Reihan compares Obama to Walter Mondale:
Obama has … left himself with only one option for raising revenue. He will have to raise taxes on high earners to levels far higher than those that prevailed during the Clinton boom. The Obama White House has, for example, championed the idea of curbing tax deductions and credits for over-$250,000 households. Soaking the rich might be a cherished tradition in Democratic politics, but as effective marginal tax rates approach 50 percent, the impact on incentives would be brutal.
The irony is that President Obama might have been better off taking a page from Walter Mondale and forthrightly arguing that universal health coverage and high levels of public investment and a fairer society and a greener environment and everything else Democrats want from government are actually worth paying for – not just by the top 2 percent of the top 1 percent, but by the top 50 percent. The only real alternatives are rolling back the growth of government, Ryan-style, or accepting sluggish growth for years to come.
Well they would simply be the same incentives that Clinton gave them in the 1990s – and we had the longest peace-time expansion. Look: I don't want to pay more taxes. But I do understand that the debt is a looming nightmare we need to start heading off soon. I would like to see Obama embrace a later retirement age and more means-testing for Medicare – but he has at least already cut Medicare (which Ryan is attacking him for), has put entitlements on the table, has unleashed serious cost control experiments in the ACA, backed a debt reduction package which was 2.5:1 spending cuts to tax increases, and is open to wider tax reform … and on revenues, the GOP refuses to offer a single penny.
When they do, we can start talking. How we raise revenues with the least economic harm is a vital discussion. But we cannot have that discussion if, for one side, net revenues are not negotiable.
The Dish 