While some might find the idea of Democrats standing up for Social Security and Medicare, it's not really true--Democrats have offered to make such cuts if there are some tax increases to go along with them. This insistence that a compromise involve a compromise has been depicted, oddly enough, as a refusal to compromise.

But things got slightly more confusing when it was reported that the Republicans had broken their anti-tax stance, and were putting a $300 billion revenue increase on the table. In the Washington Post, Lori Montgomery's piece led with this:

Congressional Republicans have for the first time retreated from their hardline stance against new taxes, offering to raise federal tax collections by nearly $300 billion over the next decade as part of a plan to tame the national debt.

That is big news. In the New York Times (11/9/11):

Republicans, long opposed to tax increases, said Tuesday that they might allow $250 billion to $300 billion of additional tax revenue as part of a deal to shave $1.2 trillion from federal deficits over the next 10 years.

One slight problem: The GOP tax increase is, it turns out, a massive tax cut for wealthy Americans. As Steve Benen noticed (Political Animal, 11/9/11):

Way down in the same article, in the 16th paragraph, the piece gets around to mentioning that Republican want to trade nearly $300 billion in new revenue for "permanently extending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts past their 2012 expiration date, a move that would increase deficits by about $4 trillion over the next decade."

That's the kind of detail that more or less debunks the article’s headline and lede. Think about it: as part of a debt-reduction deal, Republicans want to increase tax revenue by less than $300 billion and cut tax revenue by roughly $4 trillion.

This bit of trickery is still being misreported--in today's Post, for instance:

Some conservatives in the Republican House majority said they could not support the latest GOP offer to raise taxes by as much as $300 billion over the next decade as part of a broader deal to cut spending. The offer marked the first time Republicans other than Boehner have proposed raising taxes above current levels.

Readers had to keep reading several paragraphs to learn that this tax increase is actually part of a massive tax cut--bringing the top rate down to 28 percent.

Perhaps the most bizarre exchange on this topic came on Sunday's Meet the Press, where NBC host David Gregory insisted that his own reporting should be trusted over the word of Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida:

GREGORY: They did agree for tax increases that Democrats have not accepted this week. But I want to ask you about, specifically, about the debt.

SCHULTZ: Well, no, no, no.... Come on, David, that was not a serious proposal. What they proposed was, you know, reducing the number of itemized deductions in exchange for a passage, an extension of all the Bush tax cuts, which actually would've resulted in less revenue and brought the overall top tax rate down to 28 percent. So that was not a serious proposal. We need a serious proposal that balances the revenue the super committee generates and the cuts.

GREGORY: All right. Well, there was new revenue that was proposed, but I realize that's still a subject of debate. But let me, let me focus...

SCHULTZ: That would result in less revenue overall.

GREGORY: Let me--well, again, that's in dispute, according to my reporting on that.

It would be of great value to the country--and to the GOP--if Gregory could explain what his investigation turned up.

In a 2008 debate, Charlie Gibson asked Barack Obama about his support for raising capital-gains taxes, given the historical record of government losing net revenue as a result. Obama persevered: "Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital-gains tax for purposes of fairness."

A most revealing window into our president's political core: To impose a tax that actually impoverishes our communal bank account (the U.S. Treasury) is ridiculous. It is nothing but punitive. It benefits no one--not the rich, not the poor, not the government. For Obama, however, it brings fairness, which is priceless.

That was, indeed, a memorable moment--but not in the way that Krauthammer thinks. The real problem was that the question Charles Gibson asked was premised on a falsehood. As  FAIR pointed out at the time, Gibson was

pressing Obama about his plan to raise capital gains tax rates to levels of the early 1990s--a position that struck Gibson as bizarre, since lowering these taxes increases government revenue:

In each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

This question rests on two false assumptions. The capital gains tax is paid by a small percentage of the population. As Citizens for Tax Justice pointed out (3/16/06), "The wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers enjoyed 90 percent of the capital gains eligible for this special tax break." Gibson's reference to the 100 million Americans who own stock is irrelevant, since this tax is applied to the sales of stocks and real estate--not the act of having a retirement account.

Gibson's other point--"History shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up"--might be popular in certain conservative circles, but the evidence to support it is thin. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out (7/12/07), there is little causal relationship between the capital gains tax cuts and increased federal tax revenue. Economist Jason Furman of the Brookings Institution pointed out the the "Joint Committee on Taxation and Treasury both score raising capital gains taxes as raising revenues" (New Republic, 4/16/08).

Here's one example from ABC World News (8/15/11):

BIANNA GOLODRYGA (ABC NEWS): Much of Buffett's income comes from capital gains, profits resulting from investments, and they're taxed at only 15%. Buffett's solution, rates should be raised for the 300,000 Americans who make more than a million a year, left alone for everyone else. An additional 1% tax on the richest Americans is estimated to raise $100 billion in extra revenue during the next decade. But tax experts say it's not enough for just the super-rich to pay more.

MAYA MACGUINEAS (PRESIDENT OF THE COMMITTEE FOR A RESPONSIBLE FEDERAL BUDGET)

The bottom line is that the fiscal hole that we face is so large that everybody is going to have to be prepared to pay more in revenues in the end.

Nowhere does Buffett propose that his income tax rate should be increased one percentage point. In fact he talks about how his income tax rate is about half of what people who work in his office are paying. His column also talks about how the super-rich get a break on capital gains;  as Buffett sees it,  when the capital gains rate was 39.9 percent-- over twice what it is now-- it didn't stop people from investing.

So why is ABC low-balling his call to tax the wealthy? More realistic projections of how much can be gained by rolling back tax cuts for the wealthy tell a different story.   Chuck Marr at Center on Budget & Policy Priorities pointed out one way to raise a trillion dollars over 10 years:

Returning the average tax rate on the top 1 percent of taxpayers to its 1996 level of 29 percent could raise about $100 billion a year, or $1 trillion over the next decade.

Chuck Collins and Alison Goldberg note that

Almost 500 high-income taxpayers support the Fairness in Taxation Act, that would increase top tax rates on millionaires, generating an additional $78 billion in urgently needed revenue.

A New York Times story following up on Buffett's column pointed out that

his proposal would put a significant dent in the nation’s budget shortfall. Based on projections by the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Congressional Budget Office and the Treasury, the tax increase on all three fronts would generate as much as $500 billion in new revenue over the next decade — about a third of what the Congressional committee is supposed to cut from the deficit.

The ABC report does conclude by pointing out that this $100 billion figure could build 7,000 new elementary schools. But Buffett's actually proposing to raise far more money than that. Why is ABC trying to give the super-wealthy a break?

Two senior Republicans said Sunday that they might be open to raising new government revenue as part of a deal to resolve the dispute over the federal debt ceiling, but they warned that there was little time to enact a comprehensive deal.

This would be a pretty remarkable development. So who are we talking about? Broder reports:

One of the senators, John Cornyn of Texas, said he would consider eliminating some tax breaks and corporate subsidies in the context of changes in the tax code, provided there was not an overall increase in taxes.

That sounds like no shift at all-- Cornyn went on to rule out any tax increases.

But he insisted that any changes in taxes be “revenue neutral,” meaning that the government would not take in any more money from individuals or businesses than it does now.

OK-- he supports raising revenues, so long as there is no increase in, well, revenues. Is there a clearer example Broder is thinking about?

The other senator, John McCain of Arizona, said he would be willing to consider some “revenue raisers” as part of a broad deal, but he refused to name specific measures.

He was specific about one thing:

“The principle of not raising taxes is something that we campaigned on last November, and the result of the election was that the American people didn’t want their taxes raised and they wanted us to cut spending,” he said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

This article provides the evidence to refute its premise, which I guess is helpful.