President Obama slammed Mitt Romney’s economic plan this morning, telling a crowd in Mansfield, Ohio, that they had to decide “between two fundamentally different visions for America.”
“The centerpiece of my opponent’s entire economic plan is a new $5 trillion tax cut on top of the Bush tax cuts,” Obama said. “Now, the bulk of this tax cut would go to the very top…Folks making more than $3 million a year – the top one-tenth of one percent – would get a tax cut worth almost a quarter of a million dollars.”
“But it gets worse,” the president warned. “Under my opponent’s plan, guess who gets the bill for these $250,000 tax cuts? You do.”
Obama used a newly released study by Tax Policy Center, a non-partisan think tank, as evidence that Romney’s proposal would place on the middle class. The study concludes that “any revenue-neutral individual income tax change that incorporates the features Governor Romney has proposed would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower income taxpayers.” In other words, it proves Romney’s promise that “the people at the high end will still pay the same share of the tax burden they’re paying now” to be mathematically impossible.
“They found that if Governor Romney wants to keep his word and pay for this plan, then he’d have to cut tax breaks that middle class families depend on,” Obama said. “To pay for your home: the home mortgage deduction. To pay for your health care: the health care deduction. To send your kids to college. That means the average middle class family with children, according to this study, would be hit with a tax increase of more than $2,000.”
“And here’s the thing,” the president added. “He’s not asking you to contribute more to pay down the deficit…He’s asking you to pay more so that people like him can get a big tax cut. In order to afford just one $250,000 tax cut for somebody like Mr. Romney, another 125 families like yours would have to pay another $2,000 in taxes each and every year.”
This chart from The Atlantic illustrates the study’s conclusion:
Romney’s tax plan would result in 95 percent of Americans seeing their taxes rise by an average of $500 annually, while millionaires would enjoy an $87,000 tax cut. It should also be noted that the report assumed the most favorable conditions for Romney: The study was done under the assumption that Romney would close every single loophole and eliminate every single deduction for the wealthy that he hadn’t already promised to preserve. These assumptions appear implausible for a man who has utilized a number of tax loopholes to his own benefit, therefore making it more than likely that the study actually understates the burden that the middle class would bear under Romney’s tax plan.
