important. it actually was never designed as a specific housing program. it fell into the code when it was adopted. i think studies are clear it doesn t actually benefit homeownership. most of it is soaked up at the very top end in part because you have to deduct. the more you pay in taxes, the more the benefit is. if you take the standard deduction you don t get it. yes. and if you have a huge mortgage payment you get more value out of it. so kind of like health care deduction. it s something that becomes central to how we employer provided health care deduction is central to how we see middle class life and we will have to approach it to scaling back and slowly rolling it back over years which i think is becoming a concensus approach. and shahein, you re very engaged in this fight going on in congress. is there an actual prospect for anything to happen in congress? no. no. i m sorry to be so blunt but there s nothing that will happen before 2014. i mean, there are too many
absolutely, you know, entrenched as this incredible bias in american public policy. right. it s like if one person stands up at a stadium they re fine but when everyone stands off, no one is better off. mortgage interest deduction going into the housing market raises prices in such a way that it kind of gets eaten into whatever benefit you got in the first place. kind of like the health care deduction. this is a state where that accidentally became very important. it actual hi was never designed as a specific housing program. it fell into the code when it was adopted. i think studies are clear it doesn t actually benefit homeownership. most of it is soaked up at the very top end in part because you have to deduct. the more you pay in taxes, the more the benefit is. if you take the standard deduction you don t get it. yes. and if you have a huge mortgage payment you get more value out of it. so kind of like health care deduction. it s something that becomes sev central to how we
but that presents some very difficult challenges in terms of the so-called tax expenditures, because if you don t go up on the top rate, you have to go deeper into tax expenditures. that means you start affecting very popular things like home mortgage deduction, the health care deduction. that s basically what bill clinton was saying, the math doesn t work. ken conrad can do that every day and other democrats are well versed in that, and the republicans, i get the feeling they realize that argument is working. i think that s right. one of the arguments about mitt romney, the math doesn t add up is because they weren t saying what was in the math. that was a big problem for the republicans throughout the campaign. we are now past that point. we re going to have to say it. mitt romney s argument was we ll tell you once we re elected what this plan looks like. now what you re hearing is a confidence about not just rates versus deductions but rates
those to fill that bucket of deductions. if you will, this sounds absolutely fantastic. everyone get to fill the bucket. you drop your mortgage deduction, i drop my charitable contributions deduction, someone else drops their health care deduction. i mean, that s going to simplify the tax code, that one, isn t it? this is absolutely driving me nuts f i may be so frank. it s not that the lurching going on here around what is purported to be a serious proposal is absolutely absurd. you can t in the midst of a campaign where you re trying to convince america that a $5 trillion tax cut on top of all that other stuff the president was talking about is in our best interest, and when it comes to paying for it in a very tough budgetary environment, lurch around like this 37 one week the math doesn t add up but i have six studies, most of which are blogs. then say well, last week it was we re going to cap deductions at 17,000, then
states senator right there backing what paul ryan is saying. you know rob portman. i know rob very well. but the fact is he s lying. the only way that the tax plan works, the only thing he can do that really has money in savings is the mortgage deduction. it s the charitable deduction. it s the education deduction. it s the health care deduction. and mitt romney does not have the courage to tell the american people what he s planning. but ed, if he were to take on those deductions, those deductions strike at the heart of the middle class and that s why he s unwilling to tell us the truth. and so that s why we re getting all of this fuzzy math. according to a keizer foundation study, a medicare voucher system would raise premiums. the romney campaign says it wasn t based on their plan but