Here’s the President, speaking yesterday in Richmond, Virginia:
THE PRESIDENT: Now, I’m not a math teacher. (Laughter.) But I know a little bit about math. They’re proposing about $4 trillion worth of tax cuts. About $700 billion of those tax cuts are for people who typically are millionaires and billionaires, and on average would get $100,000 in tax relief — $700 billion that we don’t have, we’d have to borrow in order to provide these tax cuts. And 98 percent of Americans wouldn’t see any benefit from it.
And keep in mind that because we don’t have it, it would actually end up costing more than $700 billion, because we’d end up having — since we’re borrowing it, we’d have to pay interest on it.
… So when you add it all up, essentially their proposal would drastically expand the deficit instead of shrinking it.
The President uses two aggregate numbers: “about $4 trillion worth of tax cuts” and “more than $700 billion.” In both cases these are 10-year totals.
What the President didn’t say is that he and Republicans basically agree on the other $3.1 trillion of “tax cuts,” which I think of as preventing tax increases.
If the President thinks that Republicans are irresponsible for proposing $700 B of “tax cuts” that he opposes because of the deficit effect, why is he OK with the other $3.1 trillion of deficit effect?
Continue reading Keith Hennessey…
(photo credit: xampl9)
