And he finally started to highlight the choice this country faces. “Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else, like education and medical research, a strong military and care for our veterans?’’ he said. “Because if we’re serious about paying down our debt, we can’t do both.’’
That’s a cogent, if not completely candid, argument - the more so since since Mitt Romney became the personification of the favorable tax treatment the rich receive; his rate of about 15 percent puts a wealthy, well-known face on Obama’s call for those with incomes of more than $1 million to pay at least 30 percent in taxes.
Now, what’s fair in tax policy is largely subjective. And yet, as polls have repeatedly shown, most people favor hiking taxes on the wealthy over deeper cuts in government programs - and in a democracy, voters are the electoral judge of equity.
That’s created an obvious problem for Republicans, whose anti-tax arguments are timeworn and threadbare.
Increasing taxes on the well-to-do, they insist, will be a body blow to the economy. Problem: They made the same claim when Bill Clinton raised taxes, only to have the boom of the 1990s give the lie to their apocalyptic predictions.
Second, Republicans note, the $700 billion to $800 billion that ending the Bush tax cuts for upper earners would raise over a decade isn’t nearly enough revenue to stanch the federal flow of red ink. True enough; if the president were more forthcoming, he’d acknowledge that over the long term, that task will also require higher middle-class taxes.
And yet, the notion that nothing is worth doing unless it addresses most or all of the deficit just doesn’t scan. Obama put things in proper perspective in his Tuesday speech. The American people, he said, understand that “when I get a tax break I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else has to make up the difference, like a senior on a fixed income, or a student trying to get through school, or a family trying to make ends meet.’’
