Tax-Cut Chicken

IBD Editorials ^ | November 17, 2010 | Staff

[Kaslin]

Fiscal Policy: With just 43 days to go, it looks like Americans may be hit with the largest tax hike in history. If so, blame it on the Democrats. It's their ideological rigidity that's costing the country its economic growth

President Obama and congressional Democrats are battling with Republicans over the fate of the one bright spot in our economy over the past six years: Bush's tax cuts.

Obama and his Democratic allies want a temporary extension of the 2001 and 2003 Bush cuts for the middle class (the poor already pay no income taxes), but not for individuals earning more than $200,000 or families earning more than $250,000.

Problem is, even Democrats are split over this. And Republicans are in no mood to let Democrats play class politics with our nation's economy. They want all the tax cuts extended or nothing.

When asked Wednesday if the Republicans would agree to a deal that would permanently cut rates on the middle class, but for only two years on those with upper incomes, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah replied, "Are you kidding?"

Good answer. With Bush's cuts set to expire at year-end, Democrats, who control Congress until January, can't agree among themselves what to do — much less cut a deal with Republicans.

[Falcon4.0]

The Republicans better start talking about how the tax cuts are going to revive the Economy and bring billions into the treasury and stop letting the rats define the argument. McConnell is stuck on stupid. Using the same talking points from 30 years ago. They also need to point out that the rats want a defacto tax increase without having to vote for one and that is why we're in this mess today. Because the rats insisted on the Bush tax cuts expiring.

[John O]

Good points.

They also need to start pressing the equal protection under the law angle. It is criminal for any person to pay a larger percentage than any other person.

[crescen7]

a couple other things I wish the Republicans would emphasize:

1.The reason the tax cuts expire is because the only way they could be passed over the objections of the filibustering Democrats in the Senate was to use a legislative process known as “Reconciliation.” - yes the same process used to pass ObamaCare.

but since the Bush administration and the Republicans were adamant about meeting all the legal definitions required for a “Reconcilation” bill - it had to expire at a point certain.

By the same standards - ObamaCare would expire in 2020.

2.The idea of “temporary extensions” of cuts is more damaging than a permanent increase. Major business decisions take longer than 2 years to implement - even after they’ve been planned. It’s very difficult to assess the feasibility of a proposed endeavor when the signal from the Government is:

“Here’s today’s tax rate, if you want to know what it will be tomorrow - ask me tomorrow.”

[MrTed]

I wish that were true about ObamaCare, but I think they did not use Reconciliation - they talked about using it, but I think in the end it was passed with the help of a couple of NE RINO’s. I could be wrong, but I don’t think ObamaCare sunsets in 10 years - we won’t last that long.

[crescen7]

No it doesn’t sunset, but i believe they employed a tortured version of reconciliation to only need a simple majority on the “modification” legislation that was passed in the House, prior to passing the original Senate bill “as is”. - and they simply ignored the part of reconcilation that required it apply only during a specific “budget duration” and used the portion of reconciliation that made it exempt from filibuster.

Supposedly the house holdouts wouldn’t sign the Senate bill without the modifications being passed first.

The point is, Democrats passed ObamaCare with a blatant disregard for legislative rule and protocol, while republicans strict adherence to such protocol minutia leaves us with a sunsetting tax cut.

go figue.