Okay, he didn't say that. But it would have been cool if he did, right? And he's certainly the most likely of the administration's officials accidentally revert to 1337 speak. What he did say, on a conference call a few minutes ago, is that "we are very pleased that the House and Senate budget committees are considering proposals that are 98 percent the same as the budget proposal the President sent out in February." He said that "out of 18 discretionary spending categories, 13 are exactly the same in the Senate and 12 are the same in the House." The biggest change, he admitted, is the removal of the Making Work Pay tax cut, which passed for two years in the stimulus act and which the administration wanted to make permanent in the budget. That's out. Orszag emphasized that the tax cut exists for the next two years and the White House would continue working to etch it into the lawbooks more permanently. He also got off a sly riposte in response to the critique that the administration is raising taxes on the richest Americans and will thus impede their dynamism and our growth. "I reject the notion that they key to future prosperity is the top marginal tax rate," he shot back. It's a good line, and conceptually, an important statement of what separates the Obama administration's economic philosophy from the Bush administration's. If you think the drivers of growth are in the top one percent, and that top one percent is exquisitely sensitive to small changes in marginal tax rates, your policy proposals will be rather different than if you think prosperity and security for the broad middle is a more sustainable approach to growth.
