Tuesday, January 24, 2012

President Obama will deliver...

...his third State of the Union address tonight and Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana will give the Republican response. Daniels, you may recall, was the director of the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush when the federal budget surplus was magically transformed into a deficit through tax cuts for the rich.

And, on the very same day, Mitt Romney released his 2010 tax return showing that he paid about 13.9 percent on an adjusted gross income of $21.6 million.

(Also, Newt Gingrich has taken a commanding lead over Romney in Florida, but I couldn't find a picture with all three of them.)

Is President Obama the luckiest guy on earth, or what?

When the Republican Party base Tea Party discovered in 2009 that the Clinton budget surpluses had been squandered and that the nation was facing record deficits, they inexplicably blamed President Obama and "runaway federal spending." Except that spending wasn't the problem; revenue was. It turns out that the single biggest cause of the federal budget deficits was the Bush tax cuts. And tonight we'll be hearing from the architect of those cuts after we got a look at the tax returns from a high-profile beneficiary of those policies. (Why aren't those two in hiding?)

Warren Buffett's secretary is expected to be in attendance at the SOTU address tonight. You remember her; she pays federal taxes at a higher rate than her boss. I'm sure the president will point to her tonight when he talks about inequality in America.

But I say: never mind her, just remind everyone of Daniels and Romney.

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