Stephanie Cutter: Romney’s Tax Plan Is A $5 Trillion Tax Cut For The Rich

Stephanie Cutter on Sunday called out economic plans put forward by Republican candidate Mitt Romney, saying it is nothing more than a $5 trillion tax cut mostly for the rich that can only be paid for by raising taxes on the middle class.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, the deputy campaign manager for President Obama’s re-election effort said that the Romney plan would mean middle class taxpayers pay an average of $2,000 more each year. She also called out Romney for refusing to go into details about how his plan would work.

“So if this is a campaign about the middle class, then they need to be honest with the middle class about what’s ahead of them with that tax plan,” Stephanie Cutter said. She went on to add:

“[T]he the central question in this campaign is how we’re going to strength the middle class. We’ve got plans on the table to do that. You know, just after Congressman Ryan was picked, he said that they were going to hold back on putting any details on the table until after the election, and Romney advisers were saying it would be political suicide to talk about those details. So we’d like to have a substantive debate about, you know, the central question on the table about how to strengthen the middle class, but to do that, they’re going to have to tell us what their plans are.”

Stephanie Cutter also responded to criticism from Romney senior adviser Kevin Madden that Obama’s economic plans would cripple small business in America. She surmised that he meant Obama’s support of ending the Bush-era tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers, saying that has nothing to do with business or job creation.

“We all know that it has nothing to do with small-business growth,” Stephanie Cutter said. “Ninety-seven percent — or 98 percent of small businesses are below $250,000. And if that tax cut for the wealthy was so important to growth, then why did we retract as an economy under the Bush administration? We had the lowest growth in the century under the Bush administration with those tax cuts, so those facts just don’t hold up.”

Stephanie Cutter has been harsh on Romney’s vice presidential pick as well. She responded to Paul Ryan’s criticism of Obama’s Medicare plans by pointing out that Paul Ryan supports those same plans he is criticizing. Cutter’s assertion was backed up by PolitiFact, a non-partisan fact-checking agency.