Obama: This Is Math, Not Class Warfare

President Obama was in fighting form as he unveiled his deficit reduction plan in the Rose Garden today, vowing to veto any bill that cut Medicare but didn’t raise taxes on the rich or big corporations. “Middle class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” he declared. “Anybody who says we can’t change the tax code to correct that, anyone who signs some pledge to protect every single tax loophole so long as they live, they should be called out!”

“I reject the idea that asking a hedge fund manager to pay the same rate as a plumber or a teacher is class warfare. I think it’s just the right thing to do,” he said. He noted that both parties want to cut the deficit by $4 trillion, the AP reports, but that without tax hikes, that would all have to come from cuts to critical areas like education and medical research. “This is not class warfare. It’s math.” (More Barack Obama stories.)