A question for the president

If, as President Obama maintains, the only way Gov. Romney can avoid having his tax plan result in a shortfall which can only be paid for by increasing the deficit or by a tax increase on the middle class, why?

Why not increase taxes on the rich? I know the Leftist narrative says that Romney is out to help the rich at the expense of everybody else, but isn't a dubious line of slanderous partisan attack kind of questionable as a mathematical equation?

Or drastically cut the budget! Republicans have, after all, been demanding that this be done in lieu of tax increases on anybody. Wouldn't it be more reasonable to suggest that a Romney administration would react with really, really deep budget cuts?

Or a bake sale? Or a paper drive? Why a tax increase specifically on the middle class?

Wouldn't Romney's statement that he would neither lower the proportion of the tax burden borne by the rich nor increase taxes on the middle cleas at all cause a reasonable (i.e., no malicious) person to conclude that he would do some or all of those other things, or maybe even some approach nobody has thought of yet, rather than do something he specifically states that he will not do?

And if so, isn't it dishonest- or at least malicious and slanderous- to claim that he's going to do it anyway?