From ABC News:
Mitt Romney offered new details Sunday on how he might pay for the 20 percent income tax cut he's proposed for all Americans if he's elected president.
Speaking at a private fundraiser in Palm Beach, Fla., Romney told supporters he would eliminate tax deductions for wealthy people who own second homes. His comments were overheard and first reported by reporters from the Wall Street Journal and NBC News who were standing outside the fundraising event on the sidewalk.
"I'm going to probably eliminate for high-income people the second-home mortgage deduction," Romney said, adding that he would also likely eliminate deductions for state income and property taxes as well,according to NBC's Garrett Haake.
"By virtue of doing that, we'll get the same tax revenue, but we'll have lower rates," the candidate explained, according to NBC. He also added that the benefit of lower rates is that small businesses "get to keep a larger share of what they're earning and plow it back in to hire more people and expand their business."Now, don't start screaming, "socialism!" We already limit the mortgage interest deduction to first and second homes. To be blunt, if you can afford to own multiple homes you really aren't hurting, and it appears that this proposed elimination of the second house deduction is only for those who are high-income. If the cost of lowering tax rates for small business owners is eliminating some of the tax deductions that the millionaires (also known as Obama campaign contributors) enjoy, I can't get too terribly upset. Besides, it will be entertaining to watch Obama defend why high-income people need that mortgage interest deduction for the second house.
Romney is most certainly NOT thinking. You don't "pay" for tax cuts. Taxation is taking, more appropriately, stealing.
ReplyDeleteIf I steal from you every week and then suddenly this week I don't, can I claim to have given you something? If I give you something very week then this week I don't, can you claim to I've taken something from you?
"Paying" for tax cuts is a democratic/socialist belief, that everything belongs to the state, and what you keep is what they let you, that what you have they've given you. It's the idea that because they didn't take it from you, they gave it to you, and thus it counts as an expenditure.
Hey, we were at SSU the same time, and the econ profs there would have never made that argument. Well, maybe one, but the rest were legit. You were a history major, and I know who you're profs were :) :) Thankfully you survived!!
This is the typical stupidity that republicans fall for. They argue contra a non-sequitur. You don't "pay" for tax cuts, you reduce spending. Spending is when you use money to pay for things. Your income is your boss' expenditure for your time and labor(or profits but of course that's a dirty word!!). If you get a cut in pay you don't ask "how am I going to pay for that?"
Calm down! Even with big spending cuts (and I don't see anyway those can happen except by dictatorship), somehow, we need to balance the budget. Romney is talking about ways to cut tax rates, but without increasing the deficit (which is already huge), what's the alternative?
ReplyDeleteI'm going to have to agree with Anonymous--and we aren't going to balance the budget through taxation. Heck, even when we consider that we're likely to get a bump in revenue when we lower taxes, that bump isn't going to fix the deficit!
ReplyDeleteOf course, the alternative would be for Romney to come out and say this...but then, if he were to do that, then the follow-up to that alternative would be Romney loning the election, and another four years of Obama.
So while I understand why Romney has to say what he says (and probably even believes it), all I can say is that I have little hope for our country, and will continue to have little hope, until everyone gets a bit of sense about the enormity of our bad situation, and be willing to take a cut (or a few) to right things.
But then, we already knew that, didn't we? :-)