I agree the what comes back in taxes is a bit of hand-wave, it&#x27;s hard to find stats on the average marginal tax rate.<p>I think the non-elderly middle class net effect will be close to if not a wash. They&#x27;ll lose various tax deductions, but they&#x27;ll get $11,700 x num_adults_in_household x (1 - marginal_tax_rate). And tax deductions only kick in when they are larger than the standard deduction to begin with. You need to be closer to the &quot;upper middle&quot; side of things to get there or have an unusually large deductions.<p>I don&#x27;t think you need to get the gap amount wholly out of new taxes, as I said I think you can get some of it out of reduced aid to states, and&#x2F;or as suggested by the poster below, military spending cuts.<p>As to your overall point, I concede that it is a tough sell.