Obama, how DARE you cave on tax cuts for the rich & then raid Social Security to pay for them

[Tom Rinaldo]

83. Just connect the simple dots

No doubt Obama wouldn't frame it this way, but that is the end result. This entire battle, the fiscal cliff and all of that, is all about reducing the red ink in our budget. There are only two ways to do so, bring in more revenue or slash expenditures. Obama campaigned on a proposal to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on income over $250,000 a year becasue that would bring in almost a Trillion dollars in revenue over a ten year period AND THAT REVENUE STREAM WOULD BE PERMANENT. Now Obama is offering to accept less revenues by allowing the rich to keep their tax cuts on income below $400,000 a year. He opened the tax cut window by an additional $150,000. The entire income of the average American family is well below $150,000 a year.

Obama just offered to accept less revenue from the richest 2% of Americans even though the budget NEEDS that revenue. Without it even deeper cuts must be made to reduce the deficit, and Obama just propsed that we achieve more savings through a budgetary gimmic that reduces the size of future Socoal Security checks. Republicans wouldn't hesitate to call that a "new tax" if the income of the wealthy were being reduced through that type of gimmic.

Obama's latest proposal, compared to the position he campaigned on and won, transfers costs from some of the richest people in America to some of the poorest. The Bush tax cuts are set to legally expire. Obama is proposing NEW tax cuts for the rich while proposing smaller Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled. That is a fact.