Romney offers new ideas on taxes and immigration

Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney speaks dur­ing a pres­i­den­tial cam­paign rally at Wings of the Rock­ies Air and Space Museum on Mon­day, in Den­ver. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Aaron Ontiveroz)

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Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — Repub­li­can White House can­di­date Mitt Rom­ney is offer­ing new ideas on the con­tro­ver­sial issues of taxes and immi­gra­tion, spark­ing a fresh flash­point with Pres­i­dent Barack Obama before their inau­gural debate Wednesday.

The GOP nom­i­nee sug­gested an option of lim­it­ing deduc­tions to pay for his across-the-board income tax cut and revealed that he would honor tem­po­rary work per­mits for young ille­gal immi­grants granted by the Obama administration.

“The peo­ple who have received the spe­cial visa that the pres­i­dent has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would con­tinue to be valid. I’m not going to take some­thing that they’ve pur­chased,” Rom­ney told The Den­ver Post in an inter­view pub­lished Tues­day. “Before those visas have expired we will have the full immi­gra­tion reform plan that I’ve proposed.”

Obama announced in June that he would pre­vent depor­ta­tion for some chil­dren brought to the United States by ille­gal immi­grant par­ents. Appli­cants must not have a seri­ous crim­i­nal record and must meet other require­ments, such as grad­u­at­ing from high school or serv­ing in the U.S. military.

The pro­gram closely tracked with the DREAM Act, a bill that failed to pass Con­gress that would have pro­vided a path to legal sta­tus for many young ille­gal immi­grants. Rom­ney said dur­ing the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial pri­mary cam­paign that he would veto DREAM Act legislation.

Obama cam­paign spokesman Gabriela Domen­zain said Romney’s state­ment to the Den­ver Post “raises more ques­tions than it answers,” includ­ing whether he would repeal Obama’s pol­icy or deport those who have received a defer­ment after two years.

“We know he called the DREAM Act a ‘hand­out’ and that he promised to veto it,” Domen­zain said. “Noth­ing he has said since con­tra­dicts this and we should con­tinue to take him at his word.”

The Den­ver Post inter­view comes as Rom­ney and Obama are fight­ing a heated bat­tle for Col­orado, whose sig­nif­i­cant His­panic pop­u­la­tion could deter­mine which can­di­date receives the state’s nine elec­toral votes.

Through­out the Repub­li­can pri­mary, Rom­ney took an aggres­sive tack on immi­gra­tion, say­ing in debates that he approved of “self-deportation,” where undoc­u­mented work­ers would choose to leave the coun­try on their own because they were unable to find work. He assailed rival Rick Perry, the Texas gov­er­nor, for allow­ing ille­gal immi­grants to attend Texas state col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties at reduced, in-state tuition rates. Rom­ney always has said he sup­ports a path to cit­i­zen­ship for ille­gal immi­grants who serve in the military.

After Rom­ney secured the nom­i­na­tion, he indi­cated he would review poten­tial leg­is­la­tion from Florida Sen. Marco Rubio that would allow some young ille­gal immi­grants a way to stay in the country.

In another inter­view Mon­day with Den­ver tele­vi­sion sta­tion KDVR, Rom­ney laid out a pos­si­ble sce­nario for pay­ing for pro­posal to cut all income tax rates by 20 per­cent. He’s pre­vi­ously said the cuts would be funded by clos­ing loop­holes and deduc­tions, but that the specifics would have to be worked out with Congress.

“As an option you could say everybody’s going to get up to a $17,000 deduc­tion; and you could use your char­i­ta­ble deduc­tion, your home mort­gage deduc­tion, or oth­ers — your health care deduc­tion, and you can fill that bucket, if you will, that $17,000 bucket that way,” Rom­ney said. “And higher income peo­ple might have a lower number.”

The new details came as Rom­ney and Obama went into seclu­sion Tues­day to prac­tice for the debate, under­scor­ing the high stakes for both in their first tele­vised encounter. Obama is at a resort in Hen­der­son, Nev., while Rom­ney was spend­ing most of the day in prac­tice with plans to tour the debate stage set up on the Uni­ver­sity of Den­ver campus.

Rom­ney and Ohio Sen. Rob Port­man, play­ing Obama in their prac­tice ses­sions, emerged for lunch at a Chipo­tle Mex­i­can Grill down the street from their hotel, trailed by media tak­ing pic­tures. The pair ordered pork bur­rito bowls, Rom­ney ignored reporters’ ques­tions about how he was feel­ing going into the debates.

With just five weeks until Elec­tion Day, they dis­patched their wives and run­ning mates to court vot­ers in key states, such as the crit­i­cal bat­tle­ground of Ohio, where early vot­ing began Tues­day. Bal­lot­ing already is under way in other states.

In Penn­syl­va­nia, a judge blocked a require­ment that all vot­ers show photo ID in this year’s elec­tion, a vic­tory for Democ­rats who argued it would pre­vent the elderly and minori­ties from vot­ing. But vot­ers will have to show iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in some other states as part of a wave of new poli­cies approved pri­mar­ily by Republican-controlled legislatures.

GOP vice pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Paul Ryan was vis­it­ing three Iowa towns dur­ing a bus tour Tues­day, while Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden sched­uled two events in North Car­olina, another swing state. First lady Michelle Obama was cam­paign­ing in Ohio and Seat­tle, and Ann Rom­ney was attend­ing a rally in Lit­tle­ton, out­side Denver.

In Clin­ton, Iowa, a voter asked Ryan about video of Rom­ney say­ing 47 per­cent of Amer­i­cans don’t pay income taxes and are depen­dent on gov­ern­ment. The voter wanted to know if there is a way to col­lect some­thing from everyone.

“I have an idea: Let’s help them get jobs so they can get good pay­checks and then they’re good tax­pay­ers,” Ryan said. He did not men­tion that mil­i­tary mem­bers serv­ing in war zones and retired seniors are among the mil­lions of peo­ple who do not owe fed­eral income taxes.

Ryan acknowl­edged, how­ever, Romney’s com­ments about those peo­ple mud­dled the polit­i­cal landscape.

“Some­times the point doesn’t get made the right way,” he said.

Biden told about 1,000 sup­port­ers in Char­lotte that Rom­ney and Ryan don’t give Amer­i­cans enough credit for all the respon­si­bil­ity they take on.

“The ques­tion I have is: How could they have such a pro­found mis­un­der­stand­ing of the peo­ple of this coun­try?” Biden said. “And folks, I’ve got news for Con­gress­man Ryan and Gov. Rom­ney. America’s nei­ther depen­dent nor in decline. And gen­tle­men, let me say it to you straight into the cam­era, it’s never, never, never been a good bet to bet against the Amer­i­can people.”

Ryan tried to invoke opti­mism as his ticket trails in the polls. He pre­dicted the debates would spark a shift.

“Now we’re enter­ing what we call the debate and choice phase of this cam­paign,” Ryan told The Jay Weber Show on Milwaukee’s 1130 WISN talk radio. “Peo­ple are going to focus on this. The debates are going to give us a chance to high­light our dif­fer­ences, and we’re enter­ing the phase where we get to frame the choice of this election.”

Posted by AP News on Oct 2 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.