Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) had strong words for Republicans' proposed budget on Sunday, telling NBC's "Meet The Press" that it's "the Romney plan on steroids."
When pressed by host David Gregory about the difficulty of justifying tax increases in cash-strapped cities, Van Hollen charged that the GOP plan services the needs of the wealthy at the expense of middle-income families.
Well, David, two things. 1) the Senate Democratic plan has less tax revenue embedded in it than the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles plan. Number one. Number two, Republicans, in their budget, say there are about $5.7 trillion in tax breaks that you can eliminate.
Their plan would drop the top rate from 39% to 25%. They claim that they're going to make that up by just taking away deductions from the wealthy, but the reality is they're going to be raising taxes on middle income taxpayers. Family will pay $2,000 more in order to finance tax breaks to the very wealthy. It's like the Romney plan on steroids.
Budget standard-bearer Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) proposes to balance the nation's debt in 10 years, through a series of moves that include repealing Obamacare and slashing Medicare/Medicaid programs.
"Are a lot of these solutions very popular, and did we win these arguments in the campaign? Some of us think so," Ryan said last Monday.
During the course of the 2012 presidential campaign, Romney's tax plan was panned as a roadmap that did not add up -- headed by pledges to cut tax rates by 20 percent, without raising any taxes on middle-class families. The Washington Post's Ezra Klein summed it up last August as a "fantasy."
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