One week after suggesting that the middle-class “has been buried the last four years,” a remark that gave the Republicans more firepower this election cycle, may have, as RedState noted in jest, continued his campaign for the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan ticket.
Speaking at an Iowa campaign stop on Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden confirmed that President Barack Obama’s administration does want to raise taxes by $1 trillion. Biden, who is scheduled to debate Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Thursday, said they want to let the trillion-dollar tax cut expire.
“You know the phrase (the GOP) always uses, ‘Obama and Biden want to raise taxes by a trillion dollars.’ Guess what? Yes, we do in one regard,” said Biden. “We want to let that trillion-dollar tax cut expire so the middle-class doesn’t have to bear the burden of all that money going to the superwealthy.”
The vice president was referring to the Bush era tax cuts, which the president plans to let expire at the end of the year for households earning $250,000 or more each year. Biden noted, though, that letting the tax cuts expire is not a tax increase, but just “fairness where I come from.”
Economic Collapse News reported Wednesday on a study that suggested 90 percent of American households will see their taxes rise significantly because many tax cuts and credits for all income groups, including the Bush tax cuts, will expire.
Biden’s remarks prompted the Romney campaign to issue a statement and noted that the vice president “fully embraced the president’s job-killing tax increases” and that the next four years would be the same as the last four years.
“Fresh off admitting that America’s middle class has been ‘buried’ over the last four years, Vice President Biden went a step further today and fully embraced the President’s job-killing tax increases. The choice facing Americans in this election gets clearer every day,” said Ryan Williams, a campaign spokesperson. “We can either have four more years like the last four, with the same policies that have resulted in high unemployment and falling incomes, or we can elect Mitt Romney – who will lead us to a real recovery with more jobs and higher take-home pay.”
Ryan also pounced on Biden’s comments and, according to Fox News, told a crowd at a campaign stop in Virginia that the U.S. does not need a trillion-dollar tax increase.
“What we don’t need is a tax increase on our successful job creators that will cost us 700,000 jobs in just two years,” said the Wisconsin Congressman and House Budget Committee chairman.
At another Iowa campaign stop in Council Bluffs in front of about 650 people, Biden took aim at his GOP opponents and explained that the $5 trillion tax cut has been the “centrepiece” of the entire campaign for Romney.
During Wednesday night’s debate, the former Massachusetts Governor denied he would cut taxes, but rather across-the-board cut in tax rates will be offset by the elimination of exemptions and deductions that have yet to be specified.
“Last night we found out (Romney) doesn’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I guess he outsourced that to China,” noted Biden. “It’s hard to keep up” with Romney and Ryan, Biden said, reports the Associated Press. “You never know what game Gov. Romney is going to come with.”
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a report that found extending the tax cuts and spending policies could lead the federal debt increasing from 73 percent of the GDP in 2012 to more than 90 percent of GDP by 2022.
The House Ways and Means Committee introduced a bill that would extend the federal tax rates and credits for all income levels, but would end the two percent payroll tax cut. House Democrats support the bill, but only for those earning less than $250,000.
The U.S. federal government maintains a trillion-dollar-plus budget deficit and faces a national debt of more than $16 trillion. Reports in the past have indicated that neither the president’s nor Romney’s plans would tackle the fiscal crisis, balance the budget or make any significant dent in the debt.
David Walker, the former U.S. comptroller general, told USA Today this week the presidential candidates must be “specific, substantive and solutions-oriented” in order to curtail federal spending, deficits and debt, which he says is led by rising health care costs, retiring Baby Boomers and $1 trillion a year in tax breaks.
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