A friend points out that while Mitt Romney is paying more taxes than he has to, he has a fail-safe — if he loses the election, he can file an amended return, claim the deductions retroactively, reduce his tax rate, and get money back. Romney’s counting on the fact that most Americans have no idea how the tax code works, with its loopholes and deductions exploited primarily by the wealthy. He’s also hoping you don’t remember that he said, during a GOP primary debate in January:
I pay all the taxes that are legally required and not a dollar more. I don’t think you want someone as the candidate for president who pays more taxes than he owes.
Then there’s this quote from Romney about airplane windows, made to the LA Times Saturday night after Ann Romney’s plane had to make an emergency landing when an electrical fire filled the cabin with smoke:
When you have a fire in an aircraft, there’s no place to go, exactly, there’s no – and you can’t find any oxygen from outside the aircraft to get in the aircraft, because the windows don’t open. I don’t know why they don’t do that. It’s a real problem. So it’s very dangerous.
Really, Mitt? You don’t know why airplane passengers can’t open the windows? I know the GOP scores poorly on all things scientific, but you might want to look up the word pressurization.
Finally, in his “60 Minutes” interview last night, Romney tried to explain to Scott Pelley how he’s going to lower taxes on people and corporations, but he claimed that by eliminating deductions, everyone’s going to continue paying about the same amount they pay now, because:
I don’t want a reduction in revenue coming into the government.
I thought that was the whole idea of the tea party and the right-wing fiscal policy — have the government take less and do less. If everyone’s going to pay the same amount we pay now (highly unlikely!), how does that solve anything? Oh, right, we’re not allowed to ask about specifics.