Remember the 47 percent?

It wasn’t that long ago when former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney famously bemoaned the fact that almost half of all households did not pay federal income taxes.


Now, in a striking about-face, the Republican presidential contenders are proposing to dramatically increase the number of people who don’t pay.

Marco Rubio wants to cut an additional 10 million households from the rolls. Ted Cruz would drop 18 million.

Donald Trump would go further than both, proposing to excuse 33 million. That would push up the share of all households that don't pay federal income taxes to almost two-thirds.

What makes it even more unusual is that Bernie Sanders, the self-proclaimed socialist on the Democratic side, would add more taxpayers to the rolls (though his campaign has said the benefits they will gain would outweigh that).

“The debate has gone 180 degrees,” said Len Burman, head of the Tax Policy Center, which estimates the effects of the candidates’ tax plans.

It has also quieted what had been a raging debate, especially in conservative policy circles, over the significance of having so many nonpayers — which some Republicans had portrayed as “makers” versus “takers.”

“It was a stupid debate,” Grover Norquist, the influential anti-tax activist says. He is quick to note that the poor pay all sorts of other taxes.

“It may not be the federal income tax, but they pay sales taxes and excise taxes and they read that little tax at the end of the phone bill,” he said. “You talk to low-income people and they will list the taxes they pay.”

The turnaround is a reaction to Romney’s defeat, blamed on his inability to connect with low- and middle-income people that Republicans say was crystallized by his remarks.

This year’s crop of candidates is striving to avoid making the same mistake, emphasizing their connections to the working class and knocking Romney’s comments.

Romney “demeaned 47 percent of the people in our country,” Trump said last week, even though he defended Romney on the issue in 2012.

“The reason Republicans lost can be summed up in two words: 47 percent,” Cruz said in January. “Republicans are, and should be, the party of the 47 percent.”

The share of households that don’t pay federal income taxes has since dipped to 45 percent, 77 million households, according to the Tax Policy Center. Most pay payroll taxes, which is the largest federal levy most people earning less than $50,000 face.

Trump would hike that to 110 million, thanks largely to his plans to dramatically expand the standard deduction. He would nearly quadruple it to $25,000 for singles and $50,000 for couples, which means wages up to those levels would not be taxed.

Rubio goes about it in a different way, proposing to more than triple a child tax credit to $3,500. That, combined with a $2,000 personal tax credit, would result in fully half of all households not paying taxes.

"Under Marco's tax plan, workers still pay payroll taxes, but a main feature of the plan is to provide relief for hardworking families with lower incomes," said spokesman Alex Conant.

Cruz would remove 18 million, the Tax Policy Center said, though he would also create a new value-added tax the group says everyone would pay in the form of higher prices and lower wages.

Before his campaign ended, Jeb Bush bragged about his tax reform plan striking 15 million from the income tax rolls.

Anti-tax activist Grover Norquist said the 2012 discussion was foolish, pointing out that the poor pay a range of other taxes.

Spokespersons for Trump and Cruz did not respond to requests for comment.

All of the plans go much further than what either Hillary Clinton or Sanders has proposed. Sanders would put 8 million people back on the rolls, the Tax Policy Center said last week, while the tax plans Clinton has announced so far would have no effect.

That could potentially put them in an awkward position, though there’s little evidence voters are aware of the Republicans’ plans. If anything, the GOP tax proposals have been criticized as regressive because they would give far more to the wealthy, even as they also cut taxes on the poor.

Nonetheless, it’s a big change from 2012, when Romney said nonpayers “are dependent on the government” and won’t take “personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

Though his remarks got most of the attention, the issue was widely debated among conservatives.

“We’re coming close to a tipping point in America where we might have a net majority of takers versus makers in society and that could become very dangerous,” Paul Ryan, who eventually joined the GOP ticket, said almost a year before.

Some worried that people who don’t pay would be insulated from the costs of government benefits and might even be able to outvote the income tax payers.

“The concern is that when people perceive the cost of government to be cheaper than it really is, they will demand ever more government benefits because they either don’t feel the cost directly or believe the others will be paying those costs,” the Tax Foundation said in a 2012 report The Fiscal Costs of Nonpayers. The issue is “particularly worrisome in a majority-rule democracy.”

Norquist scoffs.

“I don’t think that’s a useful or necessary tool to get people to want to spend less,” he said. “It’s inaccurate in terms of understanding people’s motivations in why they’ll vote.”

“There are a whole bunch of people who want to be makers, but the economy sucks so they don’t have a job — not their fault.”

Of course, not all Republicans agree with paring the tax rolls.

Ben Carson had proposed charging everyone a $100 minimum tax, and Bobby Jindal tried to make his plan to charge the poor at least 2 percent the centerpiece of his tax reform proposal.

“He didn’t even make it to Iowa,” said Ryan Ellis, a Republican tax consultant.

“When you’re running for president,” said Ellis, “it’s probably not a good idea to go around saying that half the country is a bunch of lazy moochers.”