congress, 2011. so today he openly rejected the mitt romney, john boehner solution for tax reform. what i will not do is to have a process that is vague, that says we re going to sort of, kind of raise revenue through dynamic scoring or closing loopholes that have not been identified. and the reason i won t do that is because i don t want to find ourselves in a position six months from now or a year from now, where lo and behold, the only way to close the deficit is to sock it to middle class families. now, that is the classiest way i have ever seen anybody say, you know what, somebody s got to pick up the bar tab, boys. this is what president obama ran against in the presidential election. mitt romney s approach to tax reform was, trust me. the american public wanted specifics. and president obama continued to give specifics today, but the economy wasn t the only thing on
tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%. what i will not do is to have a process that is vague, that says we re going to sort of kind of raise revenue threw ough dynamic score organize closing loopholes that have not been identified. treasury secretary tim geithner put that this way yesterday there s a lot of magical thinking about how much money can you raise from tax expenditures. a lot of people who have looked at that question and concluded i think incorrectly that there s huge amount of resource there is you can raise. i think that s just not true. joining me now, nia henderson of the washington and the assistant manager editor of time magazines. the republicans have been saying we might able to do something with deductions but deductions only, no rate changes. it seems like tim geithner and the president are really double teaming that issue very
what i will not do is to have a process that is vague, that says we re going to sort of kind of raise revenue through dynamic score organize closing loopholes that have not been identified. treasury secretary tim geithner put that this way yesterday there s a lot of magical thinking about how much money can you raise from tax expenditures. a lot of people who have looked at that question and concluded i think incorrectly that there s huge amount of resource there is you can raise. i think that s just not true. joining me now, nia henderson of the washington and the assistant manager editor of time magazines. the republicans have been saying we might able to do something with deductions but deductions only, no rate changes. it seems like tim geithner and the president are really double
everybody s going to be perfectly happy, but what i will not do is to have a process that is vague, that says we re going to sort of kind of raise revenue through dynamic scoring or closing loopholes that have not been identified and the reason i won t do that is because i don t want to find ourselves in a position six months from now or a year from now where lo and behold the only way to close the deficit is to sock it to middle class families or to burden families that have disabled kids or, you know, have a parent in a nursing home. or suddenly we have to cut more out of our basic research budget that is the key to growing the economy in the long term. so that s my concern. i m less concerned about red lines per se. what i m concerned about is not
lower the corporate rates close a lot of those loopholes. that sounds on what mitt romney lost on. it s part of sim southern bowles. simpson-bowles. what dick durbin has signed off on. jonathan i want to go back to you, ezra klein has a good analysis in the washington post about what kind of game of hardball we re playing here. the president announced $1.6 trillion he wants to raise in new revenue more than you can feesbly as tim geithner put it raise than just closing loopholes. that is a reputation of what john boehner suggested in the days since the president has been re-elected. that s totally right. a key point, the simpson-bowles tax idea is kind of a magic pony, right. everyone agrees in the ab instruct, we can bring down the rates, close loopholes and deductions and raise revenue. if that s such a wonderful idea how come it s only come up now. how come no one has done it. the reason is because it s really, really hard politically. once you get into the specifics.