Call me pinko, but I think we need moderately higher income taxes on everybody, the rich included.
The country's soaring debt and terrible spending projections have it headed toward bankruptcy. Sure, blame the stimulus and bailouts, although I'd hate to see the economy without them. But don't forget about President George W. Bush's Iraq war and the Medicare drug program.
Spending cuts alone won't fix the budget, and it is difficult to argue that taxes are stratospheric now. They're among the lowest in the developed world. Obama wants to raise the top federal bracket from 35 percent to 39.5 percent - the level during the Clinton administration and below the 50 percent level in President Ronald Reagan's first term.
That would apply only to income greater than $250,000, and even then the bite wouldn't really be 39.5 percent. Shelters, loopholes and dodges ensure that nobody over a certain income pays tax sticker price. The top 5 percent of earners in 2006 - those making over $154,000 - paid federal taxes equal to only 21 percent of their income, says the Tax Foundation.
Raising that to, say, 25 percent - far beyond anything Obama has proposed - is hardly "socialist."
Call me a coldhearted right-winger, but I believe Washington must also drastically cut spending. Social Security is fixable, but Medicare is a monster that could ruin the country. We have to stop wasting billions on pills and treatments that don't work or preserve life for a couple of miserable months.
Tax increases are indefensible without broad hacks at the Washington leviathan.
Slashing the growth of government spending isn't an idea you get much from the left. Raising taxes wasn't what you heard at the tax-day tea parties. But if Obama doesn't do both after the financial crisis abates, his presidency will have failed.
Call me a fool, but I think the country can steer a middle course that satisfies neither side but saves our children and grandchildren from fiscal ruin.
