Jeff Rosenberg Posts

Mitt Romney absolutely refuses to talk about taxes. It's bad enough that he won't talk about his own taxes, despite speculation that he paid no income taxes for ten years. It's even worse that neither he nor his new running mate is willing to discuss their proposed tax policies. Apparently, Romney's newly-substantive campaign draws the line on laying out any real policies.

Earlier this week, the campaign doubled down on both positions. First, Ann Romney reiterated that her husband still refuses to be open with the voters. The following is best read in a tone dripping with disdain for the peasantry:

"We have been very transparent to what's legally required of us," she said. "There's going to be no more tax releases given."

That's where things stand on Romney's taxes, which is hardly surprising. More surprising is that, after using his veep pick to supposedly steer the campaign towards a clash of budget plans, Romney steadfastly refuses to discuss his tax plan. Here's Romney dodging a simple, easily-anticipated question about his pledge to close tax loopholes:

QUESTION: Specifically what tax loopholes would you close and what exemptions would you eliminate to make the revenue-neutral equation work?

ROMNEY: Simpson-Bowles laid out a formula that shows that you can do just as I described. That you can bring down the rates, limit deductions and exemptions for people at the high end, and with additional growth that comes by virtue of the stimulative action you can reach a balanced budget. I will follow a model similar to Simpson-Bowles and work with Congress to identify which of the alternative methods we should apply to reduce deductions, benefits, and exemptions.

Why won't Romney give us any specifics? It's for the same reason that he won't come clean on his own taxes: The voters won't like the numbers.

If Romney released his taxes, we'd find that he paid little or no income tax for ten years. Similarly, if he released his tax plan, we'd find that it lowers his own taxes and raises taxes for the bottom 95 percent. No wonder he doesn't want us to see.

It's a finance event, not a fund-raiser

-- Romney campaign staff, on Paul Ryan's meeting with billionaire Republican financier Sheldon Adelson.

Kurt Bills, Amy Klobuchar's challenger in the Senate race, just barely managed to win 50 percent of the vote last night, despite having little opposition.

Bills wasn't in any serious danger of losing, because he had multiple challengers splitting the remaining 49 percent of the vote. Still, his pathetic showing was humiliating, to say the least. Conservative activists sure seemed embarrassed by it.

If it's any consolation to Republican activists, it could be worse. In fact, it will be worse in Bills' general-election matchup with Amy Klobuchar. Much, much worse.

Both nationally and here in Minnesota, Republicans insist we need to demolish the social safety net and undo the New Deal because "we can't afford it." At the same time, they're proposing massive tax cuts for the rich. That's exactly what the MNGOP claimed in 2010, and what they'll try to argue again this year. They even shut down the state to ensure that we don't make the rich pay their fair share.

Here's the truth: We could afford to restore our safety net, but we have a revenue problem. That revenue problem is called "tax cuts for the rich." In fact, Minnesota's budget deficit can be blamed almost exclusively on tax cuts for the rich, and it could be fixed by making the rich pay their fair share. After the break, you'll see why.
Conservatives, eager to eliminate the safety net, say that we can't afford social programs anymore. Actually, Minnesota has a revenue problem, not a spending problem. Here's what our revenue problem looks like:

You can see that over the last two decades, our revenues have declined by a few percentage points as a percentage of total personal income. (Data source [XLS])

Where has that decline come from? As it turns out, it's come exclusively from tax cuts for the rich. Here's a chart from the 2011 Tax Incidence Study that shows how taxes for Minnesotans have changed over the past two decades:

They've stayed almost completely stable, except for two changes. The poorest 10 percent now pay much more, and the richest 10 percent now pay less.

That makes the solution pretty simple. If the rich were to go back to paying the same tax rate as you and me, our deficit would disappear.

This November, Minnesotans need to send a message that we want the rich to pay their fair share, and we want to restore the safety net for our most vulnerable citizens. There is absolutely no way to justify our poorest citizens starving, or dying of treatable medical conditions, while the very richest enjoy special tax breaks. Fortunately, once we fix this injustice, meeting our moral obligation to provide a decent safety net should be no problem.

If you believe Minnesota Republicans, they're very concerned about voter fraud. They'd have you believe that their election amendment is only also about providing photo ID, even though it would eliminate same-day registration, end absentee balloting, and force Minnesota to start using "provisional" -- i.e. fake -- ballots. Their amendment will radically overhaul our entire election system, but they'd rather have you just focus on the voter ID portion.

Here's the trouble, though -- voter ID is worthless.  Not only is voter fraud not a problem in Minnesota, but voter ID wouldn't prevent most illegal voting anyway. It would only prevent voter impersonation, in which a voter tries to claim they're somebody else. Wonder how often that's happened in Minnesota? Here's what a new investigation found:

In Minnesota, there have been 10 total cases of reported fraud and no cases of voter impersonation reported since 2000. [Emphasis added]

Exactly zero cases of voter impersonation. So photo ID is worthless (actually, worse than worthless, but that's a whole other post). In reality, it's nothing but a Trojan Horse. A vote for photo ID is also a vote for eliminating same-day registration. It's also a vote for eliminating absentee ballots. And it's also a vote for provisional ballots, which often aren't even counted.

That hardly seems like a worthwhile tradeoff for preventing zero cases of voter fraud.

Hi, everybody! My name is Jeff, and I'm glad to be back at MN Progressive Project. My first post in years went up this morning, but it feels a bit strange to just jump right back in, so I want to take a moment to introduce myself.

I feel like I've come home. Joe got me started blogging back when he ran MN Campaign Report, and I wrote for a while for the then-brand-new MPP when he and Eric joined forces. It's been a long time. Looking back, my last post here before today was all the way back in January 2009. For the last few years, I've been writing at MNpublius.com, but starting today I'm rejoining the fine team here at MPP.

I'm a nerd who loves public policy, but I'm also an unashamed liberal who believes it's high time liberals started fighting back against the conservative machine. That means I'll be contributing a somewhat odd -- but hopefully interesting -- mix of wonkish charts and aggressive class warfare.

I'm excited to be rejoining the MPP community! I hope you'll enjoy reading, and I'm looking forward to your comments.

Thanks to Mitt Romney's choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate, the presidential election now presents a clear choice between two very different visions for the future. That's why it's very important that Democrats stop mincing words about the Ryan-Romney budget. The Ryan-Romney plan would end Medicare, one of the most successful social programs in American history. Democrats haven't been saying that forcefully enough.

The hesitation starts at the top of the ticket. Right after the Ryan pick, I got an email from Team Obama titled FACT CHECK: The Romney-Ryan Budget Would End Medicare As We Know It. Sorry, but that's far too wishy-washy. We need to be bold, direct, and completely confident in our indictment of the Ryan-Romney plan. There is absolutely no question that Ryan and Romney would end Medicare. It wouldn't just end Medicare "as we know it," it would be the end of Medicare, period.

Democrats have been using the new, wishy-washy language ever since Politifact, in an effort to show that they call Democrats out for lying just as often as Republicans, labeled the "ending Medicare" claim a lie last year. Politifact's reasoning, though, was always exceedingly weak. Now that the Ryan budget is essentially on the ballot, the stakes are far higher, and it's time for Democrats to stop tiptoeing around the issue and call a spade a spade.

The fact is, the new "Medicare" proposed by Ryan and Romney bears no resemblance at all to today's Medicare. Medicare is a government-operated, single-payer plan. Under the Ryan-Romney plan, it would be replaced with a privatized voucher program that would not fully cover seniors' insurance needs. The only thing it would retain is the name. But just calling the new private voucher program "Medicare" doesn't mean it's still the same program. Names come cheap; providing proper care for our seniors doesn't.

Obama and the Democrats shouldn't be afraid to point this out. Sure, they'll get asked how they can justify the claim when it's been called a lie.  That's great -- it's an opportunity to explain, frequently and at great length, just what the Ryan-Romney plan would do to seniors. Isn't that exactly what we want?