A Short Lesson

by dday

The original headline for this story was “Congress to cut $400 tax credit”.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., announced a budget blueprint Tuesday that would scrap Obama’s signature tax cut after 2010 while employing some sleight of hand to cut the annual budget deficit to a sustainable level.

Conrad promises to reduce the deficit from a projected $1.7 trillion this year to a still-high $508 billion in 2014. Along the way, the Senate plan would have Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit, delivering $400 tax cuts to most workers and $800 to couples, expire at the end of next year. Those tax cuts were included in Obama’s stimulus package.

But Obama paid for that tax cut in his budget. It was tied to revenue from a cap and trade plan. The reason the tax cut is out has nothing to do with expense, but because cap and trade has been excised. Kent Conrad and the Axis of Centrism just don’t want to deal with climate change in a meaningful and substantive way, which will lead to more extreme weather, loss of snowpack, more hardship for farming, the loss of a great deal of the American coastline, and untold disaster funding needs.

This is how the government spends money in the name of saving it. And this is how “fiscal responsibility” is used as a cover to block progress.

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