On Taxes, Obama Wins

In the second debate the incumbent president was able to bring out Romney’s weak point: His plan for fiscal reform only benefits the very rich.

Barack Obama has begun his attack. “Not true,” Obama said to the allegations of his opponent, Mitt Romney, on energy and unemployment. And he continued with the same tone when he introduced his tax argument.

This time Barack Obama did not look limp, or a little spent, so resigned as he did in the first debate.

The Republican challenger responded to Obama’s “not true,” saying he had a five-point plan for reducing unemployment, increasing energy independence and encouraging the creation of jobs. But when it came to details, Romney provided decidedly nebulous scenarios.

He wants to lower taxes for all, he said, because if frees energy to create jobs. “For goodness sake,” he said, “I don’t want to lower it for the richest 2 percent in the country.”* But when he affirmed that 5 percent of Americans still contribute 60 percent of collected taxes, Romney said something senseless because the richest contribute proportionally less than the less wealthy.

And when the Republican candidate spoke of wanting to end the capital gains tax, he betrayed the fact that he wants to favor only those the same as him: Romney, with $250 million in stocks and a multi-million-dollar annual income, pays on average 14 percent tax, while a dependent worker or small business owner pays a much larger sum.

Obama, more simply, wants to lower taxes for the middle class and to raise them for those who earn more than $250,000 a year.

Then came the points on energy and the price of fuel — and it was like two boxers exchanging blows over and over again.

Romney accused Obama and his policies of being the cause of the increase in the price of gas to $4 a gallon (we would say 80 cents to the liter); Obama replied that fuel costs were lower when he arrived at the White House because America was on the brink of the abyss.

Romney then accused Obama of cutting drill permits for petroleum. The president retorted that internal production was higher than that during Bush junior’s time. And then, the thrust: “[Romney’s] got the oil and gas part, but he doesn’t have the clean energy part…. The withdrawn permits are linked to the fact that the companies don’t use them and have, on their own, decided to use them to begin extraction.”**

To Romney, who kept repeating, as if it were a mantra, “I have a five-point plan” and “the last four years haven’t so been good,” Obama enumerated the things he has done. Not enough? Maybe. Could he have done more? Certainly. But Obama claimed to have pulled America out of Iraq, to have ended the era of Osama bin Laden, to have given assured health care to all (“…Despite the fact that it’s the same health care plan that he passed in Massachusetts,” Romney wants to end it, added Obama), to have lowered taxes for the middle class, to have changed the law to reform Wall Street to stave off another crack (too bad it’s still on paper and functions little).

And Libya was a field of hard confrontation that was connected to politics in every area. Obama accused Romney of having transformed a question of security — the attention paid to the U.S. embassy one month past — into election propaganda; Romney replied that the day after the attack in Benghazi, which killed the U.S. ambassador and three others, Obama was in Las Vegas for a fundraising event. It was the moment in which the president appeared furious for the propagandistic use of a tragedy for which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had assumed responsibility as the head of the diplomatic corps.

The clash then proceeded onto China, with Romney wanting to denounce Beijing for “trade misconduct and tricks,” while Obama wished to prevent U.S. companies from going to China and not paying adequate taxes.*** But in the end every argument was an excuse to return to the key fight over job creation and taxes.

Who won? This time Obama showed grit as a candidate and as a president. And Romney lost another opportunity to respond to the questions that many Americans posed on his five-point plan.

In a week, the third and final confrontation between Obama and Romney will take place. Then another seven days and the Americans will choose who will become the next president of the United States.

*Editor’s note: Romney did not actually say this. It appears the author may have embellished his statement a little and combined it with Obama’s statement about Romney “want[ing] tax breaks for the top 2 percent.” Romney’s response to this was, “I’m not looking to cut taxes for wealthy people.”

**Editor’s note: The author appears to have summarized what Obama actually said with this quote: “The withdrawn permits are linked to the fact that the companies don’t use them and have, on their own, decided to use them to begin extraction,” which is a misquote. Obama actually said “So what we said was, you can’t just sit on this for 10, 20, 30 years, decide when you want to drill, when you want to produce, when it’s most profitable for you.”

***Editor’s note: Romney did not make this statement, but it is a summarization of his position.