This morning there is a lot of outrage in Editorials and Op-Eds about Sen, Jon Kyl’s statement that the Bush tax cuts haven’t diminished revenue. It starts with the Washington Post editorial that the GOP has no problem extending tax cuts for the rich
Senate Republicans, committed as they are to preventing the debt from mounting further, can’t approve an extension of unemployment benefits because it would cost $35 billion. But they are untroubled by the notion of digging the hole $678 billion deeper by extending President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked Republican Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) about this contradiction. Mr. Kyl’s response is worth examining because of what it says about the GOP’s refusal to practice the fiscal responsibility it preaches.
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….. Mr. Kyl trotted out the tired and unsubstantiated argument that the tax cuts for the wealthy must be extended because otherwise “you’re going to clobber small business.” Mr. Wallace persisted: “But, sir, . . .how are you going to pay the $678 billion?” — at which point Mr. Kyl descended into nonsense. “You should never raise taxes in order to cut taxes,” he declared. “Surely Congress has the authority, and it would be right to, if we decide we want to cut taxes to spur the economy, not to have to raise taxes in order to offset those costs. You do need to offset the cost of increased spending, and that’s what Republicans object to. But you should never have to offset [the] cost of a deliberate decision to reduce tax rates on Americans.”
Huh? No one’s talking about cutting taxes on the wealthy to stimulate the economy. The issue is whether the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans should be extended, adding another $678 billion to the deficit over the next decade. The tax cuts, it’s worth remembering, passed originally in 2001 with the argument that the surplus was so large that rates could be cut with budgetary room to spare. Now that the fiscal picture has deteriorated so badly, the questions remains: How are you going to pay the $678 billion? And if you don’t, how are you going to justify the added damage to an already grim fiscal outlook?
In his blog, Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman chimes in with the Republican’s Invincible Ignorance
Just in case you had some lingering notion that anyone in the Republican party was fiscally responsible, Mitch McConnell has weighed in in support of Jon Kyl:
[T]here’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue. They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy. So I think what Senator Kyl was expressing was the view of virtually every Republican on that subject.
In a way you have to wonder what point there even is in trying to argue here. But anyway, look: it’s been a long time since Morning in America. We’ve now been through two two-term administrations, one of which raised taxes, the other of which cut them. Which looks like it presided over a more vibrant economy?
Krugman up dates at the end telling his readers who complain he is “too partisan”
Update: Also, for those readers who complain that I’m too partisan, that I should admit that there are two sides to the issues, this is a prime example of my problem. How am I supposed to pretend that these are serious people? The facts really do have a well-known liberal bias.
(emphasis mine)
Ezra Klein is also “upset” with Sen, Mitch McConell, the Senate Minority leader, who thinks that there is ‘No evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue’
There’s an ontological question here about what, exactly, McConnell considers to be “evidence.” But how about the Congressional Budget Office’s estimations? “The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half – 48 percent – of this $539 billion in increased costs.” How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018. How about George W. Bush’s CEA chair, Greg Mankiw, who used the term “charlatans and cranks” for people who believed that “broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue.” He continued: “I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don’t.”
Katrina vanden Heuvel looks at November’s unpalatable choice for voter’s and how Pres. Obama echoing Roosevelt on the opposition obstruction could backfire.
There’s a clear echo of Roosevelt in President Obama’s midterm messaging, which he is starting to preview. Republicans, Obama declared in Missouri last week, “said no to laws that we passed to stop insurance companies from denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions. They said no to requiring women to get equal pay for equal work. They said no to extended unemployment insurance for folks who desperately needed help. They said no to holding oil companies accountable when they bring on catastrophe.” Then the president castigated three specific offenders: “[T]his is the leadership that we’ve gotten from Barton and Boehner and Blunt.”
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There are a couple of problems, however. A number of conservative Blue Dogs have joined with Republicans in opposing reforms. And by highlighting obstructionism, the Obama administration may be making members of its own party vulnerable.
The other issue may be more damaging. Republicans staked a huge bet on the president’s failure in the midst of a crisis, and, with the economic pain continuing, that bet may be coming in. Boehner’s response to the president this past week forecast the Republican tack: “Where are the jobs?”
And that’s the unpalatable choice voters will face this fall. Return to the people and policies that, in Obama’s words, drove “the country into a ditch,” or stick with those people and policies that have yet to drive us out?
Glen Greenwald] takes Marc Thiessen, Bush torture advocate and now Washington Post OP-Ed columnist,to the “woodshed” for his neoconservative tripe that Jewish American voters are about to abandon Democratic politicians en masse because of their supposed lack of devotion to Israel.
Marc Thiessen and the myth of the American Jewish voter
To call this assertion factually false is to put it politely. Thiessen’s link is to an April, 2010 memo from the obscure GOP polling firm McLaughlin & Associates that provides no support for his claim. Thiessen is apparently referencing that poll’s first question: “Would you vote to re-elect Barack Obama as President or would you consider voting for someone else”? In response, 42% of Jewish voters said they’d vote to re-elect him, while 46% said they’d consider voting for someone else. Thus, “reasons” Thiessen, because 78% of Jews voted for Obama in 2008, and only 42% now definitively say they’d re-elect him (rather than “consider voting for someone else”), he’s suffered a “36-point drop in support” among Jews.
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