Writing in The Daily Beast, Matt Miller makes two controversial claims. One is that in the medium term—i.e., after the recession is over but not so far in the future that it isn’t worth thinking about—taxes are going to need to be higher than Barack Obama’s FY 2010 budget suggests. The other is that Obama ought to actually say this.
The first, as readers will know, is something I definitely agree with. The second doesn’t strike me as great political advice. I’d like to see Obama’s rhetoric leave the door open to this sort of thing. But the “groundwork” needs to be laid in the first instance not by the president, but by the Matt Millers and Matt Yglesias of the world—pundits with no voters to face—and int he second instance by some politicians in congress. In particular, it would be nice to see some of the self-described “deficit hawks” from the Blue Dog Caucus or the Bayh Bunch mention every once in a while that there’s a revenue element to deficit reduction.
Previous in TP Yglesias
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