According to Official Republican Dogma™, raising taxes on the wealthy increases the deficit because in their world, rich people apparently would prefer to make less money than to pay higher taxes. Of course, in the real world, it doesn't work that way, but I wasn't expecting House Speaker John Boehner to
acknowledge that fact:
BOEHNER: The deficit is coming down. Because the president got a tax increase on January the 1st.
Boehner also credited the spending cuts from the 2011 debt limit deal, but that's not surprising. What's surprising is to hear a Republican face up to the obvious fact that when you're starting with the historically low tax rates of the Bush era, increasing taxes reduces the deficit.
Still, don't get too excited. The Republican fever hasn't broken yet. Boehner not only wants to repeal Obama's tax plan, he's still flirting with another debt limit hostage crisis:
BOEHNER: I believe that if we're gonna increase the debt limit, there oughta be cuts and reforms in place that are greater than the increase in the debt limit.
If Boehner weren't in the grips of extremists, he could actually raise the debt limit while achieving his foolish goal of reducing the long-term deficit by an equal or greater amount: He could simply raise the debt ceiling by the amount of additional revenue projected to be generated by Obama's tax over the next few decades. That would make the debt limit go away as an issue for the next few years and let the country focus on more important things. It's easy to do, and he could get it done in 15 minutes if he wanted to. Unfortunately, he doesn't.