understand how it is that our defense is going to be so badly cut. my own plan, by the way, to bring down the rates of taxation while maintaining the revenues that come into the government is by making sure that we don t lower taxes on high income people. we re not going to have high-income people pay less of the tax burden than they pay today. that s not what s going to happen. i do want to bring taxes down for middle-income people. in particular, i want middle-income americans not to have to pay taxes on interest and dividends and capital gains. erskine bowels bowles commission says that something s got to give. that your plan would not actually reduce the deficit. that, indeed, taxes would have to go up on the middle class. what gives? if you re not right about your projection? first of all i ve got princeton, harvard, wall street journal and aei saying actually that we can bring down the rates. and if we limit, or eliminate some of the loopholes and deductions at the high end
that mitt romney called coined a phrase, in his words, obamaloney. this has now become a sort of back and forth between the two campaigns about who s lying the worst. what do you make of it? yeah, you know, it s a tough debate. and you know, it s funny. i ve been looking quite a bit actually at that tax policy center study. and it s a case where they ve been cited by both sides, republicans and democrats, including mitt romney, who as you noted, has cited not that study, but that center itself as a credible, independent third party objective resource. so the tax plan is simply a case where they ve made the determination that, you know, there s no possible way to keep all of his campaign promises at once. and that one thing that he might have to do would be to eliminate some of the tax benefits that are overwhelmingly enjoyed by middle and lower class voters. the biggest problem for mitt romney is that he hasn t outlined his plan in specific enough detail to fully refute that claim.
obamaloney. this has now become a sort of back and forth between the two campaigns about who s lying the worst. what do you make of it? yeah, you know, it s a tough debate. and you know, it s funny. i ve been looking quite a bit actually at that tax policy center study. and it s a case where they ve been cited by both sides, republicans and democrats, including mitt romney, who as you noted, has cited not that study, but that center itself as a credible, independent third party objective resource. so the tax plan is simply a case where they ve made the determination that, you know, there s no possible way to keep all of his campaign promises at once. and that one thing that he might have to do would be to eliminate some of the tax benefits that are overwhelmingly enjoyed by middle and lower class voters. the biggest problem for mitt romney is that he hasn t outlined his plan in specific enough detail to fully refute that claim. he has promised not to raise taxes and to maintain progr
you know, top tax brackets measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, where we are now. what happened to all of that progressivity we used to have in the tax code, recognizing much, much higher incomes? well, it s interesting. tax is actually a complicated situation, because weirdly enough, the income tax is slightly more progressive today than it was in 1979. which is pretty amazing, considering how far down the top marginal rates have come. and that s because the people at the lower end have been taken off the tax rolls, which was a conservative idea to reward the working poor. now, of course, republicans want to put all those people back on the tax rolls. so the one good trend we ve had in the midst of this growing income inequality, republicans want to eliminate. but, yes, i mean, we had a real long period from about 1934 to 1979 when incomes in the united states were growing more equal, not less equal, and there were a number of causes for that, but
real class warfare in the united states a hundred years ago, and, you know, there was bloodshed. you know, there were killings. i mean, that s warfare. this is discussion. and we ve also had much, much higher tax rates. i mean, here you have republicans today saying it s class warfare. if you take what is now the top income tax rate and you push it up by 4.5 percentage points, they call that class warfare, if you push it up to 39%. we had rates, even when reagan was in office, that were much higher than that. oh, it s preposterous. they were 70% when reagan came in, twice what they are today. and they pushed them down to 50%, they pushed them down below that. but then if you go back into i remember, you know, when babe ruth was playing baseball, the top tax bracket cut in around $5 million. not these $100,000 maximum you know, top tax brackets measured in hundreds of thousands of dollars, where we are now. what happened to all of that progressivity we used to have in