After months of calling Mitt Romney a heartless money-bagged scrooge with plans to raise taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, now Democrats in Washington are saying something very different…Mitt Romney’s plan makes sense.
From the New York Times this morning:
WASHINGTON — With both parties positioning for difficult negotiations to avert a fiscal crisis as Congress returns Tuesday for its lame-duck session, Democrats are latching on to an idea floated by Mitt Romney to raise taxes on the rich through a hard cap on income-tax deductions.
The proposal by Romney, the Republican presidential nominee, was envisioned to help pay for an across-the-board income-tax cut, a move ridiculed by President Barack Obama as window dressing to a “sketchy deal.” But many Democrats now see it as an important element of a potential deficit-reduction agreement — and one they can claim to be bipartisan.
The cap — never fully detailed by Romney — is similar to a longstanding proposal by Obama to limit income-tax deductions to 28 percent, even for affluent households that pay a 35 percent rate. But a firm cap of around $35,000 would hit the affluent even harder than Obama’s proposal, which has previously gotten nowhere in Congress.
“Let’s just say there’s a renewed interest,” said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. “Part of it is people reflecting on Obama’s proposal, but when Romney said what he said, it just added fuel.”
“I was a little surprised Romney proposed a dollar cap when he did it,” Conrad added.
A key difference between Obama’s and Romney’s plans is Obama’s planned on limiting even charitable deductions, which would inevitably screw a good portion of America’s charities, colleges and non-profits who rely heavily on the wealthy to donate in exchange for a lessened tax burden.
Beyond the fact that it was Obama’s proposal that was demonstrably bad for those that help poor people, we can’t help but marvel at the sheer brazenness of Democrats in Washington being such disingenuous, dishonest scoundrels.
They slammed Romney’s plan as the worst economic plan since Mao’s Great Leap Forward, and only days after the dust has settled from the election are already looking to adopt it.
Kind of like when Obama slammed Hillary in the primary over the individual mandate and then made it the centerpiece of Obamacare, eh?