I guess it's a function of inflation and/or a numbness to reality but the rhetoric about money isn't what is used to be. Back in the day, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen (whose name probably means nothing to the shallow commentators who think political history started with Ronald Reagan) is alleged to have said, " A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money". Dirksen, who served in the 1950s and 1960s (and probably could never win a Republican primary in today's wing-nut world), would have been a piker by today's standards of throwing around figures without regard to reality. Which brings me to the Romney lie about taxes--which the president got right, admittedly, in a clumsy way, but most liberal-progressive pundits are getting wrong.
The focus on Romney's lie about the alleged $5 trillion tax cut--which he now denies he supports--misses the more important point.
It's $10 trillion.
TEN TRILLION DOLLARS.
Courtesy of the Citizens for Tax Justice, the facts please:
Early in the debate Obama explained that Romney’s “central economic plan calls for a $5 trillion tax cut – on top of the extension of the Bush tax cuts.” Romney denied this, saying “I don’t have a $5 trillion cut. I don’t have a tax cut of the scale that you’re talking about.” Romney added that his plan would not “reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people” and that it would “provide tax relief to people in the middle class.”
The truth is that Romney isn’t proposing a $5 trillion tax cut, he’s proposing a $10 trillion tax cut. As Obama pointed out during the debate, Romney is proposing new tax cuts costing $5 trillion over a decade (according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center) on top of the $5.3 trillion cost of extending all of the Bush tax cuts.[emphasis added]
In fairness, CTJ has been also critical--as I am--of the president's tax plan because it gives away far too much money to people who don't need it, and should not get it if the point is to make sure we have funding for...Big Bird...
But, for now, keep in mind the number of Romney's tax cut and keep repeating it:
TEN TRILLION DOLLARS.
TEN TRILLIONS DOLLARS
TEN TRILLIONS DOLLARS