DETROIT — Last September, Mitt Romney rolled out a detailed, long-in-the-works economic plan. The 59-point, 160-page document called for cutting corporate tax rates, reducing capital gains rates for some taxpayers, eliminating the death tax, reducing regulation, reaching new free-trade agreements, imposing sanctions on China, and other measures. What it did not call for was cutting individual income tax rates. In fact, in Romney’s list of “59 Policy Proposals That Will Get America Back To Work,” the number-one proposal was to “maintain current tax rates on personal income.”
But in Romney’s speech here in Detroit Friday, Romney, in a tough race with Rick Santorum for the frontrunner’s position in the Republican primary contest, called for “an across-the-board 20 percent reduction in marginal individual income tax rates.” Romney added: “By reducing the tax on the next dollar of income earned by all taxpayers, we will encourage hard work, risk-taking, and productivity by allowing Americans to keep more of what they earn.”
What had changed between September and Friday? Did changed economic conditions warrant a new approach? Changed political conditions? Something else?
The answer is, nothing changed, says key Romney economic adviser Lanhee Chen. “There were two elements to his plan,” Chen said after Romney’s speech at Ford Field Friday. “One was to retain the low Bush tax rates, the other was to engage in a Bowles-Simpson style fundamental tax reform…So this is the fundamental tax reform.”
Last September, Romney was vague about future tax cuts. On page 41 of his original plan, under the heading, “Long-Term Goal: Pursue a Fairer, Flatter, Simpler Tax Structure,” the Romney proposal said, “In the long run, Mitt Romney will pursue a conservative overhaul of the tax system that includes lower and flatter rates on a broader tax base. The approach taken by the Bowles-Simpson Commission is a good starting point for the discussion.”
Romney’s “in the long run” proviso provoked criticism in some conservative circles. The Wall Street Journal editorial page accused Romney of shrinking from a fight by not proposing individual tax cuts. “He says he favors tax reform with lower individual tax rates but only ‘in the long run,'” the paper wrote last September. “His advisers say that means in the first two years of his presidency, but then why not sketch out more details?”
Now Romney has.
