The sluggards at the Tax Policy Center1 have finally done an analysis of Mitt Romney’s tax plan. It’s about time. And it’s all bad news for Romney.
As the chart below shows, conservatives are right to believe that Romney isn’t to be trusted. Sure, he lowers tax rates on millionaires by 9 percentage points, and you may think that’s a pretty sweet deal for the rich. But come on. Newt Gingrich would lower them by 24 percentage points. (No, that’s not a typo.) Rick Perry lowers them by 20 percentage points. Herman Cain lowers them by 15 points. Frankly, Romney is hardly even trying here.
So this is the worst of all worlds for the Mittster. For the 95% of us who earn less than $100,000, his plan is almost laughably tilted toward the plutocrat set. There’s just no way for him to pretend that he really cares about the middle class. But for the plutocrat set itself, his plan seems downright miserly compared to the rest of the GOP field. So in the end, everyone is uneasy about him. Romney’s tax plan, it turns out, is a metaphor for the man himself. It’s a tough gig being Mitt.
1Just kidding. TPC rocks, and I feel sorry for the poor analysts who had to hack their way through Romney’s vague and seemingly endless set of proposals to come up with a final set of distribution numbers.
