and socialism to the banks
Mr Obama produced an only slightly less ambitious goal for deficit reduction than the House Republicans, albeit working from a more forgiving baseline: $4 trillion over 12 years compared to $4.4 trillion over 10 years. But the means by which he would achieve it are very different. Whereas the Republicans want to cut taxes, Mr Obama would raise them by more than $1 trillion. He wants to further strengthen his health reforms, which the Republicans want to scrap altogether. He proposes cuts in military spending — the one area where Republicans were reluctant to swing the axe. Much like Paul Ryan, the congressman who drew up the Republican plan, Mr Obama seems to have embraced the supposedly bipartisan goal of deficit reduction, but by means calculated to reassure his base and outrage his opponents.
Indeed Mr Obama spent much of the speech in which he described his plan spelling out his differences with the Republicans and denouncing the vision of America embodied in their proposal. Wealthier Americans, he reiterated several times, should pay more in taxes, not less; poorer ones should not bear the brunt of spending cuts. The Republican proposals, he claimed, would deprive 50m people of health insurance, leave bridges and roads to crumble unrepaired and allow such countries as Brazil, China and South Korea to surpass America in education and technological know-how, all for the sake of lowering taxes on the rich.
Il centro-destra del mondo ha un’idea comune.