The editorial board of the Tampa Bay Times called on Mitt Romney Monday to release specifics of his tax plan if he is going to deny the findings of a report from the Tax Policy Center. The editorial lays out the findings of the study, which showed that Romney’s tax plan cuts taxes on the wealthy and raises them on 95 percent of Americans. “The study cuts through the magical thinking surrounding the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s promise to lower taxes without adding to the budget deficit,” the editors write. “If he wants to argue with the numbers, rather than shooting at the messenger, he will have to demonstrate how the numbers are wrong and fill in the blanks in his plan.”
Too often candidates get away with fanciful claims that they can cut taxes without reducing defense spending or worsening the deficit. Romney’s attempt was properly called out by a group of number-crunchers. If he has a dispute with the results, he needs to provide specifics on just how he will provide massive tax relief to those at the top without adding to the tax burdens of average people.
The Romney campaign fired back at the report last week, claiming that the Tax Policy Center is biased, but the editors aren’t buying that argument.
The Romney camp attacked the messenger as politically biased since one of the three authors had worked in the Obama White House. But previously the Romney campaign had promoted the center’s work as providing an “objective, third-party analysis,” and the center is directed by a former economic adviser to Republican President George W. Bush.
