WaPo Editorial: Paul Ryan’s budget flimflam
By Editorial Board, Published: October 1
PAUL RYAN wants to tell you about the wonders of the 20 percent cut in tax rates that he and running mate Mitt Romney propose. He doesn’t want to tell you how much it will cost. On Sunday, Fox News’s Chris Wallace asked the Republican vice presidential nominee this basic question four times, citing projections of a 10-year cost of $5 trillion. Four times, Mr. Ryan dodged, hiding behind a flimsy scaffolding of pseudo-wonkiness. “Look, I won’t give you a baseline with these because that’s what a lot of this is about,” he said.
The $5 trillion figure derives from an estimate by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center that the Romney tax cuts — without base-broadening offsets — would reduce revenue by $456 billion in 2015. Multiply by 10, and account for costs rising each year, and the $5 trillion estimate is probably low.
If Mr. Ryan wants to hide behind jargon, here’s a relevant point. “Baseline” refers to the assumptions made about the budget if the Romney-Ryan tax cut isn’t enacted. The Tax Policy Center’s baseline is favorable to the Republican plan because it assumes the extension of all Bush tax cuts. A more realistic, or at least equally plausible, set of assumptions would add another $1 trillion to its cost. Mr. Ryan flings about terms such as “baseline” to obscure that painful fact.
The Republican ticket says it could pay for its tax cut by eliminating loopholes. But the biggest loopholes are popular: the exclusion from taxation of employer-sponsored health insurance and the deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes. Pressed by the assiduous Mr. Wallace about which of these Mr. Ryan would limit, the nominee pleaded a lack of time. “It would take me too long to go through all of that,” he said.
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