Center For American Progress: Let the Bush Tax Cuts on the Wealthy Expire

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Let the Bush Tax Cuts on the Wealthy Expire

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/12/bush_cuts_expire.html



By Michael Ettlinger | December 22, 2009

President Barack Obama made clear during his campaign for the presidency that he intended to let the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire on schedule at the end of 2010. The administration’s long-term budget outline counts on this happening. It is key to getting the federal budget deficit under control. Congress, in the coming year, should make it happen.

The curious may want to know why the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in the first place. After all, if then-President George W. Bush and Congress thought they were a good idea when they passed them in the early 2000s, why make them temporary?

The answer is that President Bush and a complicit Congress didn’t want to show the magnitude of the deficits that would result from their tax cuts. To hide those deficits as they were pushing them through they used a variety of accounting tricks. One of those tricks was attaching expiration dates so that, on paper, there wouldn’t be any long-term costs. This made the long-term deficit picture look fairly rosy on paper even as it doomed Bush’s successor and the current Congress to cleaning up the mess.

In fairness, Bush and his supply-side crowd believe with a zealot’s fervor that tax cuts spur such economic growth that future deficits never happen. Over history there are trillions of dollars of debt that prove them wrong. But there’s no persuading a true believer.

The mess handed to the current president and Congress couldn’t be better designed to make their lives miserable. If they take no legislative action and let the cuts expire there will be a nice juicy tax increase at the end of 2010. Taxes on the wealthy will go up the most since they got the biggest tax cuts under President Bush. But the Bush tax cuts also handed out morsels up and down the income spectrum.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. God, yes.

But get rid of the pic of Bush talking about his genitalia!

[safeinOhio]

2. It'll be time for progressives and the liberal wing

of our party to stall, say no and threaten a filibuster. How sweet it will be. No bill moved thru committee. No up or down. We must take our time and read and re-read any bill offered. We must consider the cost and not add to the deficit..............

[Quantess]

3. Sounds like a good plan.

K & R

[lamp_shade]

4. That IS the plan.

[HughBeaumont]

5. They should have been REPEALED.

Good for America that this absolutely wasteful (and ultimately purposeless) move is finally going to die, but he should have just killed this. We need the money badly and this was just a massive drain on the debt; not to mention the wonders it did in the increase of worker-to-wealthy income inequality these past 10 years.

And what "economic growth" did tax cuts to the wealthy "spur"? Each of Bewsh's recessions resulted in either anemic job creation during the recovery or massive job losses that required spending our way out. He never raised taxes and his cronies never hired enough workers to keep up with the monthly job churn. They also pocketed tons of loot in the process while those "morsels" did crapola for the middle/working/poor classes.

This is why I want to kick people dead in the balls when they talk about "punishing success". LOOK AROUND AT THE WEALTHY! Does anyone HONESTLY think that restoring taxes to just-above-Clinton-levels is even going to make a damned DENT in their lives? COME on.

[Hannah Bell]

6. They should have been repealed as item No. 1 when he took office.

But I've read there's opposition: "can't raise taxes in a recession" is the argument.

[HughBeaumont]

7. OH, but haven't you heard? The recession is apparently "over"!

At least that's what CNBC tells us. :eyes:

RAISE 'em. Start making these "leaders" pay their fair share. 35% . . . everyone's GOT to be kidding me when they say this rate is too high.

[Hannah Bell]

8. yeah, they say lots of things. i think after xmas, UE will rise.