What I would do? People ask me, `What would you to get the economy going’? and I say, `well look at what the president’s done, and do the opposite.
That’s Mitt Romney’s new version of his economic plan, via Political Wire.
Let’s see…Barack Obama cut taxes in the stimulus bill; guess Romney would have raised taxes there. He extended Bush-era tax cuts at the end of 2010 — for most of it enthusiastically; he was dragged to extending them for upper-level taxpayers. So I’m not sure whether Romney would end them for everyone, or only for taxpayers who aren’t rich. Maybe a reporter will ask him about it? And then we have the payroll tax cuts more recently. I guess Romney, doing the opposite, would have raised those, too.
It’s also not clear whether keeping interest rates low counts as “what the president’s done” or not, so again one would have to ask Romney whether he would have pushed for high interest rates, too, as many Republicans have advocated in order to prevent the hyperinflation that was going to start in 2010 or whatever. He certainly would have let Detroit die…oh wait, is today Thursday? Not sure what his position on that one is today.
To be fair: he certainly would not have imposed the ACA tax increases that will kick in after a while. Or…I think there was a cigarette tax increase? Yup. So that becomes a tax cut. But outside of that, it’s pretty clear what Mitt Romney would have proposed in 2009 and will be proposing should he be president in 2013: tax increases as far as the eye can see.
[Cross-posted at A plain blog about politics]
