Quote:
Originally Posted by sperbonzo
The knock on Romney's plan, which Obama accurately cited, is that Romney has refused to say which tax breaks he would eliminate to pay for the lower rates."
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The $5 trillion figure comes from the fact that Romney has proposed to cut tax rates by 20 percent and eliminate the estate tax and alternative minimum tax. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center says that would reduce tax revenue by nearly $500 billion in 2015, or about $5 trillion over 10 years.
Romney says he will make completely unspecified cuts to programs, close unnamed loopholes and end unidentified tax breaks to make it revenue neutral. Obama rightly pointed out that if you ended every loophole for people earning 250K or more, you can't get close to enough revenue to balance the equation. Therefore, Romney's claim that he will do this without burdening the middle class or raising the deficit is a patently false lie.
In simple math that would be: 5 trillion minus X where X can not include an increase in debt or any additional burden on the middle class.
We can not solve for X because Romney inexplicably plans to keep X a secret until after the election, but there is no X other than divine intervention that would fit.
Obama rightly pointed out it is in fact 5 trillion less revenue, and Romney can counter any time he wants by clearly identifying X for us. Until he does, he owns the 5 trillion in lost revenue he has promised and gets no credit for X which he has failed to solve. Obama did say some disingenuous things last night for sure, but this was not one of them.