TAXES AND TAX CUTS The Republicans’ pledge also fails to mention that President Obama has already called for extending the tax cuts for 98 percent of taxpayers (couples making up to $250,000 and individuals making up to $200,000).

So what the pledge is really advocating is a permanent extension of tax cuts for the top 2 percent. In all, the pledge’s tax proposal would add $3.7 trillion to the nation’s debt over the next 10 years, nearly $700 billion more than the administration’s proposal.

The drive for permanent high-end tax cuts is profligate; there is no other word for it. The nation cannot afford it. We are fighting a war in Afghanistan and only now winding down the war in Iraq. The baby boom generation is about to retire. To keep competing, the country needs enormous investment in infrastructure, energy alternatives, education and basic research.

The pledge asserts that letting the high-end tax cuts expire would kill job creation. With the economy weak, letting all the tax cuts expire would be a big hit to consumer spending and, by extension, job growth. But richer Americans tend to save, not spend, their tax cuts. Of 11 ways to boost the economy analyzed by the Congressional Budget Office, preserving the high-end tax cuts ranked last.

Republicans also assert that letting the high-end cuts expire would devastate small businesses. But less than 3 percent of taxpayers with business income would be affected. Republicans claim that 50 percent of small-business income would be hit. The only way to get that number is by including “small businesses” like some major law firms, investment funds, actors and athletes — hardly Main Street.

In any case, business owners do not typically base their hiring decisions on their income tax rate. If the top tax rates reverted to the pre-Bush levels, wealthy owners would keep less of the additional profit. But if a hire is profitable before tax, it will be profitable after tax. Undeterred by facts, the pledge would let small-business owners deduct 20 percent of their business income. Given the Republicans’ broad definition, that implies another big tax cut — an estimated $25 billion over two years — flowing to many high earners.

SPENDING The Republicans’ document promises the American people a “fact based” discussion of the scale of the nation’s budget problems. Then it offers a laundry list of spending-cut proposals, none of which are up to the scale of the problem, and many that cannot be taken seriously.