Mitt Romney brags about how S&P raised Massachusetts credit rating when he was governor. What Mittens doesn’t say is what his sale pitch was. He used the previous governors tax increases as part of the sales pitch to Standard and Poors. Mitt Romney did cut spending but left the tax increases intact. Clearly he was for in 2004, what he is against now! Sound famailair? It should, another Massachussets politician was known to be for things before he was against him.
The claim was part of a presentation to the ratings agency obtained by POLITICO under a state freedom of information law from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance. The Nov. 4 presentation, stamped “confidential,” helped persuade S&P to raise the state’s grade and handed Romney the perfect talking point for last week’s humiliating national downgrade by the same agency.
But Romney’s case to S&P is a far cry from the anti-tax absolutism of the Republican Party he hopes to lead. Indeed, it bears a far closer resemblance to the right-of-center grand compromise rejected by House Republicans this year — dismissed because it would include new taxes and end tax breaks President Barack Obama described as “loopholes” — or the more modest compromise that passed, than to the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan Romney “applauded.”
The presentation to the ratings agency reveals that Romney’s administration made the case to Standard & Poor’s that his state was creditworthy because of both spending cuts — the current preferred GOP method — and new revenues, including fees he imposed and tax “loopholes” he closed. The presentation also prominently cited a controversial set of tax increases in the summer of 2002, which Romney, then a candidate, had opposed.
Read the rest: Taxes key to Mitt Romney’s ’04 pitch to Standard & Poor’s
