The Obama campaign is wasting no time getting an ad on the air touting a new study showing that Mitt Romney's plans would mean additional large tax cuts for millionaires at the expense of other Americans. The spot, titled “Stretch†takes a double-barreled approach, beginning by reminding viewers of Mr. Romney's own tax history, before pivoting to an analysis from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, two centrist Washington-based policy research organizations. The ad's closing message is: “He pays less. You pay more.â€
The Times's Catherine Rampell wrote Wednesday that the analysis concluded that the sort of tax code that Mr. Romney has proposed “would provide large tax cuts to high-income households, and increase the tax burdens on middle- and/or lower-income taxpayers.â€
The Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee has dismissed the study as partis an, noting that one of its three authors had been on the staff of Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisers.
President Obama seized on the report Wednesday while campaigning in north-central Ohio, taking particular note in of study's finding that if Mr. Romney reduced or eliminated other tax breaks to offset the revenue loss of his tax cuts - as he has promised, without specifics - the changes would shift $86 billion of the tax burden away from the high-income taxpayers and onto everyone else. Americans would lose some or all of existing tax breaks for mortgages, college tuition and health insurance. He is likely to continue to trumpet these results as he campaigns Thursday in Florida and Virginia.
Obama for America said the ad would be broadcast in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio and Virginia.
