Obama Fires Volley in War Over Taxes

President Obama publicly made his case today for extending middle-class tax cuts and scorned Mitt Romney's tax plans for targeting the middle class, Politico reports. "We don't need a president who's going to give himself a tax break, we need a president who's going to cut your taxes," Obama said at his campaign's first town hall meeting, in Cincinnati. He accused Romney and "his allies in Congress" of planning to continue tax cuts for the richest Americans, no matter the social cost.

Continuing all of the Bush tax cuts would cost America $5 trillion, nearly half of which would benefit top-tier earners, Obama said. He conceded that Romney's tax plan would generate 800,000 jobs, but "there's only one problem. The jobs wouldn't be in America. They'd be in other countries." A Romney rep fired back, saying Romney's plan to cut the US corporate tax rate would actually boost domestic growth. “President Obama is at it again today with another dishonest attack meant to distract from his own record of failure,” she said. (More President Obama stories.)