Mitt Romney Fails at Math

I'm watching David Gregory's interview with Mitt Romney on Meet the Press right now and the words that Romney DIDN'T say are the scariest ones. Follow me here for a second:

David Gregory: You've called the debt and our deficit a moral crisis, but in addition to extending the Bush Tax Cuts you want to cut tax rates an additional 20%. You've rejected a 10 to 1 spending ratio when it comes to spending to increasing taxes and yet you want to balance the budget. The math simply doesn't add up, does it?

Mitt Romney: Well, actually it does... if we bring down our top rates and actually go aross the board and bring down rates for everyone in America but also limit deductions and excemptions for people at the high end, why you can keep the progressivity in the code, you can remain revenue neutral, and you create an enormous incentive for growth in the economy.

So, he says he's going to lower taxes on the poor, lower taxes on the middle class, and lower tax rates on the rich but offset those rate reductions by limiting deductions and exceptions... and the whole thing is going to be revenue neutral. Now, I'm pretty good at math, so let's take a look at this: -1 -1 + ( -1 + 1) = 0

Now I may be just be a simple country Hyper-Chicken, but less revenue from the poor and less revenue from the middle class and the same revenue from the rich is not revenue neutral. That's a net loss of revenue. 

It gets worse before it gets better, David Gregory continues..

David Gregory: But you haven't specified where you'd cut loopholes in particular, to make up the savings, because in addition you actually want to increase defense spending, in addition to all of that. 

Mitt Romney: Well, I actually want to maintain defense spending at the current level of GDP.

Let's break there for a moment.. He sounds like he's telling Gregory that he's going to maintain the amount of defense spending (i.e. not increase the budget) but he switches the words and says "at the current level of GDP" which means if GDP grows then defense spending will grow. So he's admitted that his budget plan WILL increase spending.

Romney continues after discussing the military budget for a bit...

Mitt Romney: My own plan, btw, to bring down the rates of taxation while maintaining the revenues that come into the government, is my making sure we don't lower taxes on high income people. We're not going to have high income people pay less of the tax burden than they pay today, that's not what's going to happen. I do want to bring taxes down for middle income people. 

Romney sucks at math. -1 + -1 + 0 = -2... it's not 0.

So, either he's lying when he says it will be revenue neutral or he's lying when he says he won't raise taxes on the Poor and Middle Class while maintaining the same tax burden on the High Income earners. He can't have both be true.

Now let's return to his statement that he would increase defense spending. Even if his impossible-to-be-true statement about taxes is true and revenues are neutral but he increases defense spending then he's increasing the budget deficit not reducing it. 

This is what Bill Clinton was talking about in his speech. These people want to call themselves Fiscally Conservative, but they utterly fail at the basic arithmetic of the budget.

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