Tax Cuts Clearly Explained

The American Thinker ^ | December 14, 2010 | Randall Hoven

[Scanian]

If you go to the White House website, right at the top is a bar you can click on to see "Tax Cuts Clearly Explained." If you click, you see a video of one of President Obama's economic advisors using a whiteboard to explain that Republicans are bad, that Obama is above politics, and that if Obama gets his way, jobs and growth and goodness will spring forth.

The video starts out simply enough. Republicans want to extend the Bush tax rates for everyone; Obama wants to leave out the top 2% of income earners. It was all about the Bush tax rates and for how long, and to whom, to extend them.

But then the video starts talking about a host of things unrelated to those tax rates. The economist even lists them on his whiteboard. •Unemployment insurance, •Earned income tax credit, •American opportunity tax credit, •Child tax credit, •Payroll tax, •Investment incentives.

The "clear" explanation is that since the current tax rates for the top 2% would be extended another couple years, this list of unrelated "targeted and temporary" tax cuts must be added to the package to somehow offset them. The concern was that extending current tax rates for the top 2% would increase the deficit too much. So politicians compromised in a way that would increase the deficit more than either party's initial proposal. (Kind of like the way they compromised on TARP in 2008. Remember "sweeteners"?)

Since Congress got into the compromise act, tax credits for ethanol, alternative fuels, and who knows what else have also been added.

In the spirit of clarity, what follows is my attempt to explain tax cuts.

[thethirddegree]

Obama needs to be arrested, tried for treason and brought to justice by a jury of military families who lost loved ones because of Obama’s insane rules of engagement.

[Venturer]

How can anyone believe that 2% of America’s population can pay the debts Obama has run up?

[Vince Ferrer]

Let him be clear.