Oh, I agree we need to increase tax revenues as part of a deficit cutting package, but politically that can only be done in conjunction with cuts in entitlement spending. There's no way such a package can be negotiated as part of the sequester mess and the GOP would be idiots to concede that a tax hike is acceptable in exchange for spending cuts unless it is locked down that those are cuts in entitlement spending. Discretionary spending cuts are too easily reversed through the use of "temporary" supplemental spending bills.
You're in the minority, then. What package have the House Republicans proposed that doesn't require loophole closures come with rate cuts that would effectively lower revenue? "Broadening the base and lowering the rates" as they call it isn't going to raise revenue - it's just going to shift more tax burden away from the rich and onto everyone else and yield less revenue in the process. As for entitlement spending, the Republicans don't want to cut entitlement spending. They want to
want to cut entitlement spending. Because they get elected by the people at the town hall meetings who holler about how "I earned my Social Security/Medicare! I paid into it and those benefits are mine!" without understanding how much more money they get out of those programs than they ever paid into them, and without understanding that their payments were given to people who were retired when they were still working - it didn't go into some little piggy bank with their name on it.
