How much reduction? None! What´s needed is a reduction in spending and that will never happen under this farce of an administration.

In this case, a tax raise will result in less revenue for the government and a huge increase in demands for benefits.
The rich are selling assets, and shutting down enterprise, at least in this country, becoming liquid and ready to go where there is opportunity.

It is not meant to accomplish anything, other than make Democrats feel good about themselves for punishing the rich. Problem is, the punishment never stops - when unchecked, it eventually leads to gulags.

Yes, but you are missing the point. The me-gimme-mine´s love the class warfare message. It isn´t FAAAAAIIIIR that "The Rich" have more money than they do, even though "The Rich" earned their money by not sitting on their duffs and watching soap operas and sleeping until noon but by working and sweating and creating.

Urkel knew this going into the election but the class warfare issue gets votes every time.

It isn´t about deficit reduction, it´s about "revenge".

And don´t forget that people have seen this coming for a long time, and have made arrangements to circumvent the effects.

This is their largest blind spot: if you destroy people´s ability and or willingness to make money, there is nothing to tax.

An additional $82 billion each year will hardly make a dent in any one of Barrack Obama´s next four deficits. That´s the case assuming the tax increase doesn´t cause another recession.

A few years ago there was a tongue-in-cheek article about not letting Obama know what comes after trillion. I think he found out.

Who is actually surprised?

This is nothing but class warfar rhetoric to justify the ex-propriation of the assets of the "rich" by a mob.

Remember in 2008 the Obama wanted a militia better armed than the military and loyal to him? That would be the mob to which the job of confiscating those assets would go...and which, no matter how brutal, will NEVER be prosecuted to by this Administration´s DOJ.

Welcome to Zimbabwe.

Obama knows the increased revenue will be negligible. Given the fact that he will not agree to reducing entitlement spending, the only options he will agree to are cuts in the defense budget and further increases in income taxes.

He´ll likely tack on another 10 points on upper income, bring back the phase out of itemized deductions, limit passive activity and some active losses from trade or business, and lower the level to $100K or $150K for the higher rates to kick in.

The real money comes from the middle class. He knows it and that´s where all this is headed.

Zip, Zero, Nada!

Obie is just trying on his training pants as a Communist...this is the first step.

So, give it to the Democrats.

Let them raise that top tax rate.

Let it be the collossal failure it will be, and let them live with the deficits because it 2 years their´s another election for Senators, and the entire House.

Too bad no one was willing to say this before the election.

Obama wants it all. He´s arguing about higher taxes on the rich, but he want the full Clinton tax schedule because the real revenue loss has come from Bush´s middle class tax breaks and his own payroll tax holiday. Getting those off the books will bring in 275 billion in 2013. Even if all the tax on the rich were actually paid, it would only be 42 billion in the table. Which is less than 10% of all the taxes in the table that Obama wants to raise. I wonder how the voters will respond to a 30% higher tax bill when the learn that the rich theoretically only needed to increase their taxes by 25%. And, since the income wasn´t earned, no additional revenue was received from the rich. Ooooops.

It no longer matters. The taxes are going up. The majority of the country voted for it.

Taxes are already above the tax saturation point where increasing rates kill more economic activity putting people out of business or reducing their business so the overall tax to be paid becomes less. Everytime taxes were lowered, under Reagan, Kennedy and Bush the revenue to the federal Govt increased. The reverse will happen when you increase taxes revenue is reduced. Any balancing of the budget must combine massive spending cuts with tax cuts to maximize growth and grow the federal revenue. The only reason to raise taxes is satisfying the envy and jealousy of the Rat Base. This is the most frustrating thing in the debate the GOP spokesperson never makes this point. It may be counterintuitive but it is a fact and needs to be repeated until the dumb electorate understands it. The returns in the chart FTA assume that the economic activity remains constant which will not happen. Another false impression Obama gets across when he says make the rich "pay a little more" is that this will solve the problem and no one else will need to make any sacrifices. The present spending levels are unsupportable and 61K spending for each poor person is unsupportable. The real result is the rich are poorer and the poor are much poorer. This point was well made by a private ad in the election called Freedom to Succeed by Thomas Peterffy. Why don´t GOP leaders ever make this point? It should be done every time Obama does his class warfare act which is a lot!!!

0bama knows that raising tax rates lowers tax revenues and he doesn´t care!

He said as much in 2008 in a pre-convention debate with Hilary. So what if tax revenues are lower and the deficit grows faster, it is only fffaaaiirrrr for the rich to owe more.

It´s equivalent to a fart in a thunderstorm.