Thursday, December 13, 2012

Why Obama Rejected Boehner's Tax On The Rich Proposal

When the Speaker of the House, John Boehner, offered a proposal to raise as much revenues on the rich by closing loopholes and by eliminating and capping certain tax deductions as would have been achieved by raising the tax rate, Obama flat out rejected it.  Certainly, any logical person would conclude that it doesn't matter how we get the increased revenues from the rich as long as those revenues are equal to or greater than the targeted amount.  But, Obama isn't thinking that way.

You see, the President's insistence on raising the "tax rates" on the rich is more about politics than any amount of money being collected.  He wants to be able to easily campaign on the fact that the rich are paying higher taxes by simply pointing to this or that rate being increased.   Boehner's salad bowl mix of tax increases is just too complex and too difficult to explain and prove and not conducive to Obama's continual need to give campaign speeches touting his achievements.  Simply, Obama's political left supporters would just find Boehner's tax increases too hard to understand. 

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