Mitt Romney’s latest campaign talking point about Standard & Poor’s upgrading the Massachusetts credit rating under his governorship hit a snag today when both the Wall Street Journal and Politico unearthed his 2004 pitch to the credit agency. It turns out his presentation touted the same sort of tax revenues Tea Partiers fought against during the recent debt ceiling debate. Politico reports:
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 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.
You can read the full presentation here. It’s not exactly a secret Romney closed tax “loopholes” (which many have argued were actually “tax hikes”) during his tenure. The issue here is his administration’s apparent defense of controversial tax increases that were instituted by the state legislature shortly before Romney took office.
However, Romney’s team points out he also initiated tax reductions during his time as governor:
“Gov. Romney balanced the budget primarily by cutting waste and inefficiency, by streamlining and economizing, and by reducing nonessential state spending,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul in an email. “Obama was talking about raising taxes.”
“At the time of Massachusetts’s upgrade, [Romney] clearly said he was proud to have done it without raising taxes and he cut taxes 19 times as governor,” she said.
While the story isn’t a major blow to the campaign, it’s yet another dent in his economic record, which has already been marred by RomneyCare and the layoffs he oversaw at Bain Capital. It also takes some of the wind out of Romney’s S&P upgrade argument, which he was undoubtedly planning to pull out during the Iowa Republican debate tonight. Interesting “coincidence” that both Politico and the WSJ both happened to obtain FOIA requests of his 2004 presentation before such a key day in the primaries.