In my latest for the Huffington Post, I argue that the vice-presidential debate showed President Obama was right when he accused Mitt Romney of supporting a $5 trillion tax cut that would mainly benefit the wealthy.
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Mike Benedict
The Republicans are once again resorting to the failed economic “theory” of trickle down, which never has worked and never will work as a vehicle for effective longterm fiscal policy.
What it DOES accomplish, however, is to widen the gap between rich and poor, thus facilitating (and ensuring) that a violent redistribution of wealth will occur.
The history of economics is the accumulation of wealth by the few and the redistribution by the many. The GOP, which loves to congratulate itself on its fiscal awareness, would be wise to remember that.
Paul Rickter
After thinking about it overnight, it seems clear to me that Biden’s over-the-top reactions were deliberate. What this does is move the needle way over to one side on reacting to outright lies — so as long as Obama doesn’t play the “malarkey” card, he has a reasonably free rein to call out Romney without being accused of overreacting.
And, honestly, I do not understand the logic of the $5 trillion tax cut. We need this tax cut, apparently, to stimulate the economy (though tax cuts have proven to be poor at economic stimulus, but whatever). Increasing the deficit is bad and we can’t talk about cutting spending on popular programs, so Romney/Ryan say we pay for it by eliminating tax deductions for the wealthy, carefully done so as to ensure that the wealthy pay no more or less in income taxes than before (even though no one has yet been able to make this add up, but whatever). Even if we take Romney/Ryan at their word that they can do this, we’ve still just cut taxes in some places and increased taxes in other places so it all comes out even. So where is the economic stimulus? It makes no sense — overall, net taxes haven’t changed, so what’s the point of the whole exercise? The whole thing seems like an elaborate con to get everyone talking about GOP tax cuts — maybe that’s the point.