Samuel Brown, William Gale, and Adam Looney:
[N]ot a single author [critiquing us] has offered a plan that generates sufficient revenue to pay for all of Romney’s (non-corporate) tax cuts, exempts households with income below $200,000 from higher taxation, and is administratively feasible. None of the responses actually refutes our study – that is, none of them shows that our conclusions are wrong, given what Romney laid out as goals. Rather, the responses either shift the goal posts – by focusing on tax increases on different households or changing the baseline – fail to raise sufficient revenue to offset all the tax cuts Romney has proposed; raise taxes on saving and investment, in violation of Romney’s goal of promoting these activities; or do a combination of these things.
Third, Romney subsequently described several ideas to help pay for some of his proposed tax cuts. This was a welcome update to the discussion, but the ideas (which Romney described but did not formally endorse) would not generate sufficient revenue to pay for the tax cuts…
