Ryan Says Won’t Detail His Tax Plan Until He’s Elected
I am seriously asking now: is there a MOLE in the Romney campaign? Is Paul Begala calling the shots and advising Romney and Ryan? Is James Carville clad in a wig disguised as a Republican campaign consultant running around down there sandbagging the campaign? What other explanation could there be for Rep. Paul Ryan’s performance on Fox News — yes, on Fox News — which is an utter turn off to anyone who is not Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh or a member of Fox & Friends? It is stunning:
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.
In case you think your eyes deceived you, let me run this again:
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.
MORE:
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.
I find it very difficult to believe the bulk of independent voters will vote for candidates who are so evasive. The GOP may greatly outspend the Democrats and Barack Obama but this kind of answer will a)have “legs” in news stories in the mainstream media, in social networking, and on non-conservative weblogs, b)generate lots of material for late night comedians, c)provide Jon Stewart with lots of possibilities.
If an avalanche of almost-one sided ads batter Democrats and Obama funded by corporations and certain rich casino owners reaches a “saturation point” where there is a law of diminishing returns, the bad taste left in some voters mouths won’t go away on election day.
Based on this, it now sounds as if both Romney and Paul Ryan are running away from the Ryan budget.
The Huffington Post also offers this statement from Camp Obama on Ryan’s interview:
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.
It MUST be James Carville in a wig…
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The lack of detail is clear.
looks like the gop strategy is all in, winning in both cases.
If they win with such a blank check scenario, they can do absolutely whatever they want. losing is also an excellent option : blame Obama and the American voters for bit putting them in charge. Eventually, they will win an election, with the blank check scenario. All it takes is patience.
I don’t think there is some big party strategy on this. I think it’s just an incredibly, poorly run campaign — one of the worst we have seen in either party.
I agree that this is not intended. It is consequence of playing an all in hand, over and over
This is a new low in politics.
Ryan, “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.”’
I thought politicians put their plans, values and ideas in front of the voters so the voters could decide if they liked that politician’s values, plans and ideas.
Sure, politicians have a way of making some promises that they don’t keep for various reasons, but you get a sense of their priorities, i.e. being compassionate and caring about the vulnerable, or on the other end of the spectrum caring only about the millionaires and billionaires and “citizen corporations”.
Now Romney and Ryan are not even doing that. They are saying, “Trust us, we know what’s best. We’ll present our plans in the future.”
That’s not how a democracy works.
Sort of reminds me about the Bush administration and Condi Rice saying (paraphrase), “Trust us. We have absolute proof that the Iraqis have WMD, but we can’t share the information due to national security. But we know we’re doing the right thing by invading Iraq.”
And just like the Bush administration’s plans, the Romney proposals will (from what we know of Romney, his biggest supporters and his values) continue to steal from the poor and give to the rich, making this country more unstable.
Are you kidding me? Saying that Congress should be the ones to decide what to scrap and what to keep is being twisted into “I won’t tell you until after elections”? He won’t ever tell you because he doesn’t think it’s his call!
You have to wonder why Rove isn’t more directly involved in the campaign. Romney has been a disaster since he became the nominee.
EE, theoretically it’s their job, but in the real world we all know that every Presidential campaign has to put forth some sort of budget plan….regardless of how incomplete or mathmatically incorrect it may be.
Ryan is trying to cop out of taking responsibility for his own record…in the same way that Mitt is running from Romneycare.
Personally I’d be eager to see both Romney’s and Ryan’s long-form birth certificate.
I don’t see this as something new – the Ryan and Romney budgets have been rightly criticized for some time for their lack of detail, specifically in what tax loopholes they are looking to close. I don’t appreciate the approach of HuffPo, which features a slideshow noting we know more about King Tut’s p*nis (didn’t know if that would pass the comment screener) than we do about Romney’s tax plans. They leave little doubt what side they’re on.
Lack of specificity has long been a winning strategy. Perhaps folks are so miffed with Mitt that they forget the historical success rate of leaving out the details. Think of Nixon’s “secret plan to end the war” [in Vietnam] or more recently Obama’s “Hope and Change” and rock star persona campaign.
Saying “I’ll tell you after the election” isn’t new and it often works.
Well since it’s not his record but rather a plan he put forth that makes no sense and since his “plan” is for congress to chop a specific amount of money but to decide how by holding open hearings and getting the input of experts and taxpayers how the heck can he be accused of not telling people his plan!!!!! Sure I get that some people want to hear his opinion of where he might make the cuts but those are different complaints.
EE, any bills he has led and obviously voted for is part of his voting record.
EE, apologies for the above response. I blame the wine.
As you commented, we do expect to know what he wants to cut.
And he isn’t hiding it. It is there in black and white. So what is the purpose of making statements that are so imprecise as to be just incorrect? You are saying he is trying to ” out” but he is just refusing to make statements about things his plan does not do. His plan is that congress cut X amount and that how and where should be decided by open hearings. Maybe he thought giving the american people a voice important enough that he doesn’t want to give idiots a sound bite in disregarding that input.
Rereading my comment I just want to say “idiots” was meant to refer to the reporters who come up with these misleading headlines that have squat to do with what really was said or done. I was not trying to direct that at anyone here but I see how it could be taken as such and I should have been more careful
The Russians, in the bad old days, had a saying: “They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work”. In this case we can say “You pretend to run for office and we’ll pretend to vote for you”.
The idiom “buy a pig in a poke” refers to someone buying a low-quality pig in a bag because he or she did not carefully check what was in the bag.
Not that we expect much in the way of a high-quality pig following an election, but at least we might know it’s a pig rather than a giant boa constrictor.
This headline confuses me. Where does he state that he won’t talk taxes until he’s elected?
No where. His tax plan doesn’t specify where exemptions should be cut just the amount of the cuts. Reporters are trying to have him decide exactly what should be cut and how much and he refuses saying that the plan was always to have open hearings and let congress and the taxpayers decide.