Paul Ryan finally had enough time to go through the math of the Romney tax plan during the vice-presidential debate. He didn’t use it. Ryan filibustered instead. About the most specific he got was citing “six studies” he said vindicate the plan’s mathematical plausibility.
Except they don’t.
Romney’s tax plan is a three-legged stool that doesn’t stand. Here’s how it works — or doesn’t. Romney wants to 1) cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent, 2) cut tax expenditures to pay for these tax cuts, and 3) maintain progressivity. The problem, as the Tax Policy Center pointed out, is there aren’t enough tax expenditures for the rich to pay for all the tax cuts for the rich. Romney’s plan only works if he cuts out the tax cuts for the rich, raises taxes on the middle class, or explodes the deficit. In other words, Romney can pick two, and only two, of his tax goals — what Matt Yglesias of Slate calls the “Romney Trilemma”.
That sound you hear is the three-legged stool falling down.
All this hasn’t stopped a fight against the tyranny of arithmetic. The defenses of the Romney tax plan generally fall into three broad categories. The first assumes the plan will set off magic growth of the monster variety; the second assumes Romney defines “middle-class” differently than he does; and the third assumes Romney would eliminate tax expenditures he has indicated he would not eliminate. Let’s briefly consider the six such “studies” that Ryan cited — most are actually blog posts — in turn.
random/anthem 