Mitt Romney has been forced to admit an
embarrassing truth: His fiscal plan for the country is half-baked.
On CNBC Wednesday morning, Mitt Romney was given a breather from political questions about his appeal to GOP primary voters and allowed to discuss substance. When it was all over, he probably wished it had been the other way around.
Brushing back a question about independent analyses, which conclude his plan will blow a huge hole in the budget, Romney accidentally hinted at a key fact about his fiscal policy: He left out all the hard stuff.
“I think it’s interesting for the groups to try and score it because it can’t be scored because those kind of details have to be worked out with Congress and we have a wide array of options,” Romney said.
But what he does know, of course, is that taxes have to be lowered. It's the tax portion of Romney's plan that is totally lacking, according to the
nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.
Noting this, Jonathon Bernstein at the Plum Line picks up a theme about how "Republicans, for all their talk about deficits, don’t seem to assess their policy proposals as if changing revenues and spending has anything to do with federal budget deficits."
That's because Republicans don't care about deficits, whether it's Mitt Romney or Rep. Paul Ryan or any other Republican in any position to make fiscal policy. The deficit is only a political cudgel for them to use against Democrats, not something they really care about excepting the extent to which they can use it to destroy entitlement programs. But the only fiscal policy they care about is cutting taxes for rich people.