Obama’s new plan may actually rely 60 percent on tax increases

Obama’s new plan may actually rely 60 percent on tax increases
Reuters ^ | April 15, 2011 | by James Pethokoukis

Posted on Saturday, April 16, 2011 8:59:01 AM by library user

~ EXCERPT ~

In his budget speech earlier this week, President Obama described his budget plan this way:

It’s an approach that achieves about $2 trillion in spending cuts across the budget. It will lower our interest payments on the debt by $1 trillion. It calls for tax reform to cut about $1 trillion in tax expenditures — spending in the tax code. And it achieves these goals while protecting the middle class, protecting our commitment to seniors and protecting our investments in the future.

Now with all these plans floating around — the debt commission, Paul Ryan’s — Goldman Sachs has tried to do an apples-to-apples comparison over 10 years (not 12 as White House tried to pull off). And here is what it found:

So of the 3.4 percentage points of savings, more than half — 1.9 points — comes from taxes. That’s 56 percent, not the one-third or one-quarter that Obama was talking about. And I am assuming that Goldman is using the White House’s rosier economic forecasts when evaluating Obama’s plan. (Ryan uses the gloomier ones from the Congressional Budget Office.) I think the Republicans will be pointing this out.

(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.reuters.com ...