Romney-Ryan: Top-Down Class Warfare

CORE MESSAGE

Romney-Ryan's plan for America: a massive redistribution of wealth from the middle class to the already-rich.

Connect: In America, our leaders are supposed to work for all of us, not just the wealthiest few.

Define: Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are planning a massive transfer of wealth from working families to the already-rich.

Explain: Their top-down class warfare would make the entire middle class pay more taxes, end guaranteed Medicare, and cut Social Security -- all to pay for more wasteful tax breaks for the already-rich.

Illustrate: It's no wonder Romney picked Ryan to be his running mate -- Ryan's plan would let Romney pay a tax rate lower than 1% and end Medicare's guarantee of coverage that he'll never need.

Discredit: How out of touch can they get? Listening to them you'd think they really believe the middle class has it too easy and the already-rich have it too hard.

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ATTACKS AND RESPONSES

ATTACK: "Obamacare robs Medicare by $700 billion."
RESPONSE:

• The real threat to Medicare is the Romney-Ryan plan to end Medicare as we know it, which replaces the Medicare guarantee of coverage with privatized vouchers. They want to stick your parents with a coupon to hand over to the insurance companies.
• Actually, that $700 billion in savings is just waste and abuse we're getting out of Medicare, to make sure seniors and taxpayers aren't getting ripped off. If that's so bad, why does the Romney-Ryan plan have the EXACT SAME $700 billion in savings?
• The only difference is that Ryan and Romney want to use that money to pay for more tax cuts for the already-rich. Obamacare puts the money back into Medicare to expand benefits and strengthen the trust fund. 
• In fact, Obamacare does not cut Medicare benefits for seniors at all. In contrast, Romney's plan cuts $2 trillion from Medicare.

FALSEHOOD: "Romney-Ryan won't lower taxes for high income people and will reduce taxes for middle income people."
RESPONSE:

• Actually, the opposite is true: nonpartisan experts show that their tax plan would raise taxes on the entire middle class while giving massive tax cuts to a tiny number of the already-rich -- no matter how the blanks in their plan are filled in.
• Any way you look at their plans, independent study after study confirms that Romney and Ryan's plans would make working families pay more so they pay less.
• Let's remember who Romney's asking you to believe: a politician who's hiding something that's worse than voters believing he didn't pay income taxes for a decade.

ATTACK: "Obama is waging class warfare!"
RESPONSE:

• As Warren Buffett says, the only class warfare in America is being waged by his class, and they're winning.
• Just look at Romney-Ryan's top-down class warfare -- it would be Robin Hood in reverse, expected to produce the largest redistribution of income from the rest of us to the richest few in modern U.S. history.
• Romney isn't just the first politician who may be running to be president on the advice of his accountant. He's apparently running to be the country's first Class Warrior in Chief.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

TAXES

• Congressman Ryan has proposed a budget that would've let Mitt Romney pay less than 1% in income taxes.
• TPC & Brookings: Romney's tax plan would raise taxes on 95% of Americans, including the entire middle class, making the average middle class family pay $2,000 more -- while giving a millionaire another tax cut of nearly $100,000 on top of the Bush tax cuts (separately worth about $150,000).
• TPC, CAP: Romney's plan would raise taxes on 18 million families to help pay for massive tax cuts for himself, including $4.5 million in income taxes and $112 million in estate taxes.
• NEC: As a House Republican, Congressman Ryan pushed to raise taxes on 25 million working families by an average of $1,000 apiece, while giving a tax cut of $160,000 to those making over a million.
• NEC: In fact, as a Republican in Congress, he's threatening to raise taxes on 98% of Americans, or almost 120 million working families, by an average of $1,600 unless the richest 2% get $1 trillion more in tax cuts.
• JEC: The Romney-Ryan budget would give a household making more than a million dollars a tax cut of almost $300,000, but raise taxes for a typical middle class family by $1,400.
• Contrary to claims of Congressman Ryan being a deficit hawk, he voted for the Bush policies driving today's deficits -- including the wasteful Bush tax cuts for the richest 2%. (In contrast, the Congressional Progressive Caucus's People's Budget would eliminate the deficit and balance the budget within ten years.)

SENIORS

• The Romney-Ryan budget would end the Medicare guarantee of coverage and replace it with privatized vouchers or coupons -- increasing out-of-pocket costs and pushing many seniors into the poorhouse. And despite their claims, their plan would force current seniors to pay more now.
• The Romney-Ryan budget creates a fast track to cut Social Security, as well as the Social Security Administration.
• Congressman Ryan authored a plan to privatize Social Security and turn it over to Wall Street, which would have required $2.4 trillion in additional costs in just the first 10 years.

HOME FRONT FUNDING

• The Romney-Ryan budget would cost us up to 4 million jobs or more in the next two years alone.
• The Romney-Ryan budget would deeply cut our investments in our home front funding, including education by 20%, and let the child tax credit expire, pushing many children back into poverty.
• In fact, the Romney-Ryan budget puts America on the Path To Poverty -- throwing vulnerable kids off Medicaid, laying off teachers, and eventually ending all federal law enforcement, air traffic safety, and protection of our food and water.

We develop messaging by aggregating, analyzing and distilling polling, tested messaging, and expert recommendations, and monitoring the media to identify what is and isn't working. See here for some of the experts and organizations we draw on.