We’re going to be seeing a lot of this for the next seven months: Mitt Romney is “overheard” by reporters explaining new details of his economic plan and a million bloggers immediately pull out their calculators and scream “argh!”
Specifically, Romney suggested that he would be able to pay for his planned 20-percent-tax-cut-for-everyone by eliminating the mortgage tax deduction for second homes as well as deductions for state and property taxes. Matthew Yglesias, Kevin Drum, and James Kwak all quickly pointed out how the numbers don’t add up. Romney’s tax cut proposals still cut far more revenue than his targeted tax code tweaks add to the ledger. That means that under Romney, without extraordinary, economy-killing government spending cuts, the U.S. federal deficit would balloon even faster than it is now.
