Yesterday’s Mitt.
Ben Smith of Politico got a hold of records relating to Mitt Romney’s 2004 attempt to convince Standard and Poor’s to raise the credit rating of Massachusetts. Here’s how Romney tells it:
“When I was governor, S&P rewarded Massachusetts with a credit rating upgrade for our sound fiscal management and the underlying strength of our economy,” Romney boasted. “That didn’t happen by accident. The president’s failure to put the nation’s fiscal and economic house in order has caused a massive loss of confidence that resulted in an embarrassing downgrade.”
That’s right, it wasn’t an accident that S&P raised the commonwealth’s rating from AA- to AA. Romney pitched them on the idea. Key to his proposal? Tax revenues.
Romney, in his presentation to S&P, touted the growth of that [rainy-day] fund, and the combination of emergency spending cuts and new revenues he’d used to fill it.
Massachusetts “successfully managed revenue and expense positions” during a downturn in fiscal years 2002 and ’03, the presentation said. “The commonwealth acted decisively to address the fiscal crisis.”
The claims are followed by a chart indicating that the state stayed solvent as tax collections plunged: “July 2002 — Legislation to increase tax revenue” by more than $1 billion in each fiscal year; a tax amnesty; and “tax ‘loophole’ legislation” worth $269 million.
The document also noted that the fiscal 2004 budget “increased fees to raise $271 million yearly,” a move Romney’s critics denounced at the time as a stealth tax.
Tough to imagine today’s Republicans touting tax revenues as part of a sound fiscal policy. Almost as hard as imagining a Republican governor signing into law a health-care bill bearing a striking resemblance to the one Obama signed last year.
Update: Sarah Palin got S&P to bump Alaska’s rating by raising taxes–on oil companies, no less.
OLD NEWS! Romney is a congenital flip-flopper. It is an artifact of his upbringing in Mormon culture which always tries to present a fresh-scrubbed face to the public concealing all the bizarre ideas and theology of this cult.
[See the current running Broadway musical, "The Book of Mormon."]
Forget trying to run a “Swift boat” campaign labeling Romney as “weird” as reported this week in Politico that the Obama campaign is contemplating trying to do.
The definitive way to POLITICALLY attack Romney was revealed by Ted Kennedy in the 1994 Massachusetts Senate campaign: get people on camera who lost their jobs and livelihoods, devastating their families, when as one of the founders of Bain Capital, a venture capital vulture company, Romney fired factory workers, closed plants and shipped those jobs to Asia and South America.
Once the Kennedy campaign ran these ads, what had been a tight race saw Teddy clobbering Romney by 20 points.
If only Obama could channel Teddy???
The GOPers all believe that lowering taxes on the 3% of the biggest richies will increase tax revenue. Their math is.. minus+minus is = to plus+plus. If they can believe that, they can and will believe that the flip/flopping Mitt’s pancake will land on the best cooked side covered with butter and pure NE Mable syrup with a side of crispy bacon. The good news is that this strange voo-doo belief will not translate into enough votes in 2012 election.
“The GOPers all believe that lowering taxes on the 3% of the biggest richies will increase tax revenue. ”
I don’t believe this. GOPers do, however, believe that you can increase tax revenue by closing tax loopholes and deleting certain costly tax expenditures, and thereby broadening the tax base. The largest single such tax expenditure is the tax credit to employers for providing health care. Republicans have argued for years to get rid of this credit; Barack Obama demagogued John McCain for campaigning on this issue.
Meanwhile, can someone tell me how much tax revenue closing the tax loopholes for corporate jets will generate? The White House can’t tell you how much it would generate (because it’s so negligible), so good luck.
Ed,
What they understand, and that progressives can’t seem to is a) raising revenue and raising tax rates are not the same thing, and b) the only way to raise revenue (proven time and again throughout human history) is to promote economic growth.
If high tax rates are such a boon to revenue, why did revenues nearly double in the decade after the tax rate reductions of the early 80′s?
The chracterization that conservatives don’t want “revenue” to be part of the solution is nonsense. They simply understand that low rates, under a simlipfied tax code are far more likely to promote growth and therefore increase revenue in the long run.
Sean;; “The characterization that conservatives don’t want “revenue” to be part of the solution is nonsense.’
Tonight everyone of the FOX GOP candidates panel refused to raise any taxes. any taxes, any taxes. never never never, What can’t be understood? Most of them want zero capital gains taxes too. That means zero taxes for many many million/billionaires. Zero ZERO zero. What can’t be understood? John Paulson fund manager made $4.5 billion last year and paid only 15% capital gains. GOPers want him to pay zero . His chauffeur to the Hampton’s pays at 35% and the GOP wants that to remain at 35% ..I hope the GOP will run on tickle down and lose bigtime. The GOP candidates tonight all plugged themselves to be the USA leader even though they despise all the branches of the government they want to lead. Incredible!!. .
There comes a point when you simply have to let them have their way despite the foolishness. You have to let them do what they want and let it all come crashing down, as it has and will continue to. Maybe then — maybe — the lesson will finally get through.
So, what I say is this — Fine. Let’s raise taxes on the super rich. Let’s impose a 90 percent marginal rate on those persons with incomes over $1 million per year. 90 percent. Seriously. Then we will really raise a lot of revenue. Then the fat cats will finally pay their fair share. After all, the super rich really don’t need all that extra money, so they can afford to pay more in taxes.
And how much could we expect to reap from this tax increase? Billions and billions, surely. That is, if any rich person is idiot enough to bother earning anything past $1 million. If they are that stupid, they deserve to pay through the nose. Most likely though, they will say to themselves, “You know, I’m rich enough — I really don’t need that extra income. So I won’t even bother to go to the trouble of earning it. Why should I exert all that effort if 90 percent will be taken away? I’d rather spend my time lying by my pool at my mansion.” And so they won’t bother to have incomes over $1 million. They won’t bother to produce goods and services beyond that point.
Hence, not only will the expected tax revenue never materialize, but because of their reduced productivity, there will be less need for them to employ the people around them. What a deal!
That is what we should do. Just give them what they want, no matter how irrational.
Yes, envy and resentment of others really is the superior morality, isn’t it?
What another person makes or does not make really has no effect on us personally one way or the other, but that does not mean that we can’t hate him for it. That doesn’t mean that we can’t wish that it be forcibly taken away from him. Of course, whether it is taken from him or not also has no effect on us personally one way or the other either. Still, that does not mean that we should want him to be forced to give the fruits of his labors to an entity even richer and greedier than him, a fat-cat many trillion times more than he is.
Ed –
The problem with the current American “conservatives” is that they preach that investors are entitled to more profit than non-investors because investors *risk* more in the system. In particular they claim that it is to everyone’s advantage not to tax investor-capitalists so that they will take big risks when necessary. Hence loopholes such as low capital gains taxes.
But when push comes to shove (like right now) the conservative investors/capitalists are sitting on 2 trillion $ of cash waiting for *less risky* circumstances to invest it. In other words, they want the rewards of taking risks without actually taking the risks. They are NOT willing to risk their capital. Conclusion: they don’t deserve any sort of tax breaks. In fact, the hypocrits ought to be penalized for sitting on their dough when the system needs it.
The irony is that their lack of courage damages their own self-interests.