Sahil Kapur:
Newt Gingrich: Romney Flip-Flopped On Tax Cuts: Newt Gingrich called out Mitt Romney on Sunday for backing off his promise to cut taxes on the wealthy after winning the Republican nomination. “I think it’s clear he changed,” Gingrich said on NBC’s “Meet The Press” roundtable, admitting that Romney had shifted from wanting to lower taxes on all Americans to promising that his reform plan would not lower taxes paid by the wealthy.
Romney’s pledge is to cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent and recover the lost revenue by closing unnamed credits and deductions for high income earners. The net effect, he says, would be to lower the burden on the middle class and keep effective taxes constant on the rich without increasing the deficit — goals that nonpartisan experts deem mathematically infeasible. In February, during a GOP primary debate, Romney said, “We’re going to cut taxes on everyone across the country by 20 percent, including the top 1 percent.”
On Wednesday, facing down President Obama, he insisted, “I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.”
