For years, Mitt Romney has been telling Americans "I love data." As he bragged to the Wall Street Journal:
"I used to call it 'wallowing in the data.' Let me see the data. I want to see the client's data, the competitors' data. I want to see all the data."
But the man who would be America's 45th president doesn't want voters to see any of his. In early 2007, the Massachusetts governor's aides scrubbed his administration's computer records as he was heading out the door in Boston. Determined to avoid becoming the poster boy for gaming the IRS, Romney's tax returns remain a mystery because, as he put it, "I don't put out which tooth paste I use either." As for own tax plan, Romney boasts that "it can't be scored" because the "details will have to be worked out with Congress." As for which tax breaks he would end to offset the $5 trillion in revenue his tax cut scheme would drain from the U.S. Treasury, Mitt Romney won't name a single one in public. Otherwise, he told the
Wall Street Journal last year, "you're gonna get hit by the demagogues in the general election."
But what Mitt Romney calls demagogues, most Americans call "voters." And despite Romney's perpetual--and perpetually cynical--efforts to keep his data secret, on the eve of the 2012 election there are some things we do know. Here, then, is Mitt Romney by the numbers.
$45,000,000. How much of his own money Mitt Romney spent during his failed 2008 bid for the White House, prompting son Matt to declare, "I don't ever expect to see any of that anyways."
$80,000,000. Estimated amount the Romney heirs will inherit if their father becomes president and succeeds in eliminating the estate tax.
$100,000,000. Estimated value of Romney's tax-free trust fund for his five sons.
$10,000,000. Amount the Romneys' blind trust invested in son Tagg's private equity firm, Solamere Capital, supporting Mitt's advice to college students to "borrow money if you have to from your parents, start a business."
0. Number of Ann and Mitt Romney's five sons who served in the military, men their father said in 2007 instead "are showing support for our nation [by] helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president."
5.5. Number of years Mitt Romney received deferments from military service in Vietnam to pursue his college studies and church mission in France.
1963. The year Mitt Romney's "dear, close relative" Ann Keenan died as the result of an illegal abortion, prompting Mitt in 1994 to declare his "unwavering" support for Roe v. Wade.
0. The number of exceptions to the abortion ban called for by the so-called Human Life Amendment endorsed by the 2012 Republican Platform and state "personhood" initiatives Romney supports.
3. The number of Tagg Romney's children resulting from in vitro fertilization, a procedure which would likely be illegal under state "personhood" initiatives his father supports.
$150. Value of the check Ann Romney wrote to Planned Parenthood during a 1994 fundraiser she and her husband attended, which when publicly revealed in 2007 led GOP White House hopeful Mitt Romney to claim "her positions are not terribly relevant for my campaign."
$0. Amount of federal funding President Romney would provide to Planned Parenthood and the entire Title X program for women's health.
72,000,000. Estimated number of people in America without health insurance if President Romney succeeds in repealing Obamacare and cutting Medicaid spending by over a third and giving what remains as block grants to the states.
2. Percentage of Massachusetts residents without health insurance.
27. Percentage of Texas residents without health insurance.
6,000,000. Number of senior citizens who rely on Medicaid to help pay for nursing home care.
$2,200. According to the CBO, the average increase per year for seniors under the Romney-Ryan Medicare voucher plan by 2030.
$4.1 billion. Total amount saved by 5.4 million American seniors as a result of Obamacare's closing of the Medicare prescription drug "donut hole," which would be reopened by Mitt Romney.
$716 billion. Ten-year amount Mitt Romney wrongly says President Obama "raided from Medicare," funds actually used to help expand benefits and extend life of the program's Trust Fund.
$716 billion. Ten-year amount taken from Medicare by Paul Ryan's House GOP budget to help fund a new tax cut windfall for the wealthy.
98. Percentage of House Republicans and GOP senators who voted for the Ryan budget.
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47. Out of 50, Massachusetts' ranking for job creation during Gov. Romney's tenure.
4. Number of the top 10 most profitable deals under Bain Capital CEO Romney in which the firm eventually declared bankruptcy. (In 2007, candidate Romney declared that taking a big payment from a company that later failed "would make me sick, sick at heart.")
1 million. Estimated number of American jobs that would have been lost if the United States followed Mitt Romney's advice and "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt."
$15 million. Minimum amount Mitt and Ann Romney's blind trust made from investment in Delphi car parts, a beneficiary of $12.9 billion total in the federal auto rescue Romney opposed.
14 percent. Mitt Romney's actual federal tax rate for 2010 and 2011, lower than many middle-class families.
"45 or 50 percent." What Mitt Romney says his tax rate really is, once his charitable contributions and so-called double-taxation of corporate profits are taken into account.
2009. The year that the IRS established its amnesty program for Americans using secret Swiss bank accounts to evade federal taxes.
2009. The year Mitt Romney's blind trust closed his $3 million Swiss bank account.
2010. The first of two years of federal tax returns Mitt Romney made public.
23. The number of years of tax returns Mitt Romney provided the McCain campaign in 2008 in his failed attempt to earn the vice presidential slot on the GOP ticket.
$100,000. Amount the state of Massachusetts paid in January 2007 to replace computers scrubbed of records by Romney aides.
"80 to 90 percent." The percentage of "us" Mitt Romney says are middle class.
$5 trillion. The 10-year cost of the Romney tax plan.
$2 trillion. The 10-year cost of additional defense spending if Romney keeps his promise to raise the Pentagon's budget to no less than 4 percent of GDP.
$1 trillion. Total annual cost of all federal tax deductions and loopholes.
0. The number of tax deductions and loopholes Mitt Romney has publicly committed to ending to offset the cost of his tax plan.
5 percent. The percentage of all American taxpayers whose taxes will be cut by the Romney tax plan (according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center).
95 percent. The percentage of all American taxpayers whose taxes will be raised by the Romney tax plan (according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center).
$54 billion. Estimated amount of revenue lost to the United States Treasury by the elimination of the estate tax for just 33 billionaire donors to Mitt Romney's Super PAC.
9. Number of months before his birth that the 1946 Detroit Golden Jubilee occurred, an event Mitt Romney said he attended with his father.
0. The actual number of times Mitt Romney actually "saw" his father march with Martin Luther King, Jr.
1978. The year Mitt Romney "pulled over and literally wept" when he heard on the car radio that his Mormon church would allow African-Americans to join the clergy.
2002. The year Mitt Romney said in 2002 he left Boston-based Bain Capital, in order to meet residency requirement to run for governor of Massachusetts.
1999. The year Mitt Romney said in 2012 he left Boston-based Bain Capital, in order to evade responsibility for many of the private equity firm's job-killing investments.
24. Length in hours of Mitt Romney's 2007 crusade demanding pension funds disinvest from companies doing business with Iran, which ended after it was revealed that Bain had investments in companies doing business with Iran.
2011. Year Mitt Romney first claimed that "other presidents and other candidates, like myself, would do exactly the same thing" by ordering the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan.
2007. Year Mitt Romney said, "I do not concur in the words of Barack Obama in a plan to enter an ally of ours" in order to kill Osama Bin Laden, a man about whom Romney previously concluded, "It's not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person."
12 million. Number of jobs Mitt Romney says he will create by the end of 2016.
12 million. Number of jobs forecasters including Moody's Analytics and Macroeconomic Advisers say current policies create by 2016 anyway.
-1.9 million. Job losses the Economic Policy Institute estimates will result through 2014 if Romney implements his budget plan.
2006. Year Romney responded "aw, geez" when informed by Boston Globe reporters that undocumented workers were landscaping his Belmont, Massachusetts, estate.
2011. Year Mitt Romney told Rick Perry, "We went to the company and we said, look, you can't have any illegals working on our property. I'm running for office, for Pete's sake, we can't have illegals."
$10,000. Amount Mitt Romney bet Rick Perry that he had not called Massachusetts health care reform a model for the nation in his book, No Apology.
For more background and sources, see: