The New Republic

the times actually agrees with you, preferring only a temporary extension of the middle class tax cuts: "Even if it gave Democrats something to crow about, cutting those rates makes economic sense during a recession (though we disagree with Mr. Obama’s plan to cut the rates permanently)."

- apollo

September 14, 2010 at 11:35am

Precisely. No tax cuts make sense with the gargantuan deficits looming over us.

- liberal reformer

September 14, 2010 at 11:42am

There are no Bob Doles and Pete Domenici around today as there were in the Reagan era. Or even Bush One (after he got elected). The GOP today is utterly irresponsible. I saw recently Orrin Hatch compare Obama to Bernie Madoff, but who is out there peddling budget Ponzi schemes??

- NR027810

September 14, 2010 at 12:18pm

I have promoted (1) a large and temporary tax cut for low to middle income folks, which is to say a temporary cut in payroll taxes (both sides) because those are the taxes (not income taxes) low to middle income folks mostly pay, combined with (2) expiration of all the Bush tax cuts to show that Obama and the Democrats are serious about the deficit. I understand why Obama is afraid to go near payroll taxes ("he's gutting social security!"), but I think his fear isn't well-founded (social security currently has a $2.5 trillion surplus); moreover, whatever concerns low to middle income folks may have about funding social security would be more than offset by the pleasure of an immediate increase in take-home pay. By "adopting" part of the Bush tax cuts, what message does Obama send to folks. That Bush tax cuts are a good thing? I blame Obama's economic team for giving a muddled message. I equate each of them (some more than others) to the smartest kid in the class, hand held high whenever the teacher asks a question, eager to show his brilliance with what is always the "correct" answer but never, never the right answer.

- rayward

September 14, 2010 at 1:05pm

Now, as policy, this is a clear improvement over the Republican position. Compared with the GOP, the Democrats have a more progressive and more fiscally responsible tax policy. But does it actually make sense? No, it doesn't. Even the middle-class tax cuts are unaffordable:

I would qualify that by saying the tax cuts for the upper middle class are not affordable. The total ten year cost of the cuts is nearly four trillion. The cost for the bottom four quintiles is a bit under a trillion dollars. The fourth quintile is a household income of about $55,000 - $90,000 annually, so solidly middle class. And there's a lot else at work in the CBOs alternative projection: doc fix, AMT, etc.

- jmorton

September 14, 2010 at 2:48pm

does anyone know what the multiplier effect is for the middle income tax cuts alone? moody's has an anemic 0.29 for permanent extension of the entire package of bush tax cuts.

- apollo

September 14, 2010 at 3:42pm

Good is relative. it's better than the republicans' which is the only other game in town. In my ideal world, we'd make the middle class tax cuts permanent and eliminate the superwealthy tax cuts. THEN, later on, we'd increase everyone's taxes by a similar amount (i.e., using middle class w. tax cuts and upper class w/o tax cuts as a base). This notion that any tax cut is unaffordable, so the pain should continue to be distributed such that the wealthy feel it no more than the poor is simply unfair.

- miceelf

September 14, 2010 at 4:09pm