The latest Washington battle is over whether the Bush Tax Cuts should expire. Republicans say that allowing them to expire will increase the strain on the economy. Some Democrats agree. But most Democrats argue that the deficit was caused by those tax cuts, and if we want to control the deficit we should allow them to expire.I’m in the latter camp. The tax cuts were targeted to the upper two percent of the population. They were promoted as the real way to stimulate the economy. Remember that the dot-com bubble had just burst, and people were losing money on the stock exchange and people were losing their jobs? Well it didn’t stimulate the economy. During the Bush years the new jobs creation didn’t even keep pace with the number of kids graduating from high school and college and entering the work force. During that decade, the net new jobs created was zero. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer. And people who work for a living couldn’t find a job.The spin of the current anti-tax crowd is the same old tired argument that hasn’t been working. Not to mention, it was a Republican controlled legislature that put the sunset provision into the tax cuts in the first place. They didn’t make them permanent. Maybe they knew that if you take money out of a budget without addressing spending the result is deficits, and that deficits can’t be sustained over the long run.Back in 2005 the Congressional Budget Office issued a report that said that tax cuts played a much larger role in increasing the deficits than any domestic spending did. Then there was the Bush-era trick of keeping military spending out of the budget so that the real impact of spending cuts would be disguised. Back then 37% of the deficit increase came from military spending and 48% came from the Bush Tax Cuts. Obama put military spending back into the budget so that Americans could see what was really happening to the budget.So, let’s get real.· The only way that a budget is balanced (no deficit spending) is if the revenue (taxes and fees) equals the spending (including on military budgets.)· Bush started an unnecessary war without paying for it. We now need to pay for it. We can’t afford to continue giving tax breaks to the wealthy, while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We can’t wage war if it isn’t paid for because the price we pay is too high. We pay in a destroyed economy and high unemployment.· Jobs are created by small businesses. Most small businesses have taxable income of $250,000 or less. The Obama tax cuts for people earning under $250,000 should stay in place. These are the guys who create jobs, they need to put the money into creating jobs instead of supporting a war that can’t be won. Read some of the leaked documents about the un-winnable war in Afghanistan and see where your tax money is being spent. It just might make you want to spit up your breakfast.Homework:Geithner on Bush Tax Cuts2005 CBO Report Demonstrated that Tax Cuts Increased DeficitDetails about Afghan War Leaked
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