Veep debate won't move the needle
E. Thomas McClanahanI scored the veep debate narrowly for Biden. He dominated more often. Ryan should have pushed back more. This debate won’t move the needle in deciding the overall race and it was s a pain to watch with all the interrupting. Biden will get pasted for his boorish behavior.
Ryan, however, helped himself and the campaign in a couple of respects. He showed he was ready for prime time and he showed he could step into the presidency if need be.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why Romney or Ryan won’t do more to flesh out their proposal to cap the amount a person can take in deductions. That gets around the contentious issue of which ones to cut. Thursday night, Ryan didn’t mention it, leaving the impression he and Romney are being coy.
Here’s Business Week explaining what’s known about the plan now:
“One way to limit deductions ‘would be to have a single number,’ Romney said in last [week’s] debate with President Barack Obama. ‘Make up a number, $25,000, $50,000,’ the Republican said. ‘Anybody can have deductions up to that amount. And then that number disappears for high-income people.’
Later, he said the cap would be $17,000. Still undecided, apparently, is how tax credits would be handled.
It looks to me as if they haven’t fully thought this through, and if so I’d say, Faster please. People think they’re playing games because they won’t say which deductions they’ll cut, and how can you roll back tax rates 20 percent and make the math work?
Here’s how: The Biz Week story says the top 1 percent of earners take an average of more than $170,000 in deductions. If Romney imposes a cap of $17,000, that would be a huge hit on those people. In return, he would roll back the marginal rate and let them keep more of each additional dollar earned, encouraging more investment and wealth creation.
Which reminds me, there hasn’t been enough emphasis in the Romney campaign, or in Thursday’s debate, on how to get the economy growing again.
Suzanne Conaway
7 months, 1 week ago“it was s a pain to watch with all the interrupting. Biden will get pasted for his boorish behavior.” But Romney was okay with all his interrupting, overriding Lehrer, etc?
Double standard, E.
JR Beillenhouser
7 months, 1 week ago5 times vs 81 times
http://vimeo.com/51308728#
Nuance Suzanne. How can you even make a comparison?
Mark Hastert
7 months, 1 week agoAh…er…. E. Thomas, watch and be amazed.