And the GOP can cut off all sorts of funding too. There are no automatic taxes in this bill, NONE.
Automatic cuts, not taxes. Those are not spread evenly, but center mostly on defense.
Perhaps this is a matter of semantics. I think people are confusing the expiration of the Bush tax cuts with new taxes that will be proposed by the Dems.
If/when the Bush tax cuts expire, that will be the largest tax increase in history. But no one will have to go on record to get that tax increase - it will happen automatically, not as a result of this bill, but as a result of the bill passed last December. Because that increase is already figured into the CBO baseline, the Dems cannot use that revenue as part of the $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction the committee is supposed to recommend. They know that. So any talk of tax increases by the Dems is about new taxes IN ADDITION TO the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.