Mitt Romney proved again again and again Wednesday night in Denver that he, like his running mate Paul Ryan, has a big math problem.

That, as Armando explained, is true for Romney's discussion of taxes and the deficit, too. The numbers don't add up.

Retired investment banker Howard Hill has looked at the candidate's deficit calculations from another angle and come to the same conclusion about Romney's skills with numbers.



If you have a $1.3 trillion annual deficit, and you are going to make it shrink to zero without raising any tax, how many new jobs will the economy have to create? Show your work. Starting with Romney’s assertion that his policies will lead to 12 million new jobs over four years and provide the government with fresh tax revenue, how close will that come to plugging the gaping hole in the federal budget? Answer: Not very close.

Hill sets some parameters.

Say that each job pays $40,000 and the earner pays, unlike Romney, an effective income tax rate of 20 percent. That amounts to $96 billion extra revenue in 2016.

Which is less than 10 percent of what the deficit is projected to be then. It's just seven percent of the projected deficit under Romney's plan to spend more on the Pentagon and reinstate subsidies to the insurance companies for Medicare.

This doesn't include the $250 billion lost by reducing the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, only two-thirds of which would be recaptured by closing ALL the loopholes he alleges will be closed.

So what would those 12 million new jobs actually have to pay each year to clear the deficit? At a 25 percent income tax rate, $433,333 a year. Nice work if you can get it.



The other possibility is that Romney’s policies will magically create even more jobs than he’s assuming. If the new jobs were those $40K per year jobs each paying 20 percent in taxes, we’d need 162.5 million new jobs. For those playing along at home, that’s more jobs than the total current civilian labor force, which stood at 154.6 million last month.

Hill lets Romney off easily and says his numbers never add up.

More to the point when the GOP candidate is talking 1 lie + 1 lie +1 lie ≠ 1 truth.