CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: It's one thing to understand, when we hear the president say rates have to go up, there's no other way to make this work. This is a purely political statement, it has nothing to do with economics. His own commission, the debt reduction commission that he appointed identified $1.1 trillion of what are called tax expenditures. Meaning loopholes and deductions out there available every year. So over a decade that's $11 trillion of available revenues without raising rates.
So, all you need to do is get less than one in ten of the dollars. One in ten and you've got a $1 trillion in raised revenues without raising rates. The only reason the president insists on raising rates is because he knows it will destroy Republican unity. It will cause a complete fracture of the Republican majority in the House. It will hand him a Congress that he can then manipulate for the next two years at least because the Republicans will be neutered. This is entirely a political action, a way to get a surrender from the Republicans and then what will happen, if he succeeds with this, with the fiction that you have to raise rates rather than eliminate loopholes, is he'll have weakened Republicans which will allow him to dictate all the terms of whatever entitlement or other reforms if any we will get in the second term.
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