Ben Stein says that taxes has to be raised on the rich....

[richardhutnik]

klystron said:

richardhutnik said:

 

The argument is not rather.  The argument is whether or not taxes need to be raised or not.  Even Obama agreed to budget cuts.  He even agreed to more, if the Bush tax cuts were allowed to expire on income $250,000 or greater.

There is an issue now with tax revenues, due to the economic slowdown.  As a percentage of GDP, tax revenues are lowest in decades. 

Richard, when Obama came in to office he had a supermajority in congress. Govt spending went from 3.1 tn (bush's last year, which was the 2.8 + his half of tarp) to 3.7 tn. Don't tell me that Obama has agreed to any budget cut. It clearly was not on their list of priorities.

The first year of Obama in office was a mess as far as the economy went.  You had numerous stimulus and other things thrown in, trying to prevent a great depression level, if not worse, meltdown.  Money was thrown at things, including bailouts.  You can't use the first year of Obama's administration as anything.  A lot of that was baked in also from Bush's budget.  

But you need to look at now here, Obama did support the budget cut plan without tax increases for ANYONE.  Obama also slashed taxes for the middle class by reducing FICA.  There was agreement here.  But, Obama doesn't support budget cuts alone.  And that is the reality of things.

Does this mean that shrinking the government for its own sake is Obama or the Democrat's approach?  No.  But there is reality of trying to contain costs, which is hitting hard now.  The debate now is over whether or not the marginal tax rate on the upper end should go back to the pre-Bush era or not.  

Regarding being fillibuster-proof congress (supermajority), it was less than 80 days Obama had:

http://sandiegofreepress.org/2012/09/the-myth-of-the-filibuster-proof-democratic-senate/