President Obama: "I said I would cut taxes for middle-class families and that's just what I did."
Republican Mitt Romney: "The president has a view very similar to the view he had when he ran four years, that a bigger government, spending more, taxing more, regulating more -- if you will, trickle-down government -- would work. That's not the right answer for America."
Obama: "Well, for 18 months he's been running on this tax plan. And now five weeks before the election, he says his big, bold idea is 'never mind.' And the fact is that if you are lowering the rates the way you describe, Governor, then it is not possible to come up with enough deductions and loopholes that only affect high-income individuals, to avoid raising the deficit or burdening the middle class. It's math, arithmetic."
Romney: "I'm not looking for a $5 trillion tax cut. What I've said is I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. ... There'll be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that - no tax cut that adds to the deficit."
Obama: "The only way to meet Gov. Romney's pledge ... is by burdening the middle-class families."
Romney: "I will not under any circumstance raise taxes on middle-income families."
Obama: "Under my plan, 97 percent of small businesses would not see their income taxes go up. Governor Romney says, well, those top 3 percent, they're the job creators, they'd be burdened. But under Governor Romney's definition, there are a whole bunch of millionaires and billionaires who are small businesses. Donald Trump is a small business."
Romney: "My priority is jobs. And so what I do is I bring down the tax rates, lower deductions and exemptions, the same idea behind Bowles-Simpson, by the way, get the rates down, lower deductions and exemptions, to create more jobs, because there's nothing better for getting us to a balanced budget than having more people working, earning more money, paying more taxes."
