On Monday, President Obama arrived at the place that many presidents reach when a recession won’t quit: He went after the rich.
Obama said he planned to increase tax rates on the wealthy, to ensure they “pay their fair share, just like everybody else.” Republicans called Obama’s ideas “class warfare” and suggested that they would hurt the economy by leaving small-business owners with less money to spend.
President Obama on Monday said that raising taxes on the wealthy is not class warfare, it's math, and only fair to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay their "fair share" in taxes. (Sept. 19)
Speaking from the White Hosue President Obama calls for $1.5 trillion in new revenue as part of a plan to find more than $3 trillion in budget savings over a decade.
Running in the red
Their argument sets up a replay of an old American debate occurring across a new political landscape.
Democrats remember when Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton won their fights to make the wealthy pay more. Republicans remember when Ronald Reagan won his battle, seeking economic recovery by having the wealthy pay less.
During this go-round, the Democrats are making their pitch to a country just a few years removed from a credit bubble when millions felt newly rich.
Now, will the wealthy seem distant enough to target?
“When everybody went up, it was a lot harder to make this argument,” Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Monday. But, he said, as the recession goes on, the argument will find more traction. “I think the time is ripe again. And I think the president sensed that.”
Arguments over the role of the wealthy in an economic recovery have always highlighted contrasting visions of the American idea. Historically, Democrats have tended to stress values such as equality and fairness — the idea that patriotism requires those who have more to do more.
“Our revenue laws have operated in many ways to the unfair advantage of the few,” Roosevelt said in a message to Congress in 1935. He wanted a wealth tax on the richest Americans in the midst of the Depression. He got it.
Clinton campaigned on a promise to raise taxes on the country’s highest bracket. After he was elected, Congress, then in Democratic hands, went along.
On Monday, as Obama outlined plans to increase tax rates on wealthy Americans, he mentioned the idea of “fairness” 11 times.
Obama said he only wants the rich to pay tax rates equal to those with lower incomes — to pay their “fair share.” What Republicans want instead, he said, was to preserve the “unfairness” of the status quo.
“It’s . . . about fairness,” the president said as he concluded. “It’s about whether we are, in fact, in this together, and we’re looking out for one another. We know what’s right. It’s time to do what’s right.”
Democratic pollsters have said that this idea — at least in theory — has wide public support. In July, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 72 percent of respondents supported raising taxes on incomes of more than $250,000 a year.
“It’s a mainstream position,” said Stan Greenberg, a longtime pollster for Democrats. “It’s not divisive, but it’s in fact where the great, great majority of the country is.”
And the idea resonated among some people on the streets of Washington on Monday.
“I feel people that make more money should pay more,” said computer assistant Cheryl Grady, 52, of Logan Circle.
Grady rejected the idea that taxing the wealthy more would stifle investment or job creation. “I don’t buy that,” she said. “They get to keep more of their money, and the people who can least afford it, at least in this economy, are the ones who are really stretched.”
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