Romney Dodges the Facts

I noted yesterday the many lies that Mitt Romney told during the first presidential debate - 27 by last count - and fortunately some in the media are slamming him for both his dishonesty and for the ruinous consequences of his tax plan that he lied about as well during the debate.  The man is a pathological liar and flip flops on his positions so often and so sharply it is nothing sort of a miracle that he doesn't have whip lash.  The Washington Post's main editorial goes after this sorry excuse of a man in today's issue of that paper.  Here are excerpts:

Republican nominee Mitt Romney has a plan to make it [the U.S. budget deficit] worse.  To understand that harsh assessment, you have to spend a few minutes with some facts that Mr. Romney did his best to obscure Wednesday.

“First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut,” he said.

In fact, Mr. Romney has proposed lowering income tax rates, abolishing the estate tax and making other changes that would cost $5 trillion over 10 years. When he says he has no such plan, he means that he intends to make up for the lost revenue by closing loopholes — what’s benignly known as “broadening the base.” Moreover, he says he can close so many loopholes for rich people that the middle class will end up paying less.

But even if you close every rich person’s loophole, you don’t save enough money to do everything Mr. Romney wants to do. The Republican cites studies that he says prove that wrong, but when you look closely, they prove him wrong. For example, Harvard economist (and Romney adviser) Martin Feldstein showed that you could pay for Mr. Romney’s tax cut by taking away deductions — mortgage interest, charitable, state and local tax — from households making more than $100,000. But then Mr. Romney said he considers households earning up to $250,000 to be middle class. So the math collapses again.

Mr. Romney’s plan is irresponsible, even if he could pay for it. The bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, which he chastised Mr. Obama for not endorsing, concluded that the country cannot solve its fiscal problem without raising revenue and cutting spending. 

An op-ed column in the Washington Post also looks at the factual dishonesty of Mr. Romney.  Here are highlights:

The Republican nominee produced a rare presidential smile when he spoke of being the father of five boys and, therefore, “used to people saying something that’s not always true, but just keep on repeating it and ultimately hoping I’ll believe it.” Yet Romney was the ultimate practitioner of this repeated-enough tactic, especially on the topic of his plan to cut personal income tax rates by 20 percent.

Romney waved away any questions about how to fill the $5 trillion hole with airy promises of curtailed deductions, unspecified, and economic growth, assumed. Reputable analyses show this is not feasible without raising taxes on the middle class? “There are all these studies out there,” Romney said, waving them away. But facts are stubborn things.

Asked what he would cut, Romney was reduced, once again, to citing Big Bird. “I’m sorry, Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” he told moderator Jim Lehrer. Amount of federal spending on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in fiscal year 2013? A whopping $445 million. Million, with an M. Chump-change cuts like this can hardly be taken seriously.

Romney was blatantly dishonest at numerous points. He said the new Medicare payment board would “tell people ultimately what treatments they’re going to receive,” when the statute specifically prohibits such judgments. He said reelecting Obama would mean “dramatic” and “devastating” military cuts — when those are called for in the to-be-avoided-at-all-costs sequester that Romney’s running mate voted for.