Romney Let’s Mask Slip
Garrett Haake reports
Via TPM
PALM BEACH, FL — Mitt Romney went well beyond his standard stump speech at a closed-door fundraiser on Sunday evening, and offered some of the most specific details to date about the policies he would pursue if elected.
In a speech to donors in the backyard of a private home here,[skip]
Romney went into a level of detail not usually seen by the public in the speech, which was overheard by reporters on a sidewalk below.
Oh my. But what is striking is not that he says one thing to donors and another thing in public where swing voters can hear. It is that there is almost no there there. Mitt Romney’s secret plan to balance the budget and to avoid giving tax breaks to the rich would do neither.
Knock me over with a wrecking ball. Briefly the secret plan is to eliminate HUD, cut the Department of Education, eliminate for high income families the second home mortgage deduction and “probably” deductions for state and local property taxes.
Discussion and more quotes and gloats after the jump.
On spending, Romney made it fairly clear that he mostly plans to change organisational charts
“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go,” Romney said. “Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I’m not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we’ve got far too many bureaucrats.
Of course he didn’t say how many bureaucrats there are in Washington (and not in Northern Virginia at the Pentagon and CIA) because there are fewer than he assumes people assume. He didn’t explain how merging departments cuts costs (hey look how well the Department of Homeland Security worked out). Targetting HUD shows he wants it to be clear that he is cutting programs for poor (and black) people.
I think he is vulnerable to questions about whether he wants to eliminate HUD programs (if so the CBPP or someone can calculate how many families will end up homeless) or just save a seat at the cabinet table. Also one can note how small the HUD budget is compared to the spending cuts he has promised. Any hook to make discussion of spending cuts specific is harmful to Romney as he depends entirely on the unpopularity of government spending in the abstract versus the popularity of government programs.
But the real oppo research (and comedy) gold is in the totally feeble tax proposals.
“I’m going to probably eliminate for high income people the second home mortgage deduction,” Romney said, adding that he would also likely eliminate deductions for state income and property taxes as well.
“By virtue of doing that, we’ll get the same tax revenue, but we’ll have lower rates,”
The fact (already calcuated I forget where) is that those with the highest incomes would gain from his rate cuts even if they were deprived of all tax deductions. But second mortgages ??? What a joke. For one thing super rich people don’t have mortgages if they are not fools as mortgage interest rates are higher than safe rates available to them. For another, the amount of money involved is tiny compared the the huge decline in revenues due to the rate cuts.
I ask people more industrious than myself (say at the Tax Policy Center)to toss in the possible elimination of the property tax deduction, define high income as income over $250,000 and run the numbers. The list of two (2) deductions to be partially eliminated reaches into one “likely” reform and so Romney can’t claim that there are other certain reforms which he didn’t mention. The claim that those two tiny reductions in deductions make up for the rate cuts is clearly a pants on fire lie.
Romney’s strategy of vagueness depends on not letting his statements about the details of his plans be overheard. Now he can be asked again and again about how he made false claims about the effect on the deficit of proposals which can be scored. This could be important if the Obama campaign doesn’t blow it (note I assume that the press won’t press Romney — also I don’t believe in the tooth fairy).
Since MSNBC does not practice anything resembling journalism I don’t care much what they or Josh Marshall say.
If anyone is shocked or surprised by Romney’s comments they have been living in a cave.
And i was lucky to get my education before the Department of Education was created.
Why would you be lucky to be that old?
Yes because the Dept of Ed is so muxh more destructive of liberty than when it was part of HEW or it was as the independent Office of Educaion which replaced the Bureau of Education which was established in 1867. In fact the federal role in education is older than the Constitution in that federal mandates to territories and states to support public education were part of the Public Lands Act of 1796, passed under the Articles of Confederation and not superceded.
How many Tea Baggers are big supporters of the various State Univerities founded and funded as Land Grant universities? Apparently the new Bagger slogan is “Keep government hands off my Cornhuskers!”
The wingnut idea that the federal role in Educatioon sharted when iit was broken out from HEW is pure propogandist crap. Unless you were born before 1784 or were totally home schooled you were educated under rules or at least funding mandates established by the feds. Deal wth it.
If someone can explain why the Right thinks we were better off when Educatiion was officially run by the Secretary of Welfare and Socialized Medicine (HEW) bring it. Becuase this whole line of attack is incoherent even on its own terms
Argghhh!
NOT the Public Lands Act of 1796, instead the Land Ordinance of 1785. 1796 being after 1789 and not before.
What say you Rusty?
In my book you have a lot of cred about the ins and outs of heath regulations but comments like yours make me review your creditability. Try harder, OK?
What I find interesting about education is that quality is directly correlated with federal involvement.
In general, in the US education improves as you move higher up the scale with the most complaints against secondary schools where the Feds plays a very minor role. Colleges, where the fed are more involved are thought to be better, but the US system of graduate education is without any serious competition anywhere else in the world. It is without a doubt, head and shoulders above anything else in the rest of the world.
But graduate education is highly dependent on federal funding and in many fields the position of individual graduate educators is highly dependent on their ability to get federal funding.
But have you ever heard anyone opposed to the Feds playing a role in education look at it from this perspective?
I think the big one is eliminating deductions for state income and property taxes. I believe that the consistently blue states typically have higher state income and property taxes to support the level of government services that those states want. If they take away the deductions for those taxes then those taxes automatically go up by 15% 25% or 30% depending on the bracket of the itemizers–the only reason I itemize is because of state taxes–and the pressure to reduce the taxes in those blue states will mount. Mississippi here we all come.
Ginx
I guess it’s not so much being that old… though of course youth is wasted on the young… but, like Rusty I was educated in the old days before the Dept of Ed. And while the Dept of Ed had nothing to do with it, I would hazard that the quality of education has deteriorated over time. Maybe it’s only something as simple and ugly as that back in the old days the poor were “educated” for factory work, and the rich were educated so they’d have something to talk about, and only those with a serious calling were educated for scholarship or science.
I am not endorsing this as a good model. I am questioning whether “education as we know it” deserves the religious awe with which we invest it with the hope for our future.
disclaimer: i mean to be provocative. but some of my best friends are teachers.
Bruce
thanks, as always, for the history.
i don’t think “the right” gives a darn for “education.” but “education” is a perennial political football, and their, no doubt highly educated, motivations research people tell them they can get votes by “running against the Dept of Education.”
I am sure you have noticed that the whole line of political discourse in this country is incoherent even on its own terms.
In fact
I was talking to a former music teacher the other day, and she told me about some wonderful things she did with her classes in a public school.
Nowadays they don’t teach music. It’s a frill, you see. And if they did teach it, they wouldn’t let any teacher do anything, wonderful or not, that wasn’t designed by a committee at the Board of Education.
To be honest, I ran into that committee when I tried to teach geometry to high school students (in 1967) in a way they could understand it… oddly enough the same way i was taught it back in the bad old days… and was told in no uncertain terms i had to teach it “their way” or else…. didn’t matter that their way was “incoherent even on its own terms.”
Can someone with credibility, like Linda, address the rationale for eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes. I don’t see how it makes sense to tax income that is earmarked for the payment of local taxes. Going another step further, I’d apply the same logic to the question of paying any taxes, federal or local, on FICA deductionns. And how is it that benefits from Social Security, which benefits derive from taxes already paid into the system. Seems like a lot of double taxation to me. Is this the result of continuously lowering tax rates on very large amounts of income?
Jack
I have no credibility, and I make no claim for understanding tax rationale…or rationalizations.
But as for the tax on Social Security benefits I believe the idea is something like this: Social Security is insurance. Because of the way it is structured… a very good way in my opinion… some of the people who receive benefits don’t exactly need the full insurance payment to “stay out of poverty.”
Apparently I am one of those people, and I can tell you that different people must have different ideas of what “stay out of poverty” means. But the amount of money taxed from SS benefits is, first, not much, and second, returned to Social Security so that it enables either a lower SS tax or higher benefits to those who do need it.
No doubt they could arrange another way to provide the same effect, but I don’t think the game is worth the candle.
I don’t know if the government taxes other “insurance benefits,” but it does tax earnings from interest and from stocks and bonds. To the extent that SS is “an investment” (as well as insurance, not to blow the minds of people to whom it must be one or the other), it doesn’t seem so strange to tax that part of the SS benefit that is “more than you paid in.”
I think you have to earn over 25 thousand a year, as an individual, in order for any of your SS to be taxed, and then only half of it is taxed… less all the other deductions… so it’s not a big deal.
Really poor people are not taxed on their SS benefits.
I don’t think “double taxation” is a very meaningful concept. Governments collect taxes where it is most convenient to do so, with some plausible allowance for “fairness.” The “double tax” on corporate earnings is the one we hear most about. It depends on the idea that the share holders are “really” owners of the corporation. And that makes about as much sense as claiming the guy who “owns” all those chips at the roulette wheel is an owner of the casino.
“arrange another way to provide the same effect”
for example
they could cut the SS benefits for people at the high end of the lifetime income / SS contribution continuum.
but this would mean that a person who had fairly high SS but no other income in retirement would lose part of what he had paid for… while taxing part of the SS income for people who have other income in retirement reduces their income trivially, while holding the guy who relies entirely on his SS harmless.
this seems to me desirable.
it should be noted that the tax on SS income for people still earning a lot of money accomplishes what the Big Liars like to claim they want: “Bill Gates doesn’t need his SS…” Well, fine. Bill gates pays a 35% tax on 85% of his SS… SS benefits which he paid for at a higher rate than less rich folk… contrary to the morons on the other side who claim that SS is a “regressive tax.”
let me spell this out.
lets say that BG (no, not Bill Gates, Big Gearner) gets 2000 a month from SS, or 24000 a year, and he also gets 100000 a year from other investments . His tax on his SS would be about 35% (his marginal tax rate) times 85% (how much SS is taxes) or about 7000 per year. Leaving him struggling to get by on the 93000 left him after paying tax on the SS (no doubt paying more taxes on that).
While avoiding the double tax by cutting SS benefits for high earners, to get the same net effect on SS would cut Mr used to work hard but now has no other income’s 24000 a year SS benefit by the same 7000, leaving him with 17000 to get by on. Could be done, but “fair”?
On the other hand you can call for “ending the double tax on SS” and there will be politicians eager to please. Most people wouldn’t know what the final effect would be, and the politicians wouldn’t care, as long as it made a good TV ad.
The conservative jihad against the Dept of Ed has everything to do with the fact that breaking it out from HEW was one of the final acts of Jimmy Carter in 1980. Which made it poison to Reaganites. It has nothing to do with actual history or the 10th Amendment: Carter bad, Reagan good. Clinton bad, Bush good.
Which BTW is how the Indiidual Mandate went from being the Love Child of Big Insurance and AEI to being a Communist Plot that Would Have the Founders Rolling in Their Graves. Romneycare good, Obamacare bad. Why? “Shut up”. he explained’
That addresses the Social Security benefits tax. Now what about the idea of taxing the earnings which go straight into the state and local coffers as tax. We’re not being taxed as a corporation by the state and as a person by the IRS. We are being asked to question the legitiamcy of paying federal taxes on income that is needed by our states and local governments. Does that make more sense than asking the truly wealthy to a greater share of the federal taxes because they earn so much of the income. How can it make more sense to pay lower rates on unearned income and double rates on earned income?
(ahem)
The original Department of Education was created in 1867 to collect information on schools and teaching that would help the States establish effective school systems. While the agency’s name and location within the Executive Branch have changed over the past 130 years, this early emphasis on getting information on what works in education to teachers and education policymakers continues down to the present day.
http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/role.html
JzB
jazz
no doubt. but i would argue that what works for one teacher does not work for another, especially after being digested by a committee.
spencer
now tell me if this differs materially from my simplified version.
Jacl
easy, money is more important than work. it is he foundation of American Pfreedom.
But while you have your eye on taxes, watch out for the interest rate. It transfers more money in america than taxes, but usually in the other direction.
Well I shore don’t know what kids these days understand, but mah generation set still standing records for terrible scores on standardised tests (I wus a borned in 1960). Also, as everyone here has guessed, in my elementary school spelling was optional.
Oh and sorry about the rage attack when you questioned my faith in the US Constitution.
1960 eh?
good chance you were a victim of the new math. it wasn’t so much that they didn’t know any math as that they didn’t seem to see any point in actually thinking about it.
and there are famous people with Ph.D.’s from Harvard whose math skills are said to be the highest… and they still don’t seem to see any point in actually thinking about it.
Romney’s idea is clearly unconstitutional as it violates the terms of John Marshall’s 1819 Supreme Court decision, McCulloch v. Maryland, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” Marshall specifically ruled that a state could not tax part of the United States government, the Bank of the United States. The original phrase came from Daniel Webster.
More generally, by deciding that state and local services are taxed twice and thus ultimately deciding what services should be offered, the Romney plan violates the 10th Amendment to the Constitution, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or by the people.” The Us Constitution does not specify how the collection of garbage should be paid for. Is Romney nuts?