Romney's Lies on His Numbers

Ezra Klein is too nice in The Romney campaign’s postmodern approach to policy.

"Suzy Khimm, Josh Barro and Dylan Matthews have already done excellent work breaking down the “six studies” that Mitt Romney says prove his tax plan adds up...I don’t have much to add to what Khimm, Barro or Matthews have written on the substance of these studies. But it’s worth pointing out the brazenness of the Romney campaign’s talking point. They know four of their six studies aren’t, even in the loosest definition of the term, ‘studies.’ They know two of the four are duplicates. They know three of the six define ‘high income’ as above $100,000, and their results thus imply a tax increase on taxpayers their candidate has publicly defined as middle class."

"This is how the Romney campaign has treated numbers in general. The evidence behind their “12 million jobs” claim is a joke. Their white paper and subsequent op-ed on the economy misrepresented almost every economist it mentioned. Their tax and spending plans are missing pretty much all of the relevant information. The standards behind the talking points and policy proposals the campaign releases are insultingly low."

It was the same thing in the Vice Presidential debate when Ryan was saying his plan was bipartisan and Biden said no Democrat voted for it. Ryan said he worked with a Democrat, and Biden pointed out he then disowned the final version. I see this over and over again from the Republicans and I don't see it from the Democrats. Sure they exaggerate some numbers but they don't just outright fabricate things or claim the opposite of reality. Look at the difference in the issues FactCheck.org came up with in the VP Debate.

Here's more on Romney. Mitt Romney’s ‘new math’ for jobs plan doesn’t add up.

" As we have noted before, the 12 million figure is not a bad bet by Romney. Moody’s Analytics, in an August forecast, predicts 12 million jobs will be created by 2016, no matter who is president. And Macroeconomic Advisors in April also predicted a gain of 12.3 million jobs."

"But the specifics — 7 million plus 3 million plus 2 million — mentioned by Romney in the ad are not in the white paper. So where did that come from? We asked the Romney campaign, and the answer turns out to be: totally different studies … with completely different timelines."

"This is a case of bait-and-switch. Romney, in his convention speech, spoke of his plan to create “12 million new jobs,” which the campaign’s white paper describes as a four-year goal. But the candidate’s personal accounting for this figure in this campaign ad is based on different figures and long-range timelines stretching as long as a decade — which in two cases are based on studies that did not even evaluate Romney’s economic plan. The numbers may still add up to 12 million, but they aren’t the same thing — not by a long shot."

As Kevin Drum sums up, "The loser is....all of us who still have functioning brain cells — including Kessler, who was forced to spend precious hours of his life on this nonsense that no one at Romney HQ even pretends to believe in the first place. But the rest of us still have to go along with the gag. Presidential candidates these days can literally say anything they want, and we're all required to stroke our chins and pretend to take them seriously."