Economy and Tax

Romney: I’d like to clear up the record and go through it piece by piece. First of all, I don’t have a $5 trillion tax cut. I don’t have a tax cut of a scale that you’re talking about. My view is that we ought to provide tax relief to people in the middle class. But I’m not going to reduce the share of taxes paid by high-income people. High-income people are doing just fine in this economy. They’ll do fine whether you’re president or I am.u00a0The people who are having the hard time right now are middle-income Americans. Under the president’s policies, middle-income Americans have been buried. They’re just being crushed. Middle-income Americans have seen their income come down by $4,300. This is a — this is a tax in and of itself. I’ll call it the economy tax. It’s been crushing.

Obama: Jim, I — you may want to move on to another topic, but I would just say this to the American people. If you believe that we can cut taxes by $5 trillion and addu00a0$2 trillion in additional spending that the military is not asking for — $7 trillion, just to give you a sense, over 10 years that’s more than our entire defence budget — and you think that by closing loopholes and deductions for the well-to-do, somehow you will not end up picking up the tab, then Governor Romney’s plan may work for you.But I think math, common sense and our history shows us that’s not a recipe for job growth.