Republican Tax Cuts

The insane argument over whether or not a Democratic President and a Congress controlled by Democrats will pass continuation of Republican tax cut continues. It has apparently not occurred to any of these Democratic geniuses that they could dump the Bush tax code altogether and come up with a new and original tax proposal of their own. It didn’t occur to any of them that this might have been done two years ago, when they could be talking about a “Democratic tax proposal” that favors the middle class rather than playing defense over a Republican tax code that favors the rich.

George W. Bush has to be thrilled to death that, in the midst of his book tour and speaking engagements, a Democratic Congress is immortalizing his tax cuts. The ineptitude of this is simply staggering, and it’s hard to know whether it is Obama or Congress that is the bigger idiot for allowing this to come about.

Obama tries to sound tough by saying that, rather than coming up with his own tax proposal, he will insist on passing only the part of the Bush tax that he likes, as if that were some sort of dynamic leadership. “I’ll let the opposition come up with the ideas, but I’ll only approve the parts that I like” is not leadership. From Bloomberg News,

"The president still believes we have to move forward with these tax cuts for the middle class," Axelrod said. "But we can't afford to borrow another $700 billion to pay for tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires."

We can’t afford to borrow $700 billion, but we can afford to borrow $3 trillion, which is what it will take to provide the tax cuts for the middle class that he is so adamant on providing. Perish the thought that we should borrow nothing and return taxes to the levels that existed during the booming economy which existed under Bill Clinton.

Obama criticizes the Republicans for “running the car into the ditch” by cutting taxes and running a deficit, and then he turns right around and insists that we need to extend the deficit by $3 trillion to extend the unfunded tax cut created by the Republicans. It was Republican irresponsibility which caused our economy to crash, he claims, and then he wants to continue that irresponsibility.

Opposing the tax you dislike the basis that “we can’t afford to borrow” is hypocrisy, when you are concealing your willingness to borrow more than four times as much for a tax cut you favor. You need a different basis for the opposition.