Despite its role in creating the financial crisis of 2008 and the ensuing Great Recession, the financial services industry continues to be one of the most powerful in both the U.S. and abroad. Banks and other financial services companies are back to making huge profits and handing out large bonuses, while lobbying against reforms aimed at preventing a repeat of 2008.

In the U.S., few have stood up to the banking industry. But over in the UK, the banks have earned themselves a new critic: the Church of England. The Church submitted a comment to a parliamentary commission investigating the LIBOR rate rigging scandal that called on the banks to make a “public, corporate contrition for past failings”:

The financial crises and emerging scandals of recent years have…raised profound concern not simply about the ability of the system to prevent extreme and criminal behavior by individuals but about the system itself and a whole cadre of professionals within it. The question is not whether systems have been adequate to identify and deal with the bad apples but whether the whole orchard needs replanting. [...]

One insight from the Christian tradition of penitence and forgiveness is that is often not enough to put matters back to where they were before things went wrong; some demonstration of a change of heart by means of restitution and a visibly robust refusal to let the same failings occur again is necessary before a bad situation can be made good…. To achieve this is not just a matter of technical “fixes” but may require public, corporate contrition for past failings…and possibly some symbolic steps to assure the public that the corporate culture has changed.

Rev. Dr. Malcolm Brown, director of the Church of England’s Mission and Public Affairs Council, told the Wall Street Journal, “you need to rethink how banking is done so that good people can flourish and good people can do good things.” Here in the U.S., meanwhile, a group of nuns have been touring the country focusing on a different public policy issue: the detrimental effect budget cuts will have on low-income families.

On ABC News’s This Week this morning, host George Stephanopoulos played an Obama campaign ad where the President says that Romney believes in “even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy.” New Jersey Governor and Romney surrogate Chris Christie (R) responded by falsely accusing President Obama of lying:

CHRISTIE: Stop lying Mr. President.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Lying?

CHRISTIE: Yeah . . . Gov. Romney’s not talking about more tax cuts for the wealthy. In fact, what he said is that the wealthy will pay just as much under a Romney administration as they pay today.

Romney may not be “talking” about how his plan reduces taxes on the very rich, but it is simply false to claim that it does not. The Romney income tax plan works in two parts. First, he calls for an “across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates.” In addition, Romney supports eliminating unspecified tax deductions and other loopholes which, he claims, will add as much to the wealthy’s tax burden as his rate reductions will take away. Romney also says his plan will be “revenue neutral,” meaning that the amount of money lost by reducing rates will be identical to the amount gained by closing loopholes.

Unfortunately, this plan is mathematically impossible.

As a report by the Tax Policy Center demonstrated last month, even if Romney were to eliminate every single tax loophole benefiting the wealthy, there simply are not enough of them to keep the richest taxpayers from paying substantially less under Romney’s plan. Indeed, the average taxpayer who earns over $1 million per year would receive a tax cut of over $87,000 under Romney’s plan. So when Christie suggests that “the wealthy will pay just as much under a Romney administration as they pay today,” he is not telling the truth.

Meanwhile, middle class families will bear the cost of these tax cuts for the very rich. According to the same Tax Policy Center report, Romney’s plan will pay for its tax cuts for upper income earners through substantial tax hikes on families earning less than $200,000 a year — many of whom would need to lose common tax benefits such as the mortgage interest tax deduction or the child tax credit in order for Romney’s plan to be revenue neutral. The average family with children earning less than $200,000 a year will see their taxes increase by $2,041 under the Romney tax plan:

So regardless of what Romney may say his Reverse Robin Hood tax plan does on the campaign trail, what it actually does is take money away from middle class Americans and give it to the wealthiest few.

For much of the general election, the Romney campaign has avoided any discussion of specifics, especially when it comes to the tax plan that he and Paul Ryan have put forward. On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace gave Ryan an opportunity to finally talk about the details of his plan to a national audience, how much it will cost and how the Romney administration would pay for it.

Instead, Ryan said he didn’t have time to get into the nuts and bolts of the proposal:

WALLACE: So how much would it cost?

RYAN: It’s revenue neutral…

WALLACE: No no, I’m just talking about cuts. We’ll get to the deductions, but the cut in tax rates.

RYAN: The cut in tax rates is lowering all Americans’ tax rates by 20 percent.

WALLACE: Right, how much does that cost?

RYAN: It’s revenue neutral.
[...]
WALLACE: But I have to point out, you haven’t given me the math.

Ryan: No, but you…well, I don’t have the time. It would take me too long to go through all of the math. But let me say it this way: you can lower tax rates by 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class. For things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care. So what we’re saying is, people are going to get lower tax rates.

Watch it:

Ryan has been the Republican vice presidential nominee for nearly three months, and has still not found the time to explain how a Romney administration would fund its tax plan of 20 percent deductions across the board. Perhaps that is because if he did, voters would balk at the cuts that would need to occur in programs like Medicare for the plan to remain revenue neutral.

Ryan’s refusal to talk specifics only lends further credibility to the various studies and reports that have found time to do the math. And as ThinkProgress has reported, those studies from non-partisan organizations show that the Romney/Ryan tax plan would actually result in a huge tax cut for the wealthiest Americans. And the only way to keep it revenue neutral is to balance their plan on the backs of middle class families, who would see a tax increase of more than $2,000.