Democrats are fair minded wussies.

with the econ as weak as it is raising taxes now will have same effect as 1938 increase which killed dead the recovery that started in 1937

Mitt Romney should release the same number of tax returns his father did. Why not?

Maybe we can sort this out just a little. First a few key points, some of which were made earlier. No, the GOP has no interest in reducing the debt or the deficit. It is only an issue when they are not in power. Once they gain the power, they proceed to spend with reckless abandon. Tax cuts to their friends, defense contracts for weapons we don't need and the military dosn't want. Unprovoked and unnecesary wars that go on and on. And then comes the really serious issue, spending cuts. Republicans believe that cutting government spending will solve all our problems. Yup, all we need to do is cut spending to the bone and the nations economic problems will be history. So let us return to the world of reality. The business of government, at all levels, is about a third of our total economy. Because government is a service business, most of it's expenditures are for labor. In modern times, governments have gone to contracting for certain services with private firms. In many cases this proves to be less costly and in other cases, not so much. But in all cases it involves the employment of a great many citizens. Now working citizens tend to spend their earnings on all sorts of stuff. Groceries, fuel, clothing, housing, and fun stuff too. The more they spend on these things, the more other citizens, in the private sector, have work to produce those goods and services which government jobs provided the spending power needed. There is also the needs of government to purchase goods such as office products, transportation equipment, etc., etc.. Consider this little side bar: The State of California purchases more than 20,000 cases of toilet seat covers each year for use in state public restrooms. Somebody had to make those covers, distribute them and finally, I'm sorry to say, clean up after the folks who used them. Who says that government dosn't create jobs?
So what happens when we reduce government spending? Well, we cut government jobs. In the last 4 years we have lost more than 660,000 government jobs throughout the country. Futhermore, if government employment had simply kept pace with population growth we are actually short about 1.1 million government jobs. That would translate into about 2.3 million private sector jobs created. This according to the CBO. who actually do know what they are talking about. Would it make sense to reduce government spending in some areas? Of course. But we whould have to be careful about where and how much. But what about the deficit? Mr. Cheney said that deficits don't matter, but that's not really true. Remember, he was in power at the time. We have some history to look at in this regard. First, consider the massive debt built up between 1940 and 1945. The nation was at war and the government was the major consumer. As there was little to buy on the civilian market during that time, the money supply quadrupled during the 4 years of the war. Following the end of hostillities, the 12 million service personnel came home, started families, bought homes and had babies. The economy boomed for the next 30 years. The federal debt shrank to managable levels. That is until the excess was burned off and a more normal market returned. Than someone decided that "government is the problem". It sounded sensable that we would be better off if citizens kept more of their earnings and government did less. I think you get my drift. Then we take a look at the Clinton years. Congress forced the administration to contain it's spending while permitting the largest tax increase in generations. Result: 23 million added jobs, low unemployment and a government surplus projected decades into the future. Then came the small government, cut spending, cut taxes crowd and presto, gone was the surplus. Gone was the job creation engine and gone was the social safety net.
Conclusion: Taxes don't kill jobs, job killers kill jobs. An expanding economy not only creates jobs, it creates wealth. Wealth that can enrich citizens at all levels of society as well as enrich government coffers to produce the resources that will be needed in the future to satisfy the commitments we've made to ourselves. This is not rocket science. It's not fancy math, it's simple logic with history as it's proof. Go figure.

It is quite easy to compare taxes, debts, and the economic health of a nation by looking at historic taxes and the economic state of the nation.

You'll see that taxes were much higher than they are today, and deficits were much worse, after WWII. With taxes on the wealthiest Americans nearing 95%, somehow they economic elites managed to still amass a pile of money while the US taxed itself out of debt. If we had the same method today as we did after WWII, we'd have long ago failed as a nation economically. After WWII, the wealthiest paid up to 94% over 50% until 1982.

Moreover, Federal tax rates on the top 0.01 wealthiest have declined from about 70% in 1960 to about 35% in 2005, while tax rates for the middle class have remained constant over the same period.
Source: http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~saez/piketty-saezJEP07taxprog.pdf

So I will respectfully disagree--vehemently--with any tax opinion and how it affects the debt and wealth of the United States until one can support his or her opinion with hard facts showing how it is that higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans does more harm to the United States than good--history is not on your side.

This isn't solely about Republicans. Clinton and Bush raped the country in succession for almost two decades, deregulating, allowing lobbyists to control Congress and have almost unlimited access to the White House (even renting bedrooms to the filthy rich for campaign donations)...the so called welfare reform did virtually nothing to stop doctor medicaid and medicare fraud, while destroying our nation's safety net and social contract with people facing hard times.
In additions, both Presidents allowed our nation's small businesses to decline dramatically, leaving Main Street empty and blaming it wrongly on Walmart when sending jobs overseas and dramatic real estate hikes pounded ordinary families even before this depression aka recession aka inflationary mess.

People truly do not generally wish to avoid paying taxes unless they are global oligarchs who have no national loyalty, or unless, as most of us including myself do see, we are paying far more out than we are getting in reciprocal benefits even when we need them.

SHAME SHAME on CONGRESS, both sides of the aisle. SHAME SHAME on the MEDIA for focusing on stupid stuff and purveying only group think political correctness.

IMO, if we end up like the Greeks it will be because of these three reasons:

1) We have a vice based criminal enterprise alternative economy that cannot be sustained without enslaving people literally and to addictions; such an economy does not,like virtue, make happiness for the citizenry

2) We have not a strong manufacturing and agricultural base and more and real estate has screwd the pooch

3) We have a damaged national infrastructure that cannot survive any true social catastrophes like the Great Depression, a cyber assault, or other major societal challenge.

Maybe the way to ensure economic fairness is not by taxation. Progressive taxation has never worked and it may be silly to think it ever could. Them with the gold makes the rules.

Perhaps a better way would be to eliminate taxation altogether and simply cap personal wealth and power with a yearly binding referendum. Let all the people decide how much money-power each citizen and corporation-person should be able to keep without causing harm to the rest of us. Let any excess wealth be given away to whomever the person or corporation decides to give it to until the recipient maxes out their wealth/power cap.

The cap should be placed high enough to keep the profit motive and prevent capital flight, but low enough to prevent extreme concentration of wealth and power. Rich people would realize the "profit" in bettering lives, environment and living standards of all the people directly instead of by obscure corporate market controls that consistently cause more harm than good.

We could all then pay for our infrastructure directly and collectively by local, state, national or international referenda, without depending on politicians and bribery to decide for us.

It is really sad the 1% aren't happy being filthy rich, they want to destroy country and countrymen to get more. The republicans will do all they can to enable them in their greed. It is all in the open, why aren't we doing something about it?