From AEI, one more weak whack at TPC's debunk of Romney's tax reform "plan"

Ever since the Tax Policy Center exposed the plain fact that Romney's proposal to render a 20% cut in marginal income tax rates "revenue neutral" with unspecified tax loophole closures without raising taxes on the middle class is mathematically impossible, GOP apologists have taken serial attempts to square the circle and fill in the blanks that Romney refuses to fill in.

First, the Wall Street Journal editorial board attempted a laughable debunk, which relied mainly on assuming that the rate cut would stimulate fantastic growth rates-- the old voodoo economics assumption.  As I pointed out at the time, the TPC had already granted Romney the most generous "dynamic scoring" (projections building in the assumption that the plan would spur growth) that any reality-based economist would grant.

The Wall Street Journal editorialists rush in where Romney fears to tread

The true believers in supply-side economics on the Wall Street Journal editorial board long for a policy debate that Romney is determined to avoid:

the one thing [Romney's speech] didn't do constitutes a major political gamble. Neither he nor the entire GOP convention made a case for his economic policy agenda. He and Paul Ryan promised to help the middle class, but they never explained other than in passing how they would do it.

In his acceptance speech, Mr. Romney tossed out his five policy ideas almost as an afterthought. Energy got one sentence, education scored big with two. Neil Armstrong received almost as much speech time as what Mr. Romney would do specifically to spur faster growth and raise middle-class incomes.

Mitt Romney, taxer of muni bonds?

Oh, the distortions, sleights of hand and outright falsehoods in the Wall Street Journal editorial board's ridiculous attempt to take down the Brookings/Urban League Tax Policy Center finding that the Romney tax plan would cut taxes for the wealthiest 5% and raise them for everyone else.  The falsehoods are macro, micro and legion.

Let's start with the premises on which the TPC analysis of Romney's purposefully vague tax plan (p. 38 ff) are based. Because Romney does not specify what tax deductions he would reduce or eliminate, or for whom, TPC extrapolates from broad principles he's laid out:

Why is Bowles-Simpson more progressive than Romney's "very similar" plan?

Yesterday, the New York Times' Jackie Calmes provided a bracing model of how to reality-check a politician's ridiculous claim:

Mr. Romney said “my plan is very similar to the Simpson-Bowles plan.” The Romney proposal, however, has little in common with that bipartisan deficit-reduction proposal from a majority on the fiscal commission that Mr. Obama created in 2010. The Simpson-Bowles plan called for reduced income tax rates, but it would have raised about $2 trillion more in tax revenues over 10 years, mostly from high-income taxpayers, and cut spending to reduce the federal debt.

This discrepancy raises a more fundamental question.  Because Bowles-Simpson raises new revenue and Romney's plan doesn't, it should be easier, not harder, for Romney to make his cut-rates-and-reduce-loopholes plan more progressive than Bowles-Simpson. According to the Brookings/Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, the opposite is true. Why?

You didn't gild that: TPC hands Obama a sword of unvarnished truth to wield against Romney's tax plans

As we await the next jobs day bomb this morning, my anxious and superstitious nature can't help but fear that the Obama campaign is like the Confederate army approaching Gettysburg -- at its high water mark in the wake of a raft of good polls, Romney twisting in the tax return wind, and the Tax Policy Center dissection of his gap-ridden and fraudulent "tax reform" plans.

But with that gesture to ward off nemesis, I can't help but delight, like (I assume) all who have been waiting for team Obama to pivot from Bain attacks to spotlighting tax cut/spending cut plans so extreme Americans don't believe Romney would actually propose them, in the way Obama has taken up the Tax Policy Center's analysis of Romney's tax plans and used it to tear into said plans.  As reported by the Times' Jackie Calmes, this Obama riff in Florida yesterday is scarlet sweetmeat to me:

Quote of the day

“It is not mathematically possible to design a revenue-neutral plan that preserves current incentives for savings and investment and that does not result in a net tax cut for high-income taxpayers and a net tax increase for lower- and/or middle-income taxpayers.” 

-  Brookings/Tax Policy Center study of Mitt Romney's tax reform proposal.

The study, which according to the Washington Post's Lori Montgomery, "seem[s] to bend over backward to be fair to the Republican presidential candidate," finds that Romney's

rate-cutting plan for individuals would reduce tax collections by about $360 billion in 2015, the study says. To avoid increasing deficits — as Romney has pledged — the plan would have to generate an equivalent amount of revenue by slashing tax breaks for mortgage interest, employer-provided health care, education, medical expenses, state and local taxes, and child care — all breaks that benefit the middle class.