Obama Uses Twitter to Explain to Republicans Why Their Deficit Plan Is a Fail

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Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 03:28 pm

In an hour long Twitter chat, President Obama took questions from a few Republicans and explained to their why their approach to the fiscal cliff won’t work.

Obama took 7 politically themed questions, and one sports question, during the chat and nearly half of them brought up the Republican deficit reduction through spending approach.

Here are the questions followed by the president’s answers:

The president tackled three ideas that the Republicans have been floating as alternatives to his plan, raising revenue without raising taxes on the top two percent, reducing the deficit by only by cutting spending, cutting taxes for the wealthy encourages growth and employment.

The idea that the nation can find an alternative stream of revenue to substitute for raising taxes is a conservative fantasy. The Romney plan was based on the idea that the nation can eliminate enough deductions and loopholes to reduce the deficit. The math didn’t add up when Mitt Romney campaigned on it, and it still doesn’t add up today. The same problem exists with the Republican idea that the deficit can be cut away. There simply isn’t enough non-discretionary spending to make it possible to reduce the deficit substantially through spending cuts alone.

As we discovered with the Bush tax cuts, lowering taxes for the wealthy does nothing to spur employment and growth. Recent history tells us that cutting taxes for the wealthy causes income inequality, not growth.

Instead of taking a victory lap with his supporters, President Obama confronted the opposition point of view and explained why his plan would work better. The president was able to layout a more detailed plan for reducing the deficit on Twitter than congressional Republicans have since the fiscal cliff negotiations began.

The Republicans have no plan. Obama was able to explain in 140 characters or less why their ideology driven notions about deficit reduction are a total fail.

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Jason Easley

Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.

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Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association

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