Top House Dem: President’s on the right track on taxes

Levin’s comments came after a couple of recent polls found Americans by and large approved of increasing taxes on the wealthy to combat budget deficits while opposing cuts to entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. 

Obama and Republicans have trotted out competing deficit-reduction visions recently, with the president giving a speech on the issue last week and the House GOP passing its fiscal 2012 budget. 

The Republican budget, largely crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), assumes that all of the Bush-era tax cuts would be extended at the end of next year, while the president reiterated last week that he wants to allow rates to rise at the top 2 percent of income levels. 

Ryan’s budget would also convert Medicaid into a block grant and turn Medicare into a sort of voucher system — proposals Levin hammered in his interview with Bloomberg.