Mitt Romney's Tax Plan: "Pamper the Rich and Soak the Middle Class"

From The Progress Report -- August 1, 2012:

Mitt Gets Worse

Mitt Romney’s Plan for a $2,000 Middle Class Tax Hike

As we reported yesterday, we already know that Mitt Romney has an economic plan to enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Well, a new non-partisan, independent analysis of Romney’s tax plan released today by the Tax Policy Center shows just how far Romney would go to help the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

Here’s the rundown.

Much Higher Taxes on the Middle Class

Romney’s plan raises taxes on the bottom 95 percent of Americans.
The average middle class family with children will see a tax increase of more than $2,000.
Among everyone making less than $200,000, the tax increase averages out to more than $500 per person.
Much Lower Taxes on the Wealthiest Americans

Romney’s plan includes a large tax cut for the only the wealthiest 5 percent of Americans.

A new $247,000 tax cut for the wealthiest 0.1 percent on top of the Bush tax cuts.

A new $87,000 tax cut for every millionaire on top of the Bush tax cuts.

How It Could Be Even Worse for the Middle Class

The authors of the study bent over backwards to make the analysis as favorable as possible for Romney’s plan. For example, the analysis assumes that almost every deduction — think mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, and charitable contributions — would be completely eliminated for people making over $200,000 a year. Nobody have ever proposed that and, as a practical matter, it’s almost impossible to imagine Congress passing such a plan. Since Romney has promised to make his plan revenue-neutral, every dollar in deductions kept by the wealthy means another dollar in increased taxes for the middle class.

In short, Romney’s plan is likely to be much, much more favorable to the wealthy and demand much, much more of the middle class than even this analysis finds. $2,000 should be thought of as the floor for middle class tax increases under the Romney plan, not the ceiling.

Romney Struggles to Respond

In typical fashion, “The Romney campaign on Wednesday declined to address the specifics of the analysis,” reported the Washington Post. In other words, the analysis is correct so they couldn’t really argue with it.

Their only real response was to call it a “partisan” study because one of the co-authors is a Democrat (the other worked in President George H.W. Bush’s White House).

The only problem with that attack? During the Republican primary, the Romney campaign cited the Tax Policy Center on several occasions in order to attack Rick Santorum, Rick Perry, and Newt Gingrich. In fact, the Romney campaign once referred to the Tax Policy Center’s “objective, third party analysis.”

House Republicans Join the Middle Class Tax Increasing Party

While it’s almost impossible to imagine Congress passing a plan that would eliminate most or all tax benefits for the wealthy, it’s definitely possible to imagine them passing one going after the middle class. In fact, it happened just today.

Today, the House of Representatives passed a plan that slashed taxes on the wealthy while raising them on the middle class. The Republican plan passed today included:

Another extension of the extra tax cuts on income over $250,000 that would benefit just the top 2 percent of Americans.
A tax increase for nearly 25 MILLION working and middle class families.
Tax increases on military families.
Amazingly, the Republican plan raises taxes on ten times more people than the Senate-passed Democratic plan, which finally ends extra tax cuts that the wealthiest Americans don’t need and we simply cannot afford:

Since the president promised to veto the Republican plan and it was already defeated in the Senate last week, Republicans are once again the only people in Washington standing in the way of tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans.

IN ONE SENTENCE: Mitt Romney and Republicans will do anything to slash taxes on the wealthy — even if that means forcing millions of middle class families to pay thousands more every year.