CNN:Schumer calls Bowles-Simpson 'trap' for middle class

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Haven't looked at this board for a while so only peeked at this thread today.  Schumer is wrong.  If you lower top marginal rates to amounts higher than where the effective rates are now, plus cut out deductions and loopholes, you are actually raising net revenues.  That's precisely why McConnell is calling the Simpson-Bowles plan a tax hike--because it is.  Except that the "job-killing" part of the charge is not entirely fair, since cutting out deductions and loopholes incentivizes businesses to invest their remaining revenue toward market opportunities instead of wrapping them around the tax code, and it also significantly marginalizes the lobbying establishment.  But the revenue-raising part is essential--you just can't deal with a $16 trillion debt and continuing spending commitments in the face of health care cost inflation and not raise revenues.  Anything else risks economic damage in the form of steadily increasing interest rates and less confidence in the long run that would hurt the economy much more than the effectively upwardly adjusted tax rates.  And, just in case the middle class thinks they can get off scott free, if they want to keep their social insurance programs, they have to kick in more money too.