Oct. 16 Romney Budget - Final

Mitt Romney’s October 16, 2012 reply to President Obama’s answer to the third question which was regarding the deductions that wouldn’t be allowed in Romney’s budget plan in order to overall reduce tax rates was a repeat of his plan. He explained that if you keep rates down it allows small business to hire more people; he stated 54% of the people work for businesses that are taxed as individuals; he repeated the condition of the economy and stated his 5 point plan – energy independence, opening up trade-going after those that cheat, getting to a balanced budget, fixing the training programs for our workers and championing small business. I did not check out the 54% issue because it doesn’t matter.

Candy Crowley, the moderator, asked Obama about the top 5% paying the same and giving the tax cuts to the middle class and it all evening out.  Obama said – it won’t, the lowering of tax rates across the board, eliminating the estate tax and other things Romney wants to do will cost about $5 trillion, plus add $2 trillion to defense and continue the Bush cuts that add $1 trillion, he also said Romney wants to cut the deficit and taxes to the middle class and he can’t tell us how he’s going to do it besides eliminating Big Bird and Planned Parenthood. Candy asked Romney if by chance the numbers don’t add up would he relook at the 20%. Romney said of course the numbers add up – he ran a business, the Olympics and a state budget and they all balanced. What doesn’t add up is a $4 or $5 trillion deficit. He said the President was talking about his (Romney’s) plan in a way that is completely foreign to what it is but we have his failed record. Because of the time factor Candy tried to stop Romney again and he wouldn’t.

Okay, Romney said 95% of the population accounts for 40% of the tax revenue and the rich aren’t going to pay more than they currently do. Per IRS in 2010 they collected more than $2.3 trillion in revenue from over 230 million tax returns and provided $467 billion in refunds (this is a gain of about $1.85 trillion). If 60% is paid by higher income people it means about $744 billion was paid by the lower income folks; a reduction of 20% would be a loss of $148.8 billion to the government. To get a balanced budget means the $1.85 trillion collected would be reduced by $148.8 billion and we’d have about $1.7 to spend. Out of this Romney says he’ll help the needy, keep necessary programs and decrease the $16 trillion deficit created by Reagan/Bush tax cuts and post 9/11 costs. There is no way for this to add up. FYI - the June 24 Washington Post Wonkblog posted the billionaires list and of the top 100 billionaires in the world, the US has 37. The article said - If a country is generating too many billionaires relative to the size of its economy, this concentration of wealth can lead to stagnation. I take this to mean the wealthy is the real reason for our economic condition not Obama’s policies.