Speaking of Dirty Harry, President Obama and Tax Fairness

Here's a timely update on what the White House says about Harry Reid's critique of Mitt Romney's taxes and President Obama's desire to have the greedy fat cat evil doers be forced to pay their fair share of taxes. Did I mention it's an election year?

Reid speaks for himself on Romney's taxes, White House says deals with two topics we wrote about earlier today:

"White House spokesman Jay Carney on Monday said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid “speaks for himself” when it comes to talking about Mitt Romney’s taxes, and that he wasn’t aware of anyone at the White House talking to Reid about the issue.

Carney also didn’t ask Reid to stop making statements related to Romney’s taxes. Last week, Reid said that “an extremely credible source” told him that Romney didn’t pay taxes for 10 years but didn’t disclose his source.

Whether or not Reid’s source’s statement is accurate, it has given Obama’s reelection campaign a new opportunity to discuss “tax fairness,” a favorite theme of this election cycle that will recur right up until November.

To wit, here’s Carney at Monday’s briefing: “The president believes very strongly…that we need to have greater tax fairness and that we need to make sure that we’re passing laws that protect the middle class, that specifically give the middle class a tax cut extension, and that we’re not passing laws that give tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires who have already enjoyed substantial tax breaks in the past.”

Romney wants to lower marginal rates across the board by 20%, a move he says will stimulate job creation and investment.

Republicans have responded with a Reid pile-on, with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus calling the Nevada senator a “dirty liar” who has created a “made-up issue.”

Meanwhile, Romney hasn’t wavered from his pledge to release a complete 2011 return when it is finished. He has already released his 2010 tax return, and an estimate for 2011."

Summing Up

By all means, let's be "fair."

It definitely appears like it will be the biggest election issue in November.

Isn't that sad?

At one point, I actually hoped that we would hear a discussion about debts, deficits, economic growth, employment, entitlements, health care and public education, to name a few of the "less important" issues confronting our political class this election season.

Silly me.

Evidently it's going to be all about "tax fairness" instead.

Thanks. Bob.