The Five Trillion Dollar Man: Willard Romney and his vanishing Tax "Plan" (Veritas odit moras Book 1)

The Five Trillion Dollar Man is simultaneously a coolly clinical dissection of the Romney Tax Cut aka “Mitt’s Plan” and a bitingly witty, sometimes rambunctious, discussion of the forensic findings.

The first comprehensive study of the plan available to the general public, the book presents the results of the authors’ meticulous application of “Mitt’s Plan” to primary source data from the IRS and CBO along with easily understandable, highly readable, often funny – and devastating – commentary.

A tour de force of style and substance, rigorous data analysis is accompanied by a romp over a vast literary and cultural landscape. Evoking Shakespeare, Dante, Monty Python (and Monty Hall), T.S. Eliot, St. Luke, Kurt Vonnegut, Cuba Gooding and Alice in Wonderland while expounding on a bare minimum of clearly presented charts and graphs, the authors enlighten and entertain (how else to stay awake reading a book on tax policy?).

Going beyond number-crunching, the book examines not only the economics but the history, politics and players behind this "plan.” Accompanied by a Virgil-like guide, we descend into the nether regions of the IRS and meet the denizens: the shade of Lee Atwater; the undead Bushonomics professors Hubbard and Mankiw - he of "Voodoo Economics" fame - resurrected as Romney advisors; Grover Norquist and his tax chastity police. As if watching some B-movie, we see the “moderate” Mitt’s plan of September, 2011 morph into the “severely conservative” Mitt’s plan of February, 2012 (scarcely two weeks after his thrashing by Santorum in the Midwest primaries) and now into the all-over-the-map plan of today as Romney realizes – horrors! - he has a $5 trillion dead albatross of a deficit hanging around his neck which he wishes he could make disappear.

The co-authors are a veteran business journalist and a businessman with a background and career path uncannily similar to Mitt's. Their facility with numbers is matched by their love of economics, politics, language, literature, witty wordplay and bad puns. And they put it all together while channeling Thomas Paine in the cause of their passionate polemic:

The Five Trillion Dollar Man: Willard Romney and his vanishing Tax “Plan”

A Treatise addressed to the Inhabitants of America on the following Interesting Subjects:
I. Of Romney's Original Tax Plan
II. Of his Realization "Oops, Big Problem: The Deficit"
III. Of his last minute, off-the-cuff, back-of-the-envelope, $17,000 (or $50,000, or whatever) Itemized Deduction Limit Kick-the-Can Punt
IV. And of his Final Problem: How to Sleep with the Sheep yet Run with the Wolves.
With many Charts, Graphs and Appendices; links to Original Data Sources at the IRS and Congressional Budget Office; and Bonus Material for Full Transparency in the form of a handy dandy, step-by-step Do-it-Yourself Tax Template so that the Reader can verify for him/herself the veracity of Candidate Romney and his promoters.