Paul Ryan Will Talk About Tax Policy 'In The Light Of Day' -- After The Election

[Mayhem]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/paul-ryan-taxes_n_1777353.html

The Romney campaign is willing to discuss its proposals on taxes "in the light of day," vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said Tuesday evening -- just not until after the election.

Multiple tax policy analysts have concluded that Mitt Romney's tax plan -- to close loopholes and reduce taxes for the wealthy -- means higher taxes for most people in order for the math to work. Brit Hume of Fox News asked Ryan to counter that charge. "What we're saying is get rid of special interest loopholes and deductions that are uniquely enjoyed by the wealthy to lower the tax rates for everybody," Ryan said.

But lowering middle-class tax rates, if coupled with eliminating key deductions, could lead to an effective tax increase, the cornerstone of the analyses of Romney's tax plan. Hume pressed for specifics.

"That is something that we think we should do in the light of day, through Congress," Ryan told Hume, promising to "have a process for tax reform so that we do this in the front of the public. So no, the point I'm trying to say is, we want feedback from Americans about what priorities in the tax code should be kept, and what special interest loopholes we want to get rid of."

One of the "loopholes" that costs the IRS the most money is the mortgage interest deduction. Another relates to municipal bonds. Hume asked Ryan if either would be on the chopping block. Ryan refused to say.

The mortgage deduction is enjoyed by millions of homeowners and is the primary policy by which the government encourages homeownership. Taxing municipal bond interest would drive up the cost of borrowing for local governments substantially.

Ryan's refusal to lay out the ticket's tax plan is in line with Romney's earlier resistance to specify which programs, beyond funding for Planned Parenthood, he'd be willing to cut. During his failed Senate bid in 1994, Romney was open about programs he'd be willing to cut, and faced a backlash. He has cited that negative experience in explaining why he now won't tell voters what spending he plans to eliminate.

Taking the basic contours of the tax plan that Romney has laid out, the Tax Policy Center concluded that for people making less than $200,000, Romney's plan leads to a tax hike.

“Our major conclusion is 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," wrote the center. "More specifically, after-tax, take-home income for those Americans making less than $200,000 would fall by an average of 1.2 percent under the Romney plan, while after-tax income for those Americans in Romney’s tax bracket would increase by 4.1 percent."

Ezra Klein, in a column for Bloomberg, took a close look at Romney's plan and compared it with the candidate's promise to give a tax cut to everyone. Such a proposal, Klein concluded, was "mathematically impossible."

"He has promised to reduce the deficit, but refused to identify the spending he would cut. He has promised to reform the tax code, but refused to identify the deductions and loopholes he would eliminate. The only thing he has put on the table is dessert: a promise to cut marginal tax rates by 20 percent across the board and to do so without raising the deficit or reducing the taxes paid by the top 1 percent," Klein wrote. "The truth is that Romney is afraid to put his plan on the table."

UPDATE: 7:25 p.m. -- Danny Kanner, a spokesman for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, said in a statement that the TV interview shows Ryan "not ready for primetime." The statement continues:

First, he attacked the President for the very same Medicare savings that he includes in his own budget. In the same breath, he falsely claimed that the Romney-Ryan budget protects Medicare -– in fact, their plan would end Medicare as we know it, leaving seniors with nothing but a voucher in place of the guaranteed benefits they rely on today. Then, Ryan refused to name a single tax loophole they’d close to pay for their $5 trillion tax plan. We know what that means: as independent experts have confirmed, Romney and Ryan’s tax plan would either explode the deficit or raise taxes on middle class families to pay for their tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. As Romney and Ryan run away from the plans they have laid out -- and in Ryan’s case, passed through the Republican House twice -- they’re revealing that they’d take the American people back to the same failed policies that crashed our economy in the first place, and have zero interest in the bold, honest, substantive debate that they claim is at the center of their campaign.

 

[Mayhem]

Ex-Reagan Budget Director: Paul Ryan's Budget 'Is Devoid Of Credible Math Or Hard Policy Choices'

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/14/ex-reagan-budget-director_n_1776063.html

Even conservatives are bashing Paul Ryan’s budget.

David Stockman, a former budget director under President Ronald Reagan, derided the budget plan of Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick in an op-ed in The New York Times Tuesday.

“Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to 'job creators' (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse,” Stockman wrote in the op-ed, later adding: “Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.”

Stockman, who resigned in 1985 in protest over deficit spending, has added his voice to a chorus of economists criticizing Ryan’s "Path to Prosperity," which would give tax cuts to the wealthy while slashing funding for programs like Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps, all in the name of reducing the national debt.

Given Ryan’s interest in cutting the social safety net, it’s no surprise that Nobel-Prize winning and left-leaning economist Paul Krugman called Ryan’s budget proposal “just a fantasy” in a blog post Monday. But the fact that Stockman -- a budget director under conservative messiah Reagan and former managing director at now-defunct Wall Street firm Solomon Brothers -- is slamming Ryan’s budget lends weight to the overall criticism.

Stockman didn't stop at deriding Ryan's budget, though; he also criticized other financial policies of the Romney-Ryan ticket. Stockman writes in the Times op-ed:

Forget about “too big to fail.” These banks are too big to exist — too big to manage internally and to regulate externally. They need to be broken up by regulatory decree. Instead, the Romney-Ryan ticket attacks the pointless Dodd-Frank regulatory overhaul, when what’s needed is a restoration of Glass-Steagall, the Depression-era legislation that separated commercial and investment banking.

The op-ed may be part of a broader change of heart for Stockman, who once made a killing in corporate buyouts after retiring from public service, according to the Associated Press. More recently, he’s pushed for raising taxes and claims he's so scared there will be another financial crisis that he doesn’t own a single stock.

 

[lurkingdirk]

Yeah, this is the kind of news I'm confident will continue to come forward, and show that both Romney AND Ryan are dodging debatable, relevant issues.

 

[zeeblofowl_1969]

Wow might as well flip the bird to the American people.

 

[xfire]

Here's some cheerful news about Ryan's running mate. These two fuckers are consummate Republicans.

http://guardianlv.com/2012/08/mitt-...nlawful-campaign-to-suppress-potential-union/

National Mediation Board document show Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may have been involved in an unlawful campaign to suppress a potential union in the mid-1980s. The complaint leveled by Key Airline Pilots Association was filed on October 15, 1985 under Case No. R-5597. The complaint specifically argued against Key Airlines a company controlled and ran by Bain Capital according to court documents.

Key Airlines, an early investment for the private equity firm founded by a young Mitt Romney and two associates, broke the law by attempting to coerce and then dismiss two pilots who tried to organize a union. Two months after a union vote failed, Bain agreed to sell Key Airlines at a large profit.

“The anti-union activities in this case are not merely unfair labor practices as Key argues, but blatant, grievous, willful, deliberate and repeated violations of the Railway Labor Act,” Roger Foley, federal judge for the District of Nevada, wrote in 1992, in a case brought by two Key pilots.

The case illustrates an episode in Romney’s business career and raises questions about how it has prepared him to manage the US economy.

Key Airlines was a small charter carrier with a military contract to ferry personnel to bases in the Nevada desert. The union effort was suppressed under Bain’s ownership in 1985 and 1986 although a court judgment against the company and its management – including Bain Capital founding partner T Coleman Andrews III – did not come until 1992. The judgment was later qualified by a subsequent court ruling in 1994, together with an agreement to settle an appeal.

According to regulatory filings, Romney was a director of Key Airlines and had a personal shareholding in the airline. Neither Romney nor Bain Capital were named or cited in the federal court ruling in Nevada.

Mr Romney’s campaign referred to a statement on its website supporting the right of workers to join – or not join – a union: “To exercise that right freely, workers must have access to all the relevant facts they need to make an informed decision. This means hearing from both the union about the potential benefits and from management about potential costs.”

“Despite unemployment over 8 per cent for more than three years, President Obama continues to put the interests of labor bosses ahead of the interests of Americans looking for work,” added Michele Davis, a spokeswoman for the campaign. “By contrast, Governor Romney has grown companies and created jobs, in the private sector and as Governor of Massachusetts, and will get America working again.”

Key Airlines was initially acquired in 1983 by investors including partners of the Bain & Company management consultancy. When Bain Capital was set up in 1984, according to a prospectus aimed at marketing funds managed by Bain, one of its first investments was a $2m injection into Key.

In the autumn of 1985, 21 pilots at Key planned to form their own union, citing safety concerns. Management said that the campaign was actually motivated by low pay.

According to the court ruling, Key held coercive meetings with pilots; said management would leave and the company lost contracts; and told pilots that salaries, bonuses and benefits could be frozen. Federal labor law forbids an airline “to interfere in any way with the organization of its employees”.

Two union organizers – Olen Rae Goodwin and Lawrence Schlang, a former naval aviator – were instructed to sign resignation letters, according to a separate report by the National Mediation Board, which oversees union elections in the sector. The report described the company’s excuse for this dismissal as “little more than pretext”. When a union election was finally held only two pilots voted “yes”.

The information it potentially damaging for the Romney as he attempt to claim in his campaign that as a result of his experience in the private sector he is by far more experienced than Obama when it comes to creating jobs.