At last week's vice presidential debate, after Paul Ryan mentioned his ticket's tax-cut plan, moderator Martha Raddatz asked the congressman a pointed question: "Well, let's talk about this 20 percent. You have refused, again, to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics? Or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?"
Ryan, true to form, hedged. Raddatz added, "No specifics, again," which the Republican responded to with no details at all.
The issue came up yesterday on "Fox News Sunday," with Chris Wallace posing a similar question to Romney campaign advisor Ed Gillespie.
Towards the end of the clip, you'll see the host and the surrogate get into a mini-debate over the ideology of the American Enterprise Institute -- which matters, but is tangential to the two main points here.
The first is the candy vs. spinach question.
"Ryan is saying, we don't want to get hemmed in. Let's leave it to negotiations with congress to get into the details. Here's my question. Why is it all right to tell voters about the candy -- hey, everybody is going to get a 20% tax cut, cut in their tax rates, but let's not tell them about the spinach, which is you're going to lose some deductions?"
Gillespie noted that the campaign has talked in broad generalities about eliminating unspecified deductions, but therein lies the point. When it comes to tax cuts, Romney/Ryan will give you all kinds of specific details -- they know exactly how much they want to cut income taxes, corporate tax rates, capital gains taxes, and the estate tax. For a campaign that prefers to be vague, promising to work out the particulars later, Romney/Ryan has no trouble at all spelling out all the lovely tax cuts they intend to implement -- i.e., the candy.
It's the other side of the ledger -- that darned spinach -- they don't want to talk about. The problem is the Republican campaign tries to present this as somehow virtuous -- they'll outline ambiguous principles and then work out the details with Congress. But that makes Wallace's question all the more significant: why are details good when Romney's handing out goodies, while details are bad when talking about how to pay for them?
Which leads us to the second issue.
GILLESPIE: Six different studies have said this is entirely doable.
WALLACE: Those are questionable, some of them are blogs, some of them are from the AEI, which is hardly an independent group.
Putting aside, for a moment, who's right about AEI, the "six studies" issue has become incredibly important. Romney/Ryan is desperately trying to tell voters that they can slash taxes, increase defense and entitlement spending, and reduce the deficit, all at the same time. People with calculators keep saying, "Um, isn't that nuts?" to which Republicans reply, "No, we have six studies that say it's possible."
But it's really not. Josh Barro had a terrific item on this late last week.
The Romney campaign sent over a list of the studies, but they are perhaps more accurately described as "analyses," since four of them are blog posts or op-eds. I'm not hating -- I blog for a living -- but I don't generally describe my posts as "studies."
None of the analyses do what Romney's campaign says: show that his tax plan is sound. I'm going to walk through them individually...
Barro scrutinizes all six "studies," and the piece is worth your time. Bottom line: common sense tells us the Romney/Ryan plan doesn't add up, and the campaign's support materials don't help the Republicans' case.
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Follow up question to Ryan: Why do you think Congress will come up with solutions? What exactly is your solution to partisan gridlock that you think will allow for such drastic solutions needed to fulfill your pipedream?
Another follow-up question to Romney/Ryan: Why do you believe returning to the profligate Bush era policies will return this nation to "prosperity", after all it didn't work under Dubya?
"six studies", indeed.
Some of the geezers assembled here can remember cigarette ads on the TeeVee.
With an actor in white, wearing head mirror and stethoscope for authenticity, saying, " 5 out of 6 doctors recommend . . ."
and 6 out of 6 people with functioning frontal lobes know that Romney and Ryan are lying sacks of shMitt
I think the "six studies" line, like Romney's claim in the debate that there was a study that said that Obama's plan will raise taxes $4000 (AEI again, unsurprisingly) are intended less to convince people than to undermine Obama's ability to call on independent fact-checkers. Being able to say "these experts say your plan is BS" instead of "I say your plan is obviously BS" is a useful tool. If wingnut welfare "think" tanks put out enough BS studies, it can undermine the whole idea of independent analysis in the minds of voters.
As snug as a bug in a rug Wallace was
Wallace was as snug as a bug in a rug
Until the days of Romney and Ryan
The days of Romney and Ryan
Where the bugs will have what from the table falls
Trickles and treats !
Yes in the Days of Romney and Ryan
There will be trickles down the merry round
With Dan up there- they're leaving things up to what has been one of the worst Congresses in American history? and trust that batch of goons and clowns is going to come up with a decent, workable, well reasoned plan?
*shakes head*
Here's a follow up question for everybody: Aside from the TeaHadists and Teavangelicals (who think Mitt will allow them to turn this country into a theocracy), and the so-called free market advocates (who think government shouldn't regulate predatory businesses), why would anyone vote for Mitt, who proudly proclaims that he won't tell you what he stands for?
This is, after all, a close race. Are there that many religious zealots and Ayn Rand worshippers in this country? (If so, I'm afraid we deserve what we get.) Are there that many racists? (There are still more than enough, but not enough to account for the anticipated slim margin between victory & defeat.) Does MItt have charm and personal appeal? (Even his supporters admit that he's only a little more likable than a pet rock.)
Why are so many people supporting candidates who take the Fifth when asked what they will specifically do?
They've been convinced everything was peaches and free handguns right up to the nanosecond Obama was inaugurated, if not elected. If they acknowledge that problems existed before "the Other" became Prez, they'll insist they were more manageable and Obama made them worse while simultaneously making America less American.
If you have to ask who's been convincing them, you haven't been paying attention. But they're the same people who also keep insisting Obama's not allowed to brag about any of his successes. The stimulus either didn't work, or it didn't work well enough and never you mind why we didn't do more to help the President make a stimulus that would work. If Obama had let Detroit go bankrupt, the private sector would have saved it and never you mind no private institution was willing to save it. If Obama had let healthcare insurance alone, the private sector would've worked itself out and never you mind that it's had decades to work itself out and hasn't. He didn't personally kill bin Laden so don't crow about that, boy. He can't brag about his accomplishments as a young man, because it was all because of affirmative action.e can't talk about his religion because we all know he's a Mooslim...
OK, let's go out there and have a good debate, good exchange of ideas. And keep it honest.
Because he:
@ DC Sessions - In other words you are saying vote for Mitt because he is a white man.
(I am assuming you were not espousing those as your reasons, but what you can decipher from tea party land)
I hope that was sarcasm...
Alas, Poe's Law confirmed again.
Who knew that people might object to 'pink slime' in their burger until they were told it was in their burger. Romney/ Ryan blowing smoke up the collective American ass since 2012.
I was thinking about this old Python Sketch whilst getting barraged with
Mitt commercials telling me how his tax plan is going to help the middle
class (what's the tax plan Mitt )or that he is going to create 12
million jobs (How Mitt?) I have a theory and my theory is.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOzVkSFnKxI
Twelve million jobs is what is ordinariy created without a end game capitalist closure sewing up all those loose dollars .
I just hope Obama is taking notes so he can say it loud and proud at the next debate, "folks, the numbers don't add up!"
It wasn't that long ago that people called the lefties ratical. If Romney/ Ryan win the race, there's no telling how their radical policies will effect us.
How about these numbers, the 47% Romney kicked in the head and at least 40% of them will vote for him.
Very sad situation.
Just want to point out again that in the Biden/Ryan debate, when talking about the R/R tax plan, Ryan said "Start with the wealthy..." In other words, their plan apparently cuts rates for the wealthy by 20% first - not all of us at once.
Something tells me that "further analysis" would result in the tax breaks stopping before getting to the middle and lower classes; they'd figure out that "America just can't afford to cut taxes further." But the rich would get theirs.
Sad thing is, there is NO candy for the middle class only the spinach.
Mungo only spinach in the candy of life
this comment FTW!!
This is not about candy and spinach. This is about winners and losers. ALL Republican tax "reform" of the last 25 years can be characterized as "a shift, not a gift" for the middle class. In other words, they move the bulk of the tax burden down the income scale.
Romney/Ryan are willing to identify the "shiftors." They are unwilling to identify the "shaftees" for obvious political reasons. Romney/Ryan tax stuff is snake oil. Treat it as such.
You got that right!
Romney/Ryan - Snake-oil Merchants?? ....please....you'll upset all the kiddies viewing FOX "News" Nation!!!!!!!!!!
Their eardrums may rupture!!
Romney/Ryan will hopefully lose because of issues like this. Please America see through these charlatans.
Another wonderful opportunity for the Obama campaign (and even BHO himself in the debate forums) to hit back directly on Romney's "six studies" comment. "Hey folks, it turns out of the six studies Governor Romney talks about that support his tax plan, 5 are blogs and op-eds. Now I like reading blogs and op-eds, but shouldn't we be asking a bit more from our government?"
Soup Nazi: "NO CANDY-SOUP FOR YOU!!"
Sad, but true that nearly 40% of that 47% will still probably vote Romney/Ryan.
Amazing the number of low/no information voters in this country. (Thanks FOX "News"/Rush Limbaugh dittoheads.)
Perhaps 40% of those 47% that you allude to aspire to be rich some day too. If you elect Obama, that won't happen. He doesn't want to help pull up people to a higher standard of living, he wants to take from those who have made it and bring them down to a lower level. When government provides, it is to a minimun standard of living for all. Look at the countries that have a similar system in place. All are the same and all have a very minimal standard of living. They all just barely get by if that. A quote from a very wise president Lincoln " You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by encouraging class hatred. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn. You cannot build character and courage by taking away man's initiative and independence. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves." President Obama who has likened himself to Lincoln on occasions is no Lincoln. He is the exact opposite. The vision of Lincoln applies today. No one can dispute the fact that our country has evolved into one that wants the government to do all. Our strong American spirit that led us to be the strongest, richest most resilient nation on earth has deteriorated to being much less. The democratic party has led us down that path. I long for the days of the JFK democrats but it is unrecognizable in the party of today. It does not encourage people to aspire to higher, more lofty goals. SAD!!
Like Denmark, Sweden, and Norway?
For those not following the conversation, the Nordic countries I mention have higher median standards of living than the USA, similar if not higher per-capita GDP, similar if not higher rates of GDP growth, and all of them have higher intergenerational upward social mobility.
What the USA has over them is the ability of the wealthy to guarantee their children safety from competition by those who started off with less.
@jes33,
Ryan tried to bring up JFK in relation to tax cuts increasing revenue. Of course what JFK got rid of was a 90% tax bracket. Yes, at that rate, you can get more revenue by lowering rates. That's not always true, otherwise we'd have infinite revenue with zero taxes.
But more to you point, it is a lie to suggest that the government is getting bigger or spending more. It's not. The deficit is going up because revenues are down, and that's the way it needs to be for now. If you are worried about us ending up like another country, look at Greece and Spain, whose austerity measures are shrinking their economy to the point that more and more people are out of work at the same time that the safety net is falling apart.
The point is, there's a balance that is corrrect. We can debate about whether taxes should be 20% or 30% of GDP. No one is suggesting it should be 50%, but the GOP would like it to be 0%, and that's not reasonable.
My question is why is such a large portion of the electorate willing to let people get away with things like this? I mean seriously, these are men running for the highest office in the land and arguably thee most powerful position in the world and somehow the people who are charged with the responsibility of vetting the ideas and policy positions of these men (namely us as in "we the people") are willing to let them be carnival barkers selling stuff that at a basic level we know is going to give us a bellyache.
The Tea Party that loudly insists that they are the "Spinach" Party keeps accusing the left of wanting nothing but candy while simultaneously stuffing themselves at the defence contractor desert bar. They are essentially making the case Bill Cosby made for feeding his kids chocolate cake for breakfast.
To be fair the Left is just as bad. Telling us things that come from the progressive pantry like some kind of social "Arugula" that a large portion of the country has never heard of, innately distrusts because it sounds vaguely foreign and doesn't understand, beyond the promise that its supposed to be "Good for us".
The point being America has no genuine idea of what anyone running for office actually wants to make for dinner but we are willing to let them run the kitchen because we don't like to cook.
(And with that I think we have successfully beaten this metaphor into cube steak)
I read an interesting article last week that was explaining that candidates that don't give specifics fare better than those that do. Why? Well if you give generalized answers to every questions, and don't fill in the blanks, you leave the blanks to be filled in by each individual voter as they see fit. Mitt doesn't say where he is going to cut so that every rich voter can assume he will cut middle class deductions and every middle class voter can assume he will cut the wealthy's deductions. It makes perfect sense. Obama is doing this as well, he is just getting less flack since he hasn't put forward a tax plan based in fictional math land.
Mitt Romney isn't the etch-a-sketch candidate, he is the playdoh (sp?) candidate - form him in whatever image you see fit, as he has only given you a basic shape structure. This way you can vote for the person you have imaged out of your own mind, and can swallow that pill on Nov 6th. The same goes for their strategy to define Obama as an "other" that has been going on since he was elected. I mean who could ever vote for someone who lived in a foreign country?
The answer to your first sentence question Dragoon21b is: the press.
To say that it's the press is to easy an answer. The only crime the news media is guilty of is in essence selling us "Junk food" information. Stuff that has been heavily processed treated with colorful dyes to make it atraactive and cut into easy to swollow portions. The problem is that we as consumers don't question it's relevant nutritional content. We have effectively become at least politically intellectual "couch potatoes".
Like Bolbis pointed out in general, we make broad assumptions based not as much on fact as much as what we want to hear. When political figures tell us things in such broad general terms internally our brains instinctively fill in the blanks with what we assume are the right answers, or at least the right answers for us, and pat ourselves on the back for it.
The problem isn't that there isn't any thing good to eat it's that we keep raiding the fridge for the Ben & Jerrys
Hmmmm....."milk before meat"??
candy and spinach are great talking point metaphors
The post is completely perceptive, Steve, and I think you're completely right, abstractexpressionist... I was thinking exactly the same thing (and have been) regarding 'milk before meat,' which is one of the strategies used by the Mormon church and its members to recruit new members, and which boils down to giving them all of the appealing things the church can offer (a sense of belonging, community, etc.) before ever giving them any details that really show what the church is about or actually believes, much less what's expected of the person who's being recruited as a member of the church... so that, ultimately, the person ends up (in an ideal situation for the Mormon church) committing to the church before realizing what they're actually in for, and can then, as a result, be manipulated into following the church's rules, meeting excessive requests for tithing, etc., and even manipulated into remaining with the church, etc., etc., etc., based on the agreement they initially made (albeit without any of the info that would've helped them know to run in the other direction instead). And the church then so completely frowns upon any interactions and socializing with others who aren't Mormon (supposedly because they aren't among the 'chosen,' and could be either unwitting and/or active representatives of the 'Adversary,' etc.), that, ideally, the member will (following the church's preferences, encouragement and prompting) sever ties with all family and friends who are non-Mormon without ever realizing how they're being misled and manipulated (and ultimately lose connections outside to the point that they'd feel they had nowhere to go, even if they ever did decide to try leaving). It's appeared that Mitt Romney and his campaign have been attempting to use the same set-up in recruiting voters throughout the election, who so desperately want a Republican in office, that they are currently completely willing to sign on to whatever they're offered, accepting it as truth as they've been continually told by people that Romney-Ryan are 'good' people in a moral sense (which is, at least, debatable... though that's tricky to say without making others completely defensive). But a google search or a stop at sites of those who have left the Mormon church, or who have ended up excommunicated by it, will give tons more details about what comes after you sign on... and how difficult it then becomes to get out of it, or to hold anyone within the church accountable for literally anything they've espoused... or even to expect that they keep any promises made, as suddenly the member can be deemed 'not worthy' of the benefits that have formerly been promised. Also, there is a pattern and absolutely humongous history of lying in the Mormon church that many who are exmormon have also written about, where a lie isn't considered a wrong if it ultimately contributes to gaining something 'good' (as in gaining or keeping members, etc.). All extremely interesting given the way Mitt operates, huh? Continue wishing more people knew... from the lack of specifics, to the fear that's being generated regarding the 'other' to the lies... the parallels are really obvious... you just have to know about Mormonism (and/or controlling and emotionally abusive behavior).
I would say that both political parties are guilty of this candy before spinach argument. Romney is attacked more for it because his math so blatantly does not work, as this site as gone over and over these past few months. Obama is guilty of the same gosh darn thing. One might want to ask him why raising the taxes on just those making over $250,000 is suddenly going to fix our financial situation. It is not. It is just a start. To be honest, something like 3/4 of our national budget is taken up by defense spending, medicare and medicaid. Everything else falls into a quarter of the budget. To be fair, defense spending will go down a little bit once the Afghanistan War is in the bag, but it will still be a huge part of our budget. Medicare and Medicaid need some serious rehabilitation and those will be HARD choices that must be dealt with in the next ten years or so. What I find completely depressing is that the obvious compromises open to politicians here are not being explored. That deal Obama almost had hammered out with Boehner would have been a really good start. Sigh. Oh well. I have lost most of my hope that no matter who is voted into the president-slot will be able to accomplish a thing. I sure do hope the government proves me wrong, but I just have very little faith. I do think that if they just continue to pass the ball down the road, that they should not be paid a cent in tax payer money because they are not working for the tax payers by ignoring these huge fiscal issues. Can that be a law- if you do not pass a budget for that fiscal year, you don't get paid. Period. That would probably motivate the stupid Congress.