Barack Obama and the Democrats are latching onto this latest study on Mitt Romney’s tax plan.  Obama says that Romney is asking middle class Americans to pay more “so that people like him can get a big tax cut."

Is this a fact?  Well … no, it actually isn’t.  So here’s how they arrive at that conclusion.  Romney wants a 20% cut in marginal income tax rates across the board.  For those of you who can do math and understand that our tax system is progressive, this means that people at the top will save more money than those who pay very little or nothing at all.  But the study points out that Romney’s plan supposedly calls for the elimination of some tax breaks.  Which tax breaks?  We’re not really sure.  So this study decided to guess … and they decided to do their calculations based on the tax breaks which would affect the middle class the most.  All of the sudden .. ta da! .. rich people are saving money while the middle classes are seeing tax breaks disappear, which, to a liberal, translates into a tax increase.

Maybe you recognize this as the same tactic that was used by the left against The FairTax.  This study of Romney’s tax play first re-writes it to set it up for criticism .. then criticize.  Interesting tactic, don’t you think? 

Here’s what you need to know about this study …

From what I can tell, Mitt Romney has not said that he wants to eliminate any tax breaks.  This study simply assumes that Romney would need to eliminate $320 billion in tax breaks in order to pay for his proposed 20% reduction in tax rates.  So this study is not based on Mitt Romney’s plan, but on a hypothetical.

But here’s what the study completely ignores .. something that Democrats always ignore.  History shows that when you cut taxes, tax revenues actually increase!  It happened under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan and Bush.  It happens virtually every time, but Democrats and their compliant pals in the media conveniently ignore it. As the tax rates are lowered and economic growth ramps up, this has the potential to lead to MORE revenues, thus completely eliminating this study’s claim that Romney will need to balance revenues by getting rid of tax breaks.  Liberals find it very difficult to understand how revenues increase as tax rates decrease.  The concept of rewarding good behavior escapes them.  Punishing behavior they deem to be bad … like success … is more their style. 

And finally … this “non-partisan,” “independent” study was conducted by none other than a former staffer of none other than Barack Obama.  The Weekly Standard observes that the bio of one of the authors, Adam Looney, reads: "Looney was the senior economist for public finance and tax policy with the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and has been an economist at the Federal Reserve Board."  And one of the other authors, William Gale, is described as “a close ally of the White House and took part in Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's ‘Fiscal Responsibility Summit’ in 2009.”

Mitt Romney could sure use a lot of help explaining his tax plan to America, before Obama and the Democrats pull the wool over the eyes of America once again on this one.