The GOP just keeps lying about Obama's tax plan. It's crazy that anyone lets them get away with that anymore. Obama will lower taxes for 95% of working Americans. Every family making less than $250K will have their taxes lowered with President Obama.

Obama will cut taxes for the middle class while McCain wants even more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. That's the truth and it needs to be repeated until everyone knows it.

The only way we are going to balance the books in this country is to increase taxes or decrease spending, and with the infrastructure disintegrating and the boomers coming close to retirement that means it is going to be increased taxes.
Perhaps we can persuade the acolytes of ST Reagan to accept a tax increase by saying we are going back to Reagan's good old days by using the tax code from his reign. The fact is that this country has swung so far to the right that the tax code was far more progressive then than it is now.
Ironically if you look at the stats, the economy grows substantially faster under Democratic Presidents, and because of Reagan's spending he left office with a huge budget deficit. Of course no Republicans will believe that...

I suspect Biden is referring to the level of taxes that the rich were burdened with when Reagan took office. See:

http://www.truthandpolitics.org/top-rates.php

Reagan inherited a 70% marginal income tax rate on the wealthy. Basically if you made over $215K, you could kiss 70 cents on every dollar you earned over $215,000 goodbye. The trickle down economic plan was to allow the wealthy to keep their money and invest it, creating new businesses, new jobs, etc. He started an economic boom that has worked pretty well for the past few decades.

Unfortunately, congress and the president are completely unable to control their spending addiction and ran up deficits instead. But that's another problem.

By the time Reagan left office, the upper marginal rate was 28%. Clinton pushed it higher, but kept spending like mad. The only reason he could pretend to have a surplus was due to the massive tax revenues from the tech boom. Bush Jr. has futzed around with it, but done little to help citizens or the government.

Obama is going to raise taxes, a lot. He'll push the upper marginal rate up 25% to something like 65% on the very wealthy. This will indeed be less than when Reagan took office, but way, way more than when Reagan left office. It will limit investment, limit jobs, and DO NOTHING TO STOP THE SPENDING.

If history is our guide, congress will see the massive infusion of tax revenues as license to spend 2x more money all over again. It will be a salve on the sucking chest wound that is our economy. It will seem to help, but the addiction to spending and meddling in everything will grow stronger and more dependent.

Meanwhile, we'll all be enslaved to our tax masters.

Personally, I'm working in a software startup trying to make a few million dollars someday. When I make that money, my plan is to self-finance another startup company, creating jobs and some new product that will make me even more money. My ability to do that will be severely impaired if 65% of that money is taken by the feds. California will take another 10%, leaving me with 1/4th the money I earned through huge risk and hard work.

It is a common misunderstanding about people with money. Liberals want you to believe that the rich just roll in their cash, hoard it, and burn the bills for fun. They don't. Rich people buy copious unnecessary stuff. They employ hair stylists at least four time more than the average citizen, they have maids, assistants, cooks, nannies, mechanics, etc. They buy fantastically expensive products like race cars and planes creating revenue for firms that perform research and development. They also buy lots and lots of cheap products because they can... creating revenue for companies than make everyday stuff.

Which do you prefer?

1. Some rich brat spending daddy's money on bling'd out sidekicks, bentleys, handbags, nail salon treatments, day spa, psychologist session, 400 lbs of cold cuts for the afternoon get-together, 50 dvds because they don't know which movie they'll want to watch tonight and so on...

OR

2. A government committee sending her daddy's money overseas to halliburton so they can install rebuild the power plant we blew up a few years ago. Oh, and the bombs to blow up the power plant, money to replace planes that got shot down, bridges to nowhere, 100K to study world of warcraft, etc.

in regard to the above, Yes, the rich buy alot of "stuff" and don't necessarily create jobs: they ship jobs overseas or hire "Cheap" labor here. they do not want the middle class protected with decent minimum wages or health care, they are the Walt-Mart CEO's. Its government's role to protect the middle class, not the rich's job (what they want is to get richer with no government oversight (i.e. Walt-Mart, overseas jobs, the housing fiasco) while middle class suffer,

The smart conservatives would support policies that protect the middle class, because that will help them in the long run also.

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