It has already announced plans to withdraw a further £39bn from the economy this year through spending cuts and tax increases on middle-income earners and the poor.
And until the rich pay more, there will never be a national consensus for tax increases on middle-income Americans, which will eventually be needed to further curb long-term deficits.
"To the extent that it is revenue neutral, a flat tax implies large tax increases on middle-class people and, mirroring that, a major tax cut on wealthy people".
"House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi is leading her fellow Democrats to oppose any effort to prevent a tax increase on middle class families for one full year," the NRCC argued, although voting down the Senate's two-month deal actually raises the chance that taxes will go up Jan . 1if the sides cannot agree.
The single mention of Mitt Romney by name comes in the most conventional part of the document: a small panel offering a side by side comparison between "Tax Savings Under Obama" versus "Tax Increase Under Romney," itself using familiar figures of a $3,600 tax cut for a "typical family" under Obama compared with an estimated $2,000 tax increase on "middle class families with kids" under Romney.
White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest released a statement saying that "the President met with influential progressives to talk about the importance of preventing a tax increase on middle class families, strengthening our economy and adopting a balanced approach to deficit reduction".
"This afternoon at the White House, the President met with influential progressives to talk about the importance of preventing a tax increase on middle class families, strengthening our economy and adopting a balanced approach to deficit reduction," Earnest said in a statement Tuesday.
The Times's David Leonhardt, who also written about some of these figures, suggested a new name for the G.O.P. bill: "Paul Ryan's 2017 Tax Increase on Middle-Class Families".
And when you're talking about taxing income above $97,500 the same way we do income of, say, $30,000, it's not really helpful to describe it as "a trillion-dollar tax increase on middle-class families".
Eliminating or substantially raising the cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax -- currently $68,400 -- would solve much of the problem, but would amount to a big tax increase on middle-and upper-income people.
