Wall Street Journal, Obama’s $250,000 Question: Left and Right Agree — His Agenda Requires Him to Break His Tax Pledge, by William McGurn:

Back in 2008, candidate Barack Obama turned even Joe the Plumber to his political advantage by playing percentages and pitting the majority of the country against the super-rich. Such was the simplicity of his message that even those attending an American university could grasp it. As one college student told this newspaper at the time, “Everyone knows Obama’s only going to raise taxes on those making more than $250,000, and Joe the Plumber does not make more than $250,000.”

Politically that was a winner. Now, however, the numbers are not adding up—or at least, not in a way that will pay for President Obama’s ambitions for the federal government. And at least some of his allies on the progressive left are pointing it out.

In the New Republic, the Brookings Institution’s William Galston zeroes in on the fuzzy math.  [Soak the Almost Rich. Obama Made a Pledge Not to Raise Taxes on the Upper-Middle Class. Liberals Should Hope He Breaks It.]  “Unless Obama is prepared to tolerate huge deficits indefinitely,” he writes, “or to emulate arch-conservatives and curb the budget deficit with spending cuts only, he will have to break his unsustainable tax pledge at some point. The only question is when.”

More remarkable still, Mr. Galston was jumping off from an article in National Review by Reihan Salam, who made the same point about the mathematical impossibilities of Mr. Obama’s present tax pledge.  [Blame the Not-Too-Rich]  Mr. Salam, a policy adviser at the pro-market think tank Economics 21, observes that the revenues Mr. Obama needs to pay for his agenda fall in the rung just below the super-rich—that is, Americans earning between $100,000 and $200,000. …

Inside the Beltway, one of the most hallowed chestnuts is that so polarized have our politics become, we can no longer agree on basic facts. Mr. Galston and Mr. Salam and their respective allies disprove that. Both agree on the revenue problem, though their policy conclusions veer off in sharply opposite ways.

Both would probably also agree that in the last two elections, the American people have zeroed in on one part of the message without perhaps accepting the full consequences of their position. In 2008, Americans went resoundingly for Mr. Obama, who promised that no one but the super-rich would have to worry about paying more for anything. Then in 2010, a tea party backlash helped elect Republicans who promised to reduce the size and reach of government.

So here’s the question for 2012: If we the people don’t want the higher taxes that are needed to support not only ObamaCare but a growing federal government, are we willing to support the real cuts that go along with that choice? And if we decide we don’t want these programs touched, will we accept the higher taxes that go along with keeping them, including for people making a lot less than $250,000? …

The argument over taxes and spending, of course, is never fully won. The good news here is Messrs. Galston and Salam have met across the ideological spectrum to offer a good starting point. For those of us who believe that America is best served by a debate that forces citizens to make a clear choice—and that Mr. Ryan has the better part of the argument—we say, “Bring it on.”

More from The New Republic

• A Collegial (For Me) Quibble On Taxes, by Jonathan Chait
• Something’s Gotta Give — A Reply to My Critics on Taxes, by William Galston
• Galston Still Saying The Rich Earning Too Much Money To Carry Tax Burden, by Jonathan Chait