Former Clinton Cabinet Members Agree on the Fiscal Cliff
Posted at 12:15 p.m. on Nov. 13, 2012
President Clinton’s notoriously dueling Cabinet secretaries, Robert Rubin at Treasury and Robert Reich at Labor, provide relatively similar prescriptions to solve the “fiscal cliff.”
Robert Rubin: “If we invest too much time and effort pursuing plans that ultimately prove undesirable and unworkable, we may go down a road that leads nowhere… When you compare raising the marginal rates for roughly 2 million Americans to phasing out health insurance exclusions that would affect 150 million Americans — even if some reform should be done — I don’t think it’s a close call substantively or politically.”
“We should let the Bush high-end tax cuts expire, with an achievable, progressive reduction in tax expenditures. And we should have spending cuts, including entitlement reforms, equally matched by revenue increases. The entire program — including budgetary room for public investment and a moderate upfront jobs package — could be enacted now and deferred for a limited time with a serious mechanism to guarantee implementation.”
Robert Reich: “First, raise taxes on the rich – and by more than the highest marginal rate under Bill Clinton or even a 30 percent (so-called Buffett Rule) minimum rate on millionaires… Raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income and cap the mortgage interest deduction at $12,000 a year… Eliminate special tax preferences for oil and gas, price supports for big agriculture, tax breaks and research subsidies for Big Pharma, unnecessary weapons systems for military contractors, and indirect subsidies to the biggest banks on Wall Street.”
