Politics

GOP Plan to Give Tax Cuts to Wealthiest Few Panned by OH, KY Editorial Boards

By Speaker's Press Shop

Despite evidence it won?t help the economy and the fact that the American people strongly oppose them, Republicans continue their push for deficit-busting tax cuts to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.

Democrats are committed to tax relief for American workers, their families, and small businesses. Congressional Democrats and President Obama will permanently cut taxes for 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small businesses ? and help get the Bush-Republican deficit under control.

Here?s how the Republican plan, which would cost taxpayers more than $4 trillion and double the deficit, is playing in the Akron Beacon Journal, from House Republican Leader John Boehner?s home state of Ohio, and the Lexington Herald-Leader, in Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell?s home state of Kentucky.

Akron Beacon Journal Editorial: Rates of return

?The thinking is: This is the wrong time to increase taxes of almost any kind, the economy fragile, job creation at a minimum. Then, there is the evidence, analyses revealing that such tax relief for the wealthiest Americans promises little punch for the economy. Far better tools are available for bolstering demand and easing the harsh fallout from the recession?

If there is an inkling of consensus in Washington, it follows that the country must do what it can to boost the economy in the short run and take credible aim at applying fiscal discipline in the long run. Allow the tax cuts for the wealthiest households to expire, and you meet both objectives. Tax relief continues for most Americans, yet the projected budget deficits also receive attention, the expiring tax cuts generating $700 billion during the next decade?

In other words, all households still would enjoy a lower overall burden than in the 1990s. The country would benefit from beginning to apply fiscal discipline, its deficits driven largely by two wars, a punishing recession and unaffordable tax cuts.

Read the full editorial»

Lexington Herald-Leader Editorial: McConnell boohoos for rich friends

To hear Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and some of his fellow Capitol Hill Republicans tell it, a failure to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans would cripple the nation’s small businesses.

But McConnell’s House counterpart, Rep. John Boehner, undercut that argument over the weekend by acknowledging on Face the Nation that just 3 percent of small businesses would pay higher taxes under President Barack Obama’s proposal?

?McConnell and crew rant and rail about deficit spending and the national debt. But extending the tax cuts for the rich will cost the federal government $700 billion over the next 10 years ? $700 billion that could reduce deficit spending, $700 billion that could pay down a bit of the national debt.

It’s also $700 billion the government won’t be borrowing, which will increase the availability of credit for those small businesses that bring the crocodile tears to McConnell’s eyes?

The implication of the ?don’t raise taxes during a recession? argument is that doing so takes money out of the economy people would otherwise be spending on goods and services. But that isn’t necessarily the case with tax cuts for the rich?

?tax cuts for the rich don’t provide the kind of economic stimulus McConnell and his fellow Republicans would have us believe.

Tax cuts for the rich while trying to fight two wars, one of which was totally unnecessary, didn’t make sense when they were enacted. They make even less sense now, as the federal government tries to cope with this recession without going too deeply into debt.

Obama’s plan to let the cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans expire while extending them for the middle class folks who will stimulate the economy with their spending is the right course for the nation.

Read the full editorial»

Full post as published by The Gavel on September 15, 2010 (boomark / email).