President Barack Obama repeatedly stresses that he will avoid raising taxes on the middle class, while Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney will do the opposite.
But that’s not the way it would pan out, according to a
Wall Street Journal editorial. The paper’s editors rebut the president’s claim that boosting taxes for the wealthy is enough to curb the budget deficit.
“The rich aren't nearly rich enough to finance Mr. Obama's spending ambitions,” The Journal’s editors write. “Sooner rather than later, Washington will come for the middle class, because that's where the real money is.”
As for the budget plan of Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan, Obama is disingenuous in his criticism, the editorial argues. “Mr. Obama likes to say that Messrs. Romney and Ryan ‘know their economic plan is not popular.’ Perhaps he can read minds, but at least they have a plan they're willing to put before voters. The president knows that voters won't like his, which is why he isn't honest about it.”
Obama’s 2013 budget document acknowledges that the plan would cause the government’s fiscal position to “gradually deteriorate” after 2022. The budget deficit would rise for the next 75 years and the debt-to-GDP ratio would ascend to record levels, the document says. “In other words, Mr. Obama's budget does not change the spending and debt trajectory,” the editorial states.
Ryan has brought these unpleasant facts into the open, Journal editors write.
“Mr. Ryan's major contribution has been to expose the illusion that Mr. Obama's re-election campaign rests on: pretending that raising taxes on a few thousand ‘millionaires and billionaires’ can fund an ever-growing government.”
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