both 2000 and 2001?
5. In 2002, you are listed as one of two managing members of Bain Capital Investors LLC in its annual report. What does this mean?
6. If, in fact, you did not veto any major investment decision during your 1999 though 2002 ownership, doesn’t that imply your broad consent of management’s decisions?
7. According to the Boston Globe, “Romney also testified that ‘there were a number of social trips and business trips that brought [him] back to Massachusetts, board meetings’ while he was running the Olympics. He added that he remained on the boards of several companies, including the Lifelike Co., in which Bain Capital held a stake until 2001.” You testified that while running the Olympics you took a number of business trips to Massachusetts and for board meetings for companies including Lifelike Co. Bain had a stake in this company until 2001. Are you contending that you could attend board meetings for Lifelike Co at the same time Bain Capital had a stake in Lifelike Co and at the same time you owned the stock of Bain Capital, but that somehow your attending a board meeting for a company partially owned by Bain had nothing to do with Bain because you were on the board as Mitt Romney the individual, not as the representative of Bain?
8. When asked “did you attend board meetings for Bain after 1999″ you responded by saying “I did not manage Bain after 1999,” or that you didn’t attend any meetings involving things like firing people. This seems to suggest the possibility that you did attend Bain meetings in 2000 and 2001 that did not involve hiring or firing people or where you made the final decisions on investments. Is that possible?