Better late than never
by digby
This is a good idea, at least for positioning purposes:
President Obama will begin pushing for a one-year extension of the Bush tax cuts for Americans making less than $250,000, reports the New York Times. The announcement from the Rose Garden Monday will signal the president’s emphasis on tax fairness as a major issue just four months from the election. Pushing the issue is also meant to make House Republicans look unreasonable as they move this month to vote on a full, permanent extension of all of the Bush tax cuts.
I don’t think there’s really a downside to calling for only the middle class cuts to be extended. This economy still sucks for most people making less than a quarter of a million dollars a year so raising their taxes isn’t a good idea. But damn, I will never in a million years understand why they didn’t extend them for say, five years, when they passed the stimulus and take them out of the negotiating equation. Battling over cutting taxes on the wealthy is much friendlier turf for Democrats. (Maybe they tried, but I’ve never heard word of it …)
It’s good that they’re doing it now, but it’s a lot less clean than it could have been.
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