Does Obama want to raise rates or cut them? I know he wants to raise revenue. Why doesn’t he say he will cut rates and close loopholes and raise revenue that way?
Voters’ concede-nothing mentality has been colored by the summer’s protracted fight in Washington over raising the federal debt ceiling, said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC and a former GOP strategist.
Obama had sought a “grand bargain” to raise taxes and trim entitlements in exchange for lifting the borrowing limit. Republicans in Congress refused to contemplate taxes and threatened a federal default unless deep spending cuts alone were adopted. Obama and the Democrats ultimately acquiesced.
“The lesson that Republicans learned in the fight over the debt limit is it pays not to compromise,” Schnur said. “It appears the Democrats have learned exactly the same lesson.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-poll-economy-20110906,0,7074574.story
…is that his preference is to close loopholes and let the Bush tax cuts expire above the first 250K of personal income. As for cutting rates to raise revenue, that sounds like the discredited Laffer Curve.
And correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Seascraper’s talking about a revenue-positive combination of loophole closings and rate cuts.