Obama senior campaign adviser Robert Gibbs says that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's debate performance was "theatrical" but only proved that the Republican nominee would take "the battle straight to Sesame Street and let Wall Street run hog wild."
"Gov. Romney had a masterful, theatrical performance just this last week, but the underpinnings and foundation of that performance were fundamentally dishonest," Gibbs told ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. "You cannot cut taxes by $5 trillion as he's doing and simply say, 'Oh, I don't have that tax cut, I'm not going to cut taxes for the wealthy,' when the average high-income earner is going to get a $250,000 tax cut."
Stephanopolous pointed out that the Romney campaign has asserted that President Barack Obama's campaign had been lying about the $5 trillion tax cut.
"Absolutely not," Gibbs insisted. "If you're going to reduce the Bush tax rates by 20 percent and the estate tax and the [alternative minimum tax], change the corporate rate and whole host of other changes, that adds up in a reduction of revenue of $4.8 trillion. The question for Gov. Romney is, what loopholes are you going to close -- supposedly -- to make up for that revenue?"
"Let's be clear, [Republican vice presidential nominee] Paul Ryan a week ago was asked about the math for this, and Paul Ryan said, 'Look, the math takes to long,'" he continued. "Well, Mitt Romney's solution is he just decided there isn't math involved in this problem. And that's absolutely crazy."
"The only thing that he outlined that he would cut in the budget is Big Bird. You know, he's taken the battle straight to Sesame Street and let Wall Street run hog wild. Again, it was a masterful, theatrical performance. It was fundamentally dishonest for the American people."
