Willard M. Romney's Debt and Deficits Hustle

Romney: "Today America faces a financial crisis of debt and 

spending that threatens what it means to be an American."

Center for American Progress: 

There’s one major problem with Romney’s rhetoric: his economic plan makes the debt worse. Romney’s tax plan gives a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut to all Americans and repeals the Alternative Minimum Tax, costing $10.7 trillion over the next decade and reducing federal revenues to just 15 percent of GDP, according to Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden. Romney hasn’t offered a plan to pay for those cuts, instead simply asserting that he will balance the budget.

But balancing the budget under those terms would be next to impossible. Even if Romney limits tax deductions for the richest Americans as he says he would, he would need 6.5 percent economic growth for the next five years to keep his plan from adding to the deficit. To put that in perspective, the best five-year period of growth since World War II was from 1961 to 1966, when the economy grew at 5.8 percent per year.