David Cay Johnston calls Romney's tax plan "G. W. Bush's plan on steroids"
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, Romney’s plan is George W. Bush’s plan on steroids. George W. Bush gave 12.5 percent of his tax cuts to the top 10th of 1 percent. Romney’s plan gives a third of the tax cuts to the top 10th of 1 percent. And Romney’s plan gives 57 percent of the total cuts in his package to the top 1 percent. That’s people who make more than about $400,000 a year. So it’s astonishing how heavily weighted it is to the top. Under his plan, there would be no estate tax and no gift tax, which means that very wealthy families can move money around freely, pass it from one generation to the next. And I believe—and I wrote in my Reuters column—it would lead to dynastic wealth, which is damaging to the idea of a democracy.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And what about the increases to the poorest taxpayers?
DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Well, that’s the really amazing part of Romney’s plan. One of the things that Romney would do—and remember the deriding that’s going on by Republicans of public education, the attacks on teachers, Rick Santorum about misstating what President Obama said and then talking about colleges being snobs. Romney would not continue the principal tax credit that currently benefits poor families trying to get ahead by having one or more children go to college. And he has no plan to replace that. And, of course, we have turned college from an enterprise that was essentially free, at the time that I went to college in the late ’60s and early ’70s, into now an enormous lending business that, at relatively high interest rates, has kept people in heavy debt who are trying to get ahead.
Video and full transcript at:
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/3/1/david_cay_johnston_romneys_tax_plan