Paul Ryan’s Middle-Class Tax Hike

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In Paul Ryan’s budget roadmap, he lays out a “goal” of reducing the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 25 percent. That’s a big tax cut for the rich! Is it possible to do this while (a) keeping total tax revenue the same and (b) not raising taxes on the middle class to make up for it?

You may recall that we had this argument during the 2012 campaign, when Mitt Romney insisted he could do this by closing various loopholes but refused to say which loopholes he would close. That didn’t stop America’s tax analysts from digging into the numbers, though, and they concluded that his plan was impossible. The arithmetic just didn’t work. And since Ryan’s plan is even more aggressive than Romney’s, there’s really no chance it will work either. If Ryan really wants to cut the top rate to 25 percent, then one way or another, the middle class is going to pay more.

Greg Sargent says Democrats are salivating at this thought:

I’m told that national Democrats are planning to mount a major campaign to hammer Republican candidates — particularly ones in swing areas — over a specific aspect of the Paul Ryan budget: The possibility that it could result in middle class tax hikes.

….When Romney found himself caught in this trap, it was devastating for him, because it perfectly laid bare the core priorities animating the GOP. It showed that the party was so committed to reducing tax rates on the rich — already a deeply unpopular position — that it was willing to further burden the middle class if necessary to do so, which would have been even more unpopular.

….And so, Dems are hoping to use the Ryan budget to ensnare Republican candidates, particularly ones in marginal districts, in the same trap that tripped up Romney. Only this time it could potentially be worse. After all, last time Republicans had just routed Democrats in the 2010 elections, and could plausibly argue that core questions about tax fairness, the size of government, and who should pay for it hadn’t been settled by the electorate. But now Republicans have committed themselves to this same set of policies and priorities after running on them in a presidential race and multiple Senate and Congressional elections and losing decisively across the board.

Well, we’ll see. It was never clear to me just how devastating this really was for Romney, though. The problem is that there’s nothing concrete to point to. The “middle-class tax increase” is the result of a bunch of calculations in a white paper, and that’s a little hard to get people riled up about. If it becomes an issue, Ryan will just do the same thing that Romney did: insist that the details will work out eventually, turning the whole thing into a tedious he-said-she-said spat between Democrats and Republicans. It will probably get tuned out pretty quickly.

So….I’m not sure about this. It might work, I guess. A juicy tax cut on the rich is never an easy thing to defend, regardless of how the numbers work out. I’m just not sure it’s a killer attack.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate