CBS News’s 60 Minutes aired an interview with President Obama last night in which the President responded to Republican accusations that he is “fixated” on raising taxes on the wealthy.
In the second half of the interview, President Obama answered Republican accusations that he refuses to consider other ways of addressing the budget problems:
The math is the math. You can’t lower current (tax) rates and raise revenue unless you’re getting revenue from someplace else. Now, either it’s coming from middle-class families, or poor families, or it’s coming from folks like you and me that can afford to pay a little more.
…you can’t get away from the basic concept that either we have a system in which the people who have benefited the most from this new economy, by a magnitude of 200, 300 percent increases in their income, either they’re doing a little bit more or they’re not.
I think they should. Because, and this is not because I’m interested in punishing the rich, I want everybody to be rich, that’s great. It has to do with the fact that the less I’m asking you or me to do, the more I’m asking somebody who’s in a much tougher position to sacrifice. And that is basic math.
President Obama also asserted that there is an inability to have an “honest conversation” about both income inequality and the mismanagement that led to the economic crisis.
The second part of the interview can be seen here and the transcript is here.
