My wife and I are in that demographic with a big tax target on it's back.... Making less than $250 K but still upper middle class, disposable income, not rich enough to hire lobbyists to watch our backs, well off so we don't have the social welfare industry looking out for us, and too busy working so we don't have much time to lobby on our own behalf. We pay a lot in taxes now and will need to be paying more in the not too distant future. I accept that because taxes are the price we pay for civilization, but I would like to feel that the tax burden is fairer tha it is now; the rich should be paying more than they do, and the poor should be getting a little less help than they do. Aside from starting the deficit reduction ball rolling, I think a big part of Obama's push for raising the marginal tax rates for income over $250K is to make future tax hikes for folks like me easier to take. And that is as it should be.

Here are some important points that Scot missed: 1. Under the Bush tax rates, the tax code became MORE progressive. Fewer lower income people paying taxes, and a larger shares of the total tax bill now comes from the wealthy. The idea that a lower rate means that the wealthy are paying less is demonstrably false. But it is an easy sound bite to score political points. But the 47% of the country who pay no taxes can thank President Bush. 2. The spending side of the deficit is critical. After Obama passed his "stimulus", he also raised the baseline budgets throughout the federal government, at a time when the economy was flatlining, this was the biggest cause of our current deficit. 3. The biggest driver of tax revenue is economic growth. That is what balanced the budget in 1998, and what caused the deficit to shrink in the pre recession years of 2004-2007. Therefore, the congress must make changes that will encourage economic expansion. Tax hikes do not grow the economy. 4. Politics is the art of compromise. Obama acts as though raising the top rate to 39.6% is the solution, but the revenue it would generate, through static scoring is but a rounding error in the overall deficit: $80 Billion per year, with a deficit at $1.2 Trillion. The actual increase would be less, as behavior changes as a result of changing tax rates. The GOP can give him this little symbolic victory, but must demand real cuts to the discretionary budget in return.

Would you advocate returning to Clinton era spending rates. Do that and Republicans fall in line.

If you listen to WBZ radio and the commercials mouthed by Gary LaPierre you would understand why medicaid costs are so high. The taxpayers are subsidizing the inheritances of middle class children. Put your home in a trust, wait a few years and it becomes unattachable should you enter a nursing home. Try that with your grocery bill.

It is always interesting to note the obfuscation and twisting of reality that some who make comments must go through to make their points.  Always at bottom lay some evil or lie that their opponent is promulgating as some misguided truth.  The fact is Scot covered much of the reality.  The reality that he missed or chose not to pursue is that politicians on both sides of the debate fear to be honest with a public that as was once famously said, "can't handle the truth".

The truth is the public has made it very clear that the entitlement programs it has paid for or is paying for, SS, Medicare, these the public wishes to remain the same.  That being the case the honest response by Dems. and Repubs. conservative or liberal should be, they must be paid for.  There are a number of ways to accomplish this but none of them are pain free.  Remove the SS cap, means test Medicare, eliminate the tax cut for the upper income brackets, make the middle class cuts only temporary to be reviewed each year.  At the same time reform the tax code in its entirety.  Others may not agree but I've always preferred the VAT to the income tax, but those are issues open to discussion.

What is not open to discussion is that you can "politically" balance the budget only with tax increases or only with budget cuts.  There are too many people running around saying because "I don't like it" or 'I can do without it" it shouldn't be done.  The fact is it isn't about you, it is about the United States of which you are merely a part.  The rest of us are not merely satellites to your own personal political or economic view of the world.

I think it is very wrong to look at our "fiscal cliff" too narrowly. It requires a broad examination of our national priorities. For example, ending tax breaks for the rich is but one part of a compehensive suite of fiscal reform. It is necessary, ethical, and an important correction to the errors of a flawed and grasping ideology, but more must be done. That "more" need not cause any more pain and an austerity death spiral through cuts to programs like Medicare or higher taxes on the middle class. I completely disagree with Scot on that notion. Austerity does NOT work.

Let's take a look at what else will 1) be ethical and 2) be effective. Progressive budgets that protect ordinary working family include things like ending oil subsidies that taxpayers extend to the richest and most destructive industry ever known on earth, and tax subsides to agribusiness and big pharma. Taxing carbon and a small tax on financial transactions would raise billions and billions while protecting our environment and our economy. When the global elite are hiding more than 21 trillion dollars in secret tax havens (about 12 trillion American dollars are sheltered), that's an another obvious place for reform...as is correcting the amazing tax dodging of corporations. Corporations are also using shell games and tax havens to evade paying taxes...sometimes paying no federal taxes whatsoever. Ending tax loopholes for the uber wealthy and corporations would also raise untold billions. Fixing our absurd health care system is a huge one...we are wasting so much money in this area for such bad results. Let's join the rest of the civilized world, instead, and establish single payer.

Investing some of this huge additional revenue in education, infrastructure, healthcare, technology, and so on will yeild a more sustainable and thriving nation that can lead the world again in innovation. A strong economy will also raise revenues without raising taxes on the middle class.

But in order to move forward of all of this commonsense reform, we would have to first reform government so that the largest and wealthiest interests can no longer dictate our public policy for their own short-term gains. Get the money out of politics, expose the covert propaganda, and protect democracy and freedom. It's about justice, and pragmatism.

Attaturk, thanks, you're right that i'm not promoting austerity; rather, realism.

"greendragon"  As the economy improves I don't see how we avoid raising the middle class tax level.  I admit I never believed the Bush tax cuts were a good "economic" idea, a nice move politically but of no value economically.  After all it doesn't take an economist to know if you reduce revenue and then try to fight two wars and give a prescription drug benefit you will run short of money. 

For too long pols have avoided telling folks the truth, the benefits of govt. must be paid for.  You'll get the libertarian fruitcakes with their, "I don't need benefits", but that is purely nonsensical hyperbole. Current tax levels are extremely low and if pols would simply quit being pols and be honest then the public would support what needs to be done.  However, to expect today's current crowd of R's and D's to not worry about the next election is probably too much to ask.

I agree with Richmond12. "The spending side of the deficit is critical. After Obama passed his "stimulus", he also raised the baseline budgets throughout the federal government, at a time when the economy was flatlining, this was the biggest cause of our current deficit." Enough with the taxes! Everyone understands that taxes will be raised via some formula. What about spending? What substantive reduction in spending has the Obama administration proposed? All I am reading here is how we need to raise taxes so we can spend the revenue. Crazy! Why don't we all get more credit cards and spend the limit?

and not an adult in sight

Has anyone a looked at the cost of the war on drugs? 

Well, one last comment, in the form of a lucid op-ed by Paul Krugman (speaking of clarity):

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/opinion/krugman-the-gops-existential-crisis.html?_r=0

Remember, deficits are "a feature, not a bug". Deficits are the first step in implementing the shock doctrine (see Naomi Klein).

(Note that the ideologues he mentions are those who have enormous financial incentives to destroy social programs. It's ideology that comes conveniently with a big money-and-power payout for those who already have the resources to game the system. It's a self-serving ideology of reckless greed, totalitarian impulse, and a lack of empathy.)

"Since the 1970s, the Republican Party has fallen increasingly under the influence of radical ideologues, whose goal is nothing less than the elimination of the welfare state — that is, the whole legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society. From the beginning, however, these ideologues have had a big problem: The programs they want to kill are very popular. Americans may nod their heads when you attack big government in the abstract, but they strongly support Social Security, Medicare, and even Medicaid. So what’s a radical to do?

The answer, for a long time, has involved two strategies. One is “starve the beast,” the idea of using tax cuts to reduce government revenue, then using the resulting lack of funds to force cuts in popular social programs. Whenever you see some Republican politician piously denouncing federal red ink, always remember that, for decades, the G.O.P. has seen budget deficits as a feature, not a bug."

While taxing the rich may not be the toal solution to the deficit, its a question of fairness. Why should they pay a lower rate than low income people? Why should they be hiding money in tax dodges and offshore accounts? What can a man use after the first billion? Many of these people are economic geniuses but moral morons, in my opinion. Listen to Buffett, a man who knows when he has enough and tells it straight.

One final point here.  The argument that the top 1 percent pay let us say 50% of all federal revenues or the bottom 47% pay no "income tax" is not an argument with a point, other than a mathematical statement.  Tax rates and tax codes are based upon "income" not upon "the proportionality" of the total federal revenue.  Similarly a VAT tax or a consumption tax is based upon what you purchase or how much you purchase not upon what proportion of federal revenues you supply.  Govt. determines the progressivity of any tax code.  Now if one wishes to argue the poor should pay the bigger portion or the middle class should pay the bigger portion then I'd suggest making an argument as to why progressivity is unfair.  If one believes that it is morally more important for the rich to pay less and the poor to pay more then one should make the moral argument in support of that position. 

Not a word about spending in this article, naturally. Its always about more revenue. How many of the rest of us have this kind of option in our families, businesses or other, non-government, organizations? Everyone BUT governments have to live within their means but, somehow, it is utterly impossible to freeze government spending, to actually PRIORITIZE the spending in any way shape or form when government (at any level) in the US. It can be done without "catastrophe". Research Canada or Sweden in the 90's. Both reduced government spending as a percent of GDP. Neither could be considered "heartless", rapaciously capitalist, societies. Both recovered so well that they are currently among if not the healthiest nations, economically, in the world. The point is; reducing spending can be done with ANY budget, anywhere, without the world ending. Why is it completely impossible to even IMAGINE in the US?

Obama has absolutely no intention of cutting spending or reducing the deficit.  He is propising 44 in spending for every $1 in taxes. How many votes has his last 2 budgets received?

Prayers to the folks in CT.

Guys

1) I actually did talk about spending -- entitlements -- in the column. I guess it's just reflexive for some posters to assert the contrary. That said, the idea that our current problems result from Obama's spending is just not true. The big drivers are the retirement of the baby boomes, who are now tapping Medicare and Medicaid, plus the Bush-era tax cuts, plus war efforts & associated interest. 

Scot

seems pretty inconsequential when compared to Newtown

Scot,

How can you suggest that the current discretionary spending is NOT part of the deficit problem?  Entitlements have been rising, but it is the NON enetilement piece that has exploded, as a result of Obama's stimulus and expansion of baseline budgets across the government.  Entitlements are part of the structural deficit, and need to be addressed.  But the biggest part of entitlement increases is in future years.  Today's deficit is made up mostly of spending increases, and a flat economy. 

Also, Has the Globe covered any of the union thugery in Michigan?  I have not seen coverage of this anywhere but on Fox News.

Thanks for some balance.  Raising taxes towards Clinton-era levels makes sense, even though it may hurt a bit.  But that said, spending has to come down too.  Why can't either "side" admit this?