Mitt Romney

New Romney Plan Lowers Taxes Further On Rich, Raises On Poor (CHART)

Brian Beutler | March 1, 2012, 5:14PM

Mitt Romney

When Mitt Romney unveiled his revised tax and debt plan last week, his camp sold it as a bid to preserve fairness to the middle class.

He proposed an across the board 20 percent cut to everybody's current rates, and to make up the lost revenue by limiting deductions, credits and other tax benefits for wealthy Americans. But he declined to specify exactly how he'd broaden the tax base. And a new analysis by the Tax Policy Center shows that without those details, his proposed cuts would actually be more regressive than his first plan.

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Mitt Romney

The GOP's Real Tax Cut Goal Has Nothing To Do With The Middle Class (CHART)

Brian Beutler | February 23, 2012, 5:50AM

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaks at the Livonia and Greater Farmington Hills Area Chambers of Commerce luncheon at the Farmington Hills Manor in Farmington Hills, Michigan, Thursday, February 16, 2012. (Patricia Beck/Detroit Free Press/MCT)

You'd think that with the economy growing, and indeed accelerating in its growth, the GOP would be setting itself up to claim all the credit come November -- rather than reluctantly embracing President Obama's call for a payroll tax cut, while talking down its efficacy as a tonic for the job market.

Instead they're obstinately digging in. And with all of the party's presidential hopefuls lukewarm on the payroll tax cut and leapfrogging each other with plans to cut taxes for wealthy Americans alone, Republicans are inadvertently clarifying for voters what they know to be unpopular economic policies.

"Let's be honest, this is an economic relief package, not a bill that's going to grow the economy and create jobs," said House Speaker John Boehner last week in a statement ahead of the passage of the payroll tax cut deal.

The package itself won a modest majority of Republican votes in the House and a significant minority of Republican votes in the Senate. But both stand in complete agreement with the GOP presidential field on the need to enact large, permanent tax cuts for the highest earners in the country. This is what Mitt Romney refers to as pro-growth tax policy. So to give you a clearer sense of what the GOP would have rather done than renew the payroll tax cut, here's a graphical breakdown.

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Taxes

Senate Democrats Plan To Put Republicans On The Wrong Side Of The Middle Class

Brian Beutler | January 25, 2012, 3:11PM

Senate Democrats are preparing an aggressive legislative agenda to complement the vision President Obama outlined in his State of the Union Address. The goal is to test the idea that the public supports an agenda of aggressive federal action on behalf of the middle class, and that Republicans are locked in a pattern of reactionary opposition, even to popular policies.

The push is premised on the notion that the country has turned the corner on the fights over deficits and the size of government, and that keeping issues of equity and opportunity for the middle class at the center of the national debate will redound to Democrats' political benefit, either by breaking the GOP or by putting them on the wrong side of public opinion.

But in an extremely consequential election year, when consensus becomes an endangered species on Capitol Hill, it will take a groundswell of political pressure to force either party to work with the other on a substantive agenda. So expect the Dems to hawk these issues relentlessly.

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Bernie Sanders

Sen. Sanders: War Is Being Waged On America's Middle Class (VIDEO)

David Taintor | December 6, 2010, 12:15PM

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

In an impassioned Senate floor speech last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said that there is a war being waged on America's "disappearing and shrinking middle class."

"We talk about a lot of things on the floor of the Senate, but somehow we forget to talk about the reality of who is winning in this economy, and who is losing," he said. "And it is very clear to anyone who spends two minutes studying the issue that the people on top are doing extraordinarily well, at the same time as the middle class is collapsing and poverty is increasing."

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