“In other words, Obama wants “pain” because he thinks he can get advantage from it, the GOP House can use the same pain to attract enough “conservative” Dems in the House and the Senate to push Obama, because they will not survive 2014 elections.”
Let me add, that Obama’s power comes from a weak economy. Dems, like other socialists stay in power by keeping the country poor and giving out entitlements. The Reps must make Obama’s voters feel pain - they don’t vote R anyway, and really two years is forever, in voter memory.
This is a game where we weaken Obama - taxes are part of it. If he is weakened the dems will run against him and Republicans can get us moving again. Congress will always get the blame, but really who cares about congress. Most of us like our Congress person - everyone else’s blows.
And the case is so easy to make that the problem is government spending and that the higher "marginal tax rates" are not equal to higher "revenues" - which is simply the euphemism Progressives/liberals/Democrats adopted to de-emphasize and hide the word "taxes" from the taxpayers.
We had essentially the same "Bush tax cut" rates since 2001. These rates during Bush administration (and mostly Republican Congress) produced the government revenues of approximately 19% of GDP while the government spending was about 21% of GDP, leaving the annual deficit of approximately 2% of GDP with the economy growing at 3.5-4+ percent.
Under Obama and mostly Democratic Congress, these exact same "Bush tax rates" produced government revenues of less than 16% of GDP while government spending shot up to over 24% of GDP, producing a deficit of more than 8% of GDP with the economy struggling to barely reach 2% growth.
Same tax rates on the people Obama and democrats call "rich" and all others, and yet dramatically different picture for the "revenues" and the spending.
Should not be difficult to put it on the charts and show it to people Ross Perot-style, it becomes very easy to understand which side of the equation has the credibility problem.
And according to Heritage, based on OMB and CBO estimates, higher taxes on the so-called "rich" alone won't even produce much "revenue" from them even discounting dynamic scoring and behaviour changes which will reduce that revenue even further and discounting the higher government spending to support displaced / laid-off workers.
Tax Shock (jpg) - (Vast majority of taxes will come from incomes below "top 2%" and Alternative Minimum Tax, rollback of 2% cut in payroll tax, eollback of "stimulus" tax cuts and from new ObamaCare taxes.)
