Apparently not the Republicans. Check out Eric Cantor admitting that extending the Bush tax cuts will increase the deficit:
Transcript (via Think Progress):
GUTHRIE: [W]ill you just as simply acknowledge that passing these tax cuts worsens the budget deficit problem? I mean, you can’t deny that, right?
CANTOR: Savannah, let’s look at it through the prism of the working families seeking jobs and the small business people who are creating them. It’s not a tax cut they’re looking for. They don’t want a tax hike. And that’s –
GUTHRIE: But that wasn’t my question. … I just was wondering if you had any dispute with the notion that it does exacerbate the deficit picture?
CANTOR: Well, what I said in the beginning is, if you have less revenues coming in to the federal government, and more expenditures, what does that add up to? Certainly you are going to dig the hole deeper, but you also have to understand if the priority is to get people back to work, is to start growing this economy again, you don’t want to make it more expensive for job creators.
Again we see the class-warfare that the Republicans are launching. They turned their backs on small business last week to help protect the ultra-rich. Now they are saying that programs should be cut for the middle class to help offset tax cuts for the top 2%.
And the Republicans can’t use the “this is the desire of the people” meme. Americans want the tax cut to be gone by almost a 2-1 margin:
A Pew Research Center/National Journal Congressional Connection poll last week found that 27 percent of Americans think the cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003, should be allowed to expire as scheduled this year for individuals making $200,000 a year or more and households making $250,000 a year or more. Another 31 percent said all the cuts should be allowed to expire. That combined 58 percent compares to only 30 percent who think they should be extended. Along with the overwhelming percentage of Democrats who support ending the tax cut, even 40 percent of Republicans also favored ending them either for the wealthy or altogether.
As bad as the Democratically controlled Congress has been (and it has been bad), a Republican controlled one will be much worse. One of the top Republicans in the House just admitted they plan on stealing from the poor to give to the rich. Is this what you want for America? I’ll take the screwed up Democrats over that any day, and hopefully we can keep this issue on the front page so that more Americans see who the Republicans really care about – only 2% of the country.