Quote of the Day: Romney Still Not Making Sense on Taxes

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.


From Mitt Romney, explaining his tax plan:

So number one, [] don’t raise taxes on middle-income people, lower them. Number two, don’t reduce the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest. The top 5% will still pay the same share of taxes they pay today.

Hold on. The top 5% will pay the same share of taxes they pay today. But that means the bottom 95% will also pay the same share they pay today. Right? That’s just arithmetic.

So everyone will pay the same share of taxes they pay today. But we’re going to lower taxes on the bottom 95%. So that means we have to lower taxes on the top 5% too. That’s the only way to keep their shares the same.

In other words, Romney is going to lower everyone’s taxes. Not just tax rates, actual taxes. And yet, his plan is going to be revenue neutral. How? Most likely it has something to do with Romney’s tax cuts creating new incentives that will supercharge the economy blah blah blah.

I guess believers gotta believe, but if you believe a word of this, you’re the kind of mark who’d still fall for the wire scam even after seeing The Sting a dozen times on late-night cable. You’ve got no one to blame but yourself.  After all, it’s been less than ten years since George W. Bush ran the same swindle, and we all remember how that panned out, don’t we?

We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

INDEPENDENT. BECAUSE OF YOU.

Mother Jones has no billionaires calling the shots—just readers like you making fearless reporting possible

Donate