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Monday, June 11, 2012

I Can't Believe That Only "A Few" Dems Are Proposing This Bush Tax Cut Endgame

Greg Sargent is hearing some whispers:
[A] few progressive Dems seem to be quietly floating another scenario entirely: letting all the tax cuts expire, coming back and voting on recutting middle class tax rates, and challenging Republicans to vote against the Dem-proposed tax cuts. Remember: If Democrats do nothing, all of the Bush tax cuts will expire. And Dems recognize that their leverage turns heavily on whether they appear willing to let them all expire. So progressives like Sheldon Whitehouse and Jeff Merkley are suggesting, in interviews with David Dayen, that perhaps it should come to that, if necessary. As Merkley put it, “you can’t give up your leverage in advance.” Whitehouse added that if the tax cuts were allowed to expire, it would break the hold that Grover Norquist’s anti-tax fundamentalism has on large swaths of the GOP
The thing I can hardly believe is that only "a few" of the most "progressive" Democrats are saying this. This is so obviously the right thing to do politically, strategically, and fiscally. Let the Bush Tax cuts expire. Republicans are in control of the House, so blame them for not being able to get the deal done. Everybody knows the Orange One is lurching drunkenly in a scrum of loudmouthed zealots who can't shoot straight, and it's a process story anyway, the details won't determine the public take, long prepared narratives about Republican extremism and support of the rich over people who have to work for a living are the best we could hope to make it through the filter in any case so go with it. Republicans didn't win the public fight over the debt ceiling hostage with a gun to his own head drama, and they won't win this one either. Hell, the cluster frack might help regain the Democrats the House and retain the Senate, especially if Obama wins with coattails. Come the new year Democrats should take the reins, whether they quite have the majority or not, propose and support lower tax rates but only for the middle class. They can call them "The Obama Tax Cuts" for the rest of eternity and let the Republicans stew on that and vote against them if they dare. More money coming in from rich fucks, defense cuts coming in, too, what's not to like?

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