Fox's Wallace Deflects From Study Showing Romney May Raise Middle Class Taxes

After Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod cited a recent report showing that Mitt Romney's tax plan may require tax hikes on the middle class, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace countered with a study he said was by a “nonpartisan respected accounting firm.” But he did not note that the study was paid for by business organizations that oppose Obama's policies.

WALLACE: You keep bringing up the Tax Policy Center study, and that's fair enough. But I want to ask you about another study by the respected accounting firm Ernst & Young which did a study on all the tax increases that president Obama is proposing, and here's what they found when they analyzed those. That economic growth with the Obama tax increases would fall by 1.3 percent and employment would fall by 710,000 jobs. Ernst & Young, a nonpartisan respected accounting firm says that raising taxes that much would be a drag on the economy right now.

The study by accounting firm Ernst & Young was "[p]repared on behalf" of the Independent Community Bankers of America, the National Federal of Independent Business, the S Corporation Association, and the United States Chamber of Commerce - groups which have spent millions of dollars to fight President Obama's policies and put Republicans in office. According to the National Economic Council's Jason Furman, the study is also based on flawed assumptions.

The Tax Policy Center, on the other hand, is a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute and is considered so nonpartisan the Romney campaign cited them as an “Objective” group last November when they published a report critical of one of his primary opponents. The right-wing media has tried to discredit the Tax Policy Center. However, The Washington Post's Fact-Checker called the claim that the Center is biased “pretty ridiculous” as the analysis was done by economists that have worked as nonpartisan analysts for Democratic and Republican administrations.

Wallace was implying that the two studies were equivalent in terms of credibility - but they're not.