The Republican middle-class hostage crises, wherein the Republican party is holding a proverbial knife to the throat of the middle-class taxpayer in order to extract tax cuts for the rich, may be quite the spectacle to watch. But, let us not get distracted from the even more damning facts on the ground. Why are taxes set to go up for the middle class in 2011? Or, to be more exact, which party voted overwhelmingly for legislation designed to raise taxes dramatically, in 2011? Read on...
Imagine, for a moment, a madman standing on a busy street corner, holding a live hand grenade. He pulls the pin, and as hard as he can, he throws that hand grenade straight up. And then he briskly takes a few steps away. Now imagine that some others walking through should happen to be right where the hand grenade is set to land when it comes down.
The madman points and jumps and shouts, "oh my god, a hand grenade is coming straight down at us, do something about it! If you don't do something about it, whatever happens is your fault!"
So the question is, who is really at fault for the fact that a hand grenade is just then coming down out of the sky? Or, for a more concrete example, whose fault is it that our battered American middle class faces a substantial tax increase, in these delicate economic times? Let's look to the legislation that actually has this tax increase rushing towards us like a hand grenade falling out of the sky...
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The debate was contentious, but in the end, 58 senators voted in favor of a bill to effect a dramatic tax increase in 2011. Popular misconception would have us believe that this vote took place recently, and that the majority favoring the tax increase were Democrats, backing some bill made into law by President Obama. But, in fact, this vote was taken and this bill made law over ten years ago, and it commanded virtually lockstep Republican support. You see, that's what a "sunset provision" does -- and what the legislators voting for it knew it would do. It throws that hand grenade up in the air and gives it a good long decade to come down.
The complete list of Senators who voted for the 2011 tax increase, including over forty Republicans such as McConnell, Sessions, Brownback, and Crapo, can be found right here, and the House members who voted for the 2011 tax increase, including every single one of the 211 Republicans voting, Republicans such as Armey, Boehner, Toomey, Blunt, and Pence, can likewise be found right here.
So let us not ignore this vital fact, let us not let the American people forget that taxes are going up because the Republicans tossed up the grenade and waited a decade for it to come down, hoping the throw would have been forgotten by then.