Saturday, September 29, 2012

Romney Isn't A Flipflopper On Taxes, He's A Snake

During the primaries Romney ran as a conservative tax cutter who would cut taxes across the board by 20 percent.

Now that he's the candidate, in Ohio he has said not to expect much of a tax cut because he would be eliminating deductions and exemptions at the same time, evidently in continuity with his pledge to maintain revenue neutrality and the progressivity of the tax code. You'll be paying the same . . . for now.

The problem with this is that the deductions and exemptions are bullwarks against the effects of rising tax rates in the future, and once removed expose taxpayers to the full force of those higher tax rates. This happened to us once before between 1986 and 1993 when deductions were eliminated by Reagan in exchange for lower tax rates, only to be raised again by Clinton. (Sorry, folks).

Conservatives should be running away from Romney. He's not just a mere flipflopper. He's a snake, and a liberal one at that whom the Democrats will be quite happy to have succeed with his tax program because it will make it easy for them to milk the middle class the next time they come to power.