Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
With all the fights so far in the last many months in Congress a new, very important fight in the direction of our country is soon to be joined. With the Bush Tax Cuts set to expire a fight will ensue on renewing them, renewing a few of them, or renewing them all. This is one fight we should use common sense on. Yes, the economy is hurting and the deficit is booming. However, after decades of a free ride, and being the only "patriots" to ever receive a tax cut in a time of "war" it is essential that the wealthy once again pay their fair share and that the middle and lower classes reap the benefits for once.
For their part, most Democrats who are really Democrats want to keep the tax cuts for everyone except the very wealthy:
Democratic leaders, including Mr. Obama, say they are intent on letting the tax cuts for the wealthy expire as scheduled at the end of this year. But they have pledged to continue the lower tax rates for individuals earning less than $200,000 and families earning less than $250,000 — what Democrats call the middle class.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Yes, Democrats want to raise taxes modestly on those who have stagnated wages, outsourced jobs, and crashed the economy. It seems as if this is only fair. I mean, these are the folks that benefited from the booming economy while effectively shutting the middle-class out of the profits. They then received a bailout and are still living high on the hog with lavish bonuses while the rest of America suffers. Even more insulting to the middle-class is the explanation given by Republicans for their position by Orrin Hatch:
In a statement, Mr. Hatch lambasted Democrats. "They can talk about the wealthy all they want, but this is about stopping a job-killing tax hike on small businesses during tough economic times, " he said.
And there is that word again from Repubicans. "Small Businesses". It seems as if to me that if they were really concerned with the plight of "small business" they would have supported the bill that would go a long way towards allowing small businesses and community banks to spurn the economy detailed in this diary. But no, they turned their backs on small businesses and working Americans to do what the always do, fight for the greediest and least patriotic among us.
And while they want us all to believe they are "deficit hawks", when it comes to throwing money away to the very rich as they starve working America Republicans care little about deficits:
Some liberals want Mr. Obama to keep his promise to raise taxes on the rich, and the White House’s budget forecasts rely heavily on rolling the top income tax rates back to their pre-2001 levels. Some fiscal hawks warn that extending the tax cuts would add more than $2 trillion to the federal budget deficits at a time when the national debt is becoming an economic concern and a political issue. Political economists are fiercely divided.
You see, Republicans do not care about the deficit one bit and never have. They care about who the money goes too. If it goes to the wealthy elites, their base then deficits are just fine. I mean these are the only folks who received a tax cut in a time of a "war" of their own making ballooning the deficit. And while we were all asked to make sacrifices it is business as usual for them. Which brings about the essential question of if these tax cuts for the wealthy are needed so badly, and are so very essential to the economy why has the economy crashed and the deficit ballooned with them intact.
The answer to this one is simple and Democrats need to get a spine and fight for it. In the last few decades the wealthy have been doing just fine. They wanted Bush and a crashed economy and wars in the middle-east and put it all on the credit card. Now, the bill is coming due and it is time for them to pay their fair share. The tax rates should go up for those over $200,000 and remain the same for everyone else. They have squeezed every ounce of blood possible from the working class and now it is their turn to ante up.
If Democrats have any guts they will fight for this.