(Crossposted on “Alas” and on “TADA.”)
Things are still in flux, but it seems likely that Republicans are going to coalesce around extending the Bush tax plan (the legislation Republicans wrote a decade ago created temporary tax cuts, so they’ll need to be actively extended by Congress in order to continue). Democrats seem likely to propose letting the Bush tax cuts expire for households with over $250,000 in income (about 2% of taxpayers), but cutting taxes for many with household incomes under $250,000.
The Wall Street Journal helpfully charts the competing proposals:
The only persuasive argument for the Republican plan is that it’s foolish to let tax cuts expire during a recession. But tax cuts as stimulus are most effective when the people getting the tax cuts aren’t rich (since poor people are more likely to spend the money immediately, and more consumer spending is the one thing our economy most desperately needs). By moving the tax cuts from the rich savers to middle-class and lower-class spenders, Obama’s tax plan may well be more stimulative.
An argument we’re likely to hear from conservatives is that the top 2% of earners already pay a huge portion of federal income taxes, relative to the rest of the country.. That’s true, but they also own a huge proportion of the country’s wealth — most of it, in fact.
It’s not unjust that the people who own most of everything should also pay most of the taxes. (And in fact, the rich are not as paying as large a portion of taxes as some conservatives claim, once all the other taxes Americans pay — not just Federal income taxes, but payroll taxes, sales taxes, state and local taxes — are included.)
Finally, some Conservatives are going to voice a philosophical objection to the idea that some Americans will wind up paying no taxes at all. But again — we’re just talking about Federal income taxes here. There are plenty of other taxes, especially payroll taxes, that are paid for by a broader slice of Americans.
UPDATE: Actually, the Obama administration has proposed not extending the Bush tax cuts for individual filers making $200,000 or above, and joint filers making $250,000 or above. That’s a bit different from what I claimed above; sorry for my mess-up.
Look! Another campaign promise that Obama reneged on….
Remember how he said exactly that? And now, look what he’s doing….
I’m actually pretty happy that they’re actually trying to do this.
The only persuasive argument for the Republican plan is that it’s foolish to let tax cuts expire during a recession. But tax cuts as stimulus are most effective when the people getting the tax cuts aren’t rich (since poor people are more likely to spend the money immediately, and more consumer spending is the one thing our economy most desperately needs). By moving the tax cuts from the rich savers to middle-class and lower-class spenders, Obama’s tax plan may well be more stimulative.
This is backwards. We are not talking about a stimulus from a tax cut; that happened ten years ago when the tax cuts passed. Letting the cuts expire amounts to a tax increase in terms of investor psychology; we aren’t discussing who gets a “tax cut” which already happened, we’re discussing who is going to get hit by a tax increase.
You’re quite right about the effects of cuts and who should get $ in order for their to be a stimulus effect, but there will be no such effect here. The effect already happened, when Bush cut the taxes. Rather, the question is who will be hit with this tax increase, and how negative will its impact be on economic growth.
Robert, look carefully at the amounts in the first four rows of that chart from the Wall Street Journal. If the WSJ’s reporting is accurate, the effect of the Democratic plan (which includes some cuts, in addition to letting Bush’s top 2% cuts expire) will be to lower taxes for most taxpayers, compared to extending the Bush plan. Taxes would get lower for middle-class and lower-class people, but rise for the upper-class.
Also, if you’re agreeing that tax cuts aimed at the non-rich have a stimulative effect, then the most recent time that happened wasn’t ten years ago, but last year, when the Democrats cut taxes for the large majority of Americans. (I know you didn’t deny this, but I thought it worth clarifying.)
I <3 numbers posts.
It would be interesting to see % of all taxes paid vs. income and wealth, including all taxes (gas, sales, payroll, etc).
Hm. What would rich people spend their tax cuts on? They certainly buy things. They buy luxury goods such as fancy cars and boats and clothing, all of which employ people to make and sell them. They also invest in businesses, which then gives those businesses capital to buy capital goods, expand production and make new jobs.
Obviously poor and middle-class people will spend a larger percentage of their income on life’s necessities. But I don’t take it as intuitively clear that rich people simply stick their money away in a non-productive fashion. What documentation is there for this?
Many small businesses file as individuals. Raising taxes on small businesses in this economy is yet another nail in the coffin of this feeble recovery.
Here is a tax calculator that purports to calculate your taxes for next year and show you what you’ll pay in 3 different scenarios; 1) if the Bush tax cuts are extended, 2) if they are allowed to expire, and 3) if the administration’s current proposals are enacted.
My wife and I make well under $250,000. We own a home that we have about 5 years left to pay on (so we have both a property tax and a mortgage interest deduction). We have two grown children graduated from college, one of which was living in our home for the first half of the year until he got a professional job. I have no dividend or capital gains income. According to it I’ll to pay another $3,500 in taxes under scenarios 2 and 3.
That’s very strange, RonF, since the chart was provided by the Tax Foundation – the same think tank that made the calculator you link to.
My wife and I also make well under $250k. We own a home with under 4 years left on the mortgage. We have no dependents or investment income. According to the calculator, I’ll pay $2.5k to to $3.3k less under scenarios 2 & 3. After playing around with it for a while, I can’t figure out what you entered to show you’d pay more under scenarios 2 & 3 . How did you do it?
Well, I don’t know what numbers you are entering, but the only way I could replicate that was by putting in a huge deduction for real estate taxes, and getting hit by the alternative minimum tax. For instance, 250 k in income and 100k in property taxes leads to a 3k bump in taxes for scenarios 1 and 3 (RonF called them scenarios 2 and 3, but the calculator calls them scenarios 1 and 3). Or 200k in income and 50 k in property taxes and 50 k in other itemized deductions gives an extra 3k only under scenario 3.
Looks like maybe you made a really bad decision when you bought into a high home value high property tax area.
formerlyLarry, #6: a small business that generates over $250,000 in profits for a sole proprietor every year – that’s profits, after all expenses are deducted on sch. C – is not particularly small. I’ve worked as a tax filer, and I’ve never seen sch C income at anything like that level. Businesses that size don’t tend to have sole proprietors.
Your comment is lacking in the logic department anyway; “Many small businesses file as individuals. Raising taxes on small businesses in this economy is yet another nail in the coffin of this feeble recovery.” ? Because many small businesses file as individuals a policy that affects a few very wealthy individuals is going to hurt all small businesses? Huh?
This statement would only make a jot of sense if taxes were being raised for all individuals; as I just said, if taxes on individuals with less than $250,000 in income are going to be cut, then taxes for most small businesses are going to be cut. Why are you opposed to tax cuts for small businesses, eh? Tell me that.
[beat by seconds by a very similar but better comment from Thene]
Thene,
Paying the same rate in 2011 as it was in 2010 is not a cut. Paying more in 2011 than was paid in 2010 is a tax increase. Either for individuals or small businesses.
So the debate in congress regarding the Bush tax cuts as I understand it is one of three options:
1. Tax increases for all federal income tax payers
2. Tax increases only for those over $250K, no change for everyone else
3. No change (Stopping all the scheduled tax increases)
You might be right about the number of sole proprietorship and S corps. making $250K. I dont know. But in some parts of the country that isnt a lot of money.
Paying a lower rate in 2010 than it was in 2009 is a cut, and that’s what people who earned under $250,000 did, because of the Obama tax cuts and (for those in the lower part of that wide income bracket) the new Making Work Pay credit (which will be extended to 2011).
I don’t know if you’ve, like, totally not been following either this thread or this entire issue, but the expiration of the Bush tax cuts isn’t the only factor involved here; the Obama tax cuts, which are focused on middle-income Americans, are what create actual tax cuts for most people. None of your three options make reference to the Obama tax cuts.
Reality has chosen option 4: tax cuts for people who earn under 250k, tax increases for people who earn over 250k. If you don’t support this then I guess you don’t support tax cuts for small businesses!
Bullshit. It’s a lot of money. It’s well over ten times the federal poverty threshold for a family of 4, and over twenty times the poverty threshold for a single adult. Anyone who thinks it isn’t a lot of money has no idea what living on a low or even average income is like.
That’s just silly talk. I suppose $250k isn’t a lot of money for people living on Central Park South, but then that isn’t really referred to so much as “some parts of the country” as it is a wealthy neighborhood. I suppose it isn’t a lot of money for selected towns around the country, but that’s hardly the same thing.
Someone who makes $250,000 in rural Mississippi is very wealthy. Someone who makes $250,000 in Manhattan is lower middle class.
You’re deluded. I know people in Manhattan who make 1/10 that, and they are not poor.
Assuming the numbers I’ve found are accurate, the median salary in New York City according to the bureau of labor statistics was approximately $50,000.*
Does that go up according to professions? Yes. The median salary for a worker in the business and financial sector was $77,000.
The highest median salary within the business and financial sector was for personal financial advisors, at $130,000. In the computer field, the highest median salary for any variety of position was $112,000. In construction, it was $77,000. In education, it was $116,000. In engineering, $101,000 again. In food services, only $34,000. Surgeons top the healthcare chart at $194,000–but health care support only goes to $48,000. Even lawyers can’t compete within legal services with $140,000. For maintenance, building, and grounds cleaning it’s $44,000. Management must be great right? It is, but even the most highly paid category within management (chief executives) is slightly lower than surgeons at $190,000. Athletes–listed within media–get $128,000. Office administration is down to $50,000. The vaguely named personal services position give the highest median salary to flight attendants at $72,000. Production salaries average quite low, with the high going to dental lab technicians at $47,000. Within law enforcement, the situation is a bit better, with first line supervisors pulling in $90,000. In repair, first line supervisors only get $69,000. In sales, you can get $119,000 in real estate. Physicists, surprisingly, earn the most out of all the scientists, at $113,000 median income. But the social services are back down in salary again, with the highest income going to vocational counselors at $64,000 (but no pyramid). In transportation, the median salaries average low, but pilots break out of the run-of-the-mill numbers with an almost-competitive-with-surgeons $162,000.
I should repeat that those are the absolute highest entries in each category, often accompanied by ten to twenty other positions whose median salaries are much, much lower.
No single individual even comes close to the line that Robert draws for the *lower* middle class. Not even a surgeon, at $194,000.
Now maybe he misspoke. Maybe he didn’t mean “someone.” Maybe he meant “a family of someones” and maybe he was talking about families with two wage earners.
So, it’s true, two surgeons, each earning a median-for-their-profession salary of $194,000, do actually exceed the $250,000 barrier. But what kind of deluded reality do we have to enter to classify a pair of married surgeons as *lower* middle class?
How about more traditionally middle class professions? Maybe a teacher and a policeman? Well, a median middle school teacher earns a salary of $66,000, while her husband as a patrol officer earns $62,000. Together, they’re at $128,000, about half of what Robert declares is the line for the *lower* middle class. So I guess teaching and law enforcement are not middle class professions; they must be poverty level professions.
An office assistant married to an architect? If he’s an office manager, he might make $56,000. His wife does better at $84,000. Together, they’re making $140,000… again, well short of the line for the *lower* middle class. I guess they’re living in poverty, too.
Two architects? At $168,000 for the pair, they’re also poor. A legal secretary ($45,000) with a graphic designer ($56,000)? Poor at $101,000 a year. An auto mechanic ($40,000) with a civil engineer (82,000)? $122,000 and poor, poor, poor.
Two people working at the median level in the financial services, where we started out, are only at $144,000–so that business degree you were planning to get so that you could earn some cash? Well, maybe it’ll work out for you if you strike it rich, but if you’re just average, then your business degree is also your ticket to poverty.
Even pairs of some of the highest earners on this list–which is already a list of the HIGHEST median salaries within their fields–fail to make it to the golden $250,000 lower middle class mark. Now two surgeons are doing well (at 388,000) and so are two airplane pilots (314,000), and two chief executives (380,000), all of whom have earned their place in the lower middle class. Two athletes (256,000) and two personal financial advisors (260,000) squeak by at the very lowest boundary of the lower middle class. None of them could support a stay-at-home spouse, though, without slipping into poverty.
But poverty howls at the doors of the houses of two physicists (226,000), two real estate agents (238,000), two college professors specializing in health (232,000)**, two computer hardware engineers (202,000), and two computer research scientists (222,000).
Whole professions have been locked entirely out of the lower middle class. In fact, it seems like the lower middle class has been raised entirely out of sight… almost to a point where it’s just a little tiny white dot in the air, almost invisible, almost totally devoid of all meaning.
As a lower middle class salary, the number $250,000 excludes almost everyone. Almost everyone falls below, and almost no one is above. If this is going to be a meaningful way of deciding who is in the middle class, then I have to ask what the point of protecting the middle class is. I though that one reason we hear so much about defending the interests of the middle class was because that’s where the bulk of the population is, the largest number of people whose interests need defending. But if entry into even the *lower* middle class requires such a high barrier, then we’re talking about a smaller and smaller, rarefied sliver of people. If that’s the middle class, then no, I don’t oppose raising taxes on “the middle class.”
Of course, $250,000 isn’t a lower middle class salary, not in any real world metric. $250,000 is not a lower middle class salary anywhere outside of situations when Republicans want to stretch the definition of middle class past its breaking point in order to oppose raising taxes on the rich.
The idea that $250,000 is a lower middle class salary in NYC–even for a pair of earners–is the function of profound delusion and ignorance.
—
*The numbers appear to be from 2008.
**Why are “Health Specialties Teachers, College” so overpaid compared to their peers?*** Their $116,000 median salary is bizarrely high compared to the next highest category, $95,000 for law professors, and the third place $89,000 for economics teachers. Filtering all college professors out of the category, the highest median salary in education is $70,000, applying to both secondary school vocation teachers and secondary school special education teachers.
***My husband points out that it’s because they’re teaching pre-med, and that the hierarchy med teachers, then law teachers, is parallel to the one in the real world where surgeons earn a huge amount of money, and lawyers earn slightly less.
I’m not sure if the notion that a New Yorker (or even a New York family) making a quarter of a million dollars a year is barely squeaking by comes from stereotypes about New York or from Robert being so rich it skews his notion of how people live. $100,000 a year would be a pretty comfortable lifestyle for us even if you don’t count the outer boroughs as really being New York.
I won’t answer for the specifics of Manhattan, but it’s very true that someone who is making, say, 100K$ a year in the northern Chicago suburbs is going to get less for their housing dollar, food, etc. than if they lived in rural Indiana. Even if they moved to suburban Indianapolis.
“I won’t answer for the specifics of Manhattan, but it’s very true that someone who is making, say, 100K$ a year in the northern Chicago suburbs is going to get less for their housing dollar, food, etc. than if they lived in rural Indiana. Even if they moved to suburban Indianapolis.”
No one disputed that, so it’s unclear what your point is.
When I suggested that 250K wasnt a lot of money I wasnt implying that is poor, only that it isnt “rich” in some places.
(IMHO of course)
Here is an interesting list of high median income citys:
http://www.city-data.com/top2.html
Wait, how are we measuring poverty? I assume pretty much everyone is like me; I judge my own wealth level primarily by how much of a struggle it is or isn’t to make ends meet, what sort of luxuries and leisure activities are available to me, and other such absolute metrics, rather than worrying about how much money other people have (beyond the effect the general wealth level of where I live has on prices).
I mean, I suppose it’s possible to be pulling in six figures and still feel poor, but you’re not likely to be worrying about eating unless you consistently make very bad decisions.
Look, I think we’re putting the cart before the horse here. Claiming that because the median income of Atherton, California (#1 on the list … none of them reach 250K as median. EVERYWHERE, that’s above average.) is $200,001 doesn’t mean that someone making 200,000 in Atherton isn’t rich. It means that it’s a town full of rich people.
I live near Atherton. It used to be part of my daily commute. I know this. The same is true about Blackhawk (#14), Saratoga (#33), Alamo(#35), Peidmont (#39), Orinda (#64), Danville (#73), and Tiburon (#97).
Now, I’m not saying that cost of living in an area doesn’t need to be taken into account when evaluating whether or not a given income is ‘poor’ or ‘middle class’ or what. Of course that has a huge effect. But the point is that it also goes the other way. The cost of living is often high because the median income is high. When you make 250,000 a year, you can afford to eat a big ol’ caviar sandwich for lunch each day, but that’s not saying that all of a sudden milk costs $7 a gallon.
If you make a bajillion dollars on internet poker and buy a mansion in a gated community, you’re not middle class just because everyone else there has a bajillion dollars too.
—Myca
See what I wrote at #14?
That last sentence was specifically aimed at the towns that are #’s 4, 12, 23, 24, 26, 28, 31, 42, 55, 58, 63, 79, 80, 83, 94 & 98 on that list. And I understated things in that sentence. I grew up in and around those towns. They are wealthy towns and, even there, $250k /yr is a bunch of money. There are almost zero people living in those towns who would qualify as poor. The people in those towns who are poor aren’t earning 1/10th of that amount. $250k/yr would allow you to live in New Castle without being deemed poor. My sister lived there in a very nice historic house when her family’s total income was well under that. She wouldn’t be considered poor by any rational measure.
formerlyLarry, you were clearly suggesting that $250k was poor in some places when you wrote:
$250k/yr is a lot of money in every part of the country. It isn’t a lot in some small enclaves of the super-rich, but that isn’t what you were claiming.
You could just say that you were mistaken, you know, and we could all move on.
As long as we’re discussing people who were mistaken, I’d like to draw attention to Mandolin’s masterful demolition of Robert’s extremely (and obviously) wrong comment #15.
—Myca
Yeah, that was a thing of beauty.
The per capita income in Manhattan is $120,000. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highest-income_counties_in_the_United_States#20_highest-income_counties_by_average_per_capita_income_.282009.29_.5B5.5D)
As a specific figure, $250,000 might be wrong, and so I won’t defend it vociferously.
As a general statement, Manhattan is one of the wealthiest places on earth, and an income that would be comfortable elsewhere is relative poverty there. This is not delusional nor untrue.
People who wish to make the argument that (say) $25,000 a year, even in New York City, even in Manhattan, is not in fact genuine poverty are welcome to make that argument. They will generally find me in agreement with them. $25,000, by the historical standards of the human race, is wealth beyond measure and comfort beyond dreams. This argument always earns its wielder the opprobrium of liberals when it is used to defend wealth inequalities, but if you want to rule it in-bounds when used to refute conservative NYC-bashing, ok with me.
In relative terms, however, the numbers are quite clear. Manhattan’s average per capita income, $120K. (The only place richer is Jackson Hole.) In MS, the figure is $26K.
The strength of the proposition that geographic wealth differentials create powerful gradients of lifestyles experienced for an income of [x] seems irrefutable to me. Well done, you’ve successfully quibbled with the exactly dollar value being bandied by the people making the fundamentally true statement.
Robert,
Per capita income is not relevant. There are some very rich people living in Manhattan. This doesn’t mean that the majority of people are living in poverty in any meaningful sense. The median household income in Manhattan is $50k, so more than half the population of Manhattan makes less than half the average income of Manhattan, and less than one fifth of the level that you called lower middle class.
Someone who makes $250k should be able to afford to spend $6000/month on rent (even after taxes). In Manhattan, this “lower middle class” individual will be forced to get by with an apartment like this Greenwich Village beauty, or this 3 bedroom overlooking Central Park or this 4 bedroom apartment with a fireplace, 2 roof terraces, and 3 marble baths.
Of course, that “lower middle class” Manhattanite will also not see a tax increase under Obama’s proposal. So let’s call the $350k earning couple “middle class” for Manhattan (even though they are now making 7 times the median). These members of the struggling middle class will suffer a $5k tax increase, and if they make their budget cuts entirely in what apartment they rent, they will have to abandon their large 3 bedroom apartment with fantastic views and full concierge service for the shockingly modest 3 bedroom, 3.5 marble bath apartment with large terraces, formal dining rooms and a view. Cry me a river.
That doesn’t look like lower middle class to me.
And more to the point, I think the chance that a single small business owner in Manhattan will decide to let their business fold (not sell it, just close it), because they have to downscale between those last 2 apartments, is, well, 0. So even in Manhattan, there is no way that the Obama tax plan will be the death knell for even a single small business.
Well done, you’ve failed to defend your ridiculous nonsense given in defense of FormerlyLarry’s even worse nonsense.
FormerlyLarry’s claim that failing to extend the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250k would be the death knell for American small business was wrong. His claim that $250k wasn’t much money in some places was marginally true in an irrelevant sense. Your claim that $250k was lower middle class in Manhattan was absolute nonsense. Trying to pretend that pointing all of this out is minor quibbling with the fundamentally true point that relative wealth and poverty are meaningful concepts is intellectual dishonesty that lives up to your usual standards.
$250,000 is a lot of money no matter how much your neighbors make. Again, I’m extrapolating from myself, but I can’t imagine being satisfied with the material side of my life and calling myself poor, or even “lower middle class” as a complaint. Are you trying to say that following the commandment about covetousness puts me in not just a minority, but a negligible minority? I don’t even think it puts me in a negligible minority among atheists.
Charles, this is what Robert does on Alas; he makes manifestly untrue statements and then gropes after abstracts in order to attempt to defend them. Yes, wealth differentials can be significant! No, that does not mean that there are people anywhere in America who earn $250k a year and are lower middle class & struggling to make ends meet. But because Robert wants to believe that people who earn $250k a year are just average joes who Obama is cruelly persecuting, he’ll darn well try to find some way to suggest that, hypothetically, there might be some people in America who earn $250k a year and are lower middle class.
I’ve already backed off the $250k number. It seems ungenerous to keep lambasting me for it by name.
The $250k was the central fucking point and you know it.
Until you explicitly backed off from this dishonest bullshit:
you don’t deserve to be treated with any generosity.
This isn’t even vaguely related to reality. Maybe you should take the experience of those who’ve lived in Manhattan as credible. Or maybe you should give us the number that is comfortable “elsewhere” so that we can address your magically non-specific threshold of comfort elsewhere/poverty in Manhattan. I’m willing to bet that you cannot name a defensible number.
It is also worth noting that you are also wrong in your understanding of the structure of income levels. The difference between Manhattan and an impoverished town in the Mississippi delta is not that the middle class in Manhattan makes much more money, it is that Manhattan has fewer working class people (it actually has about the same percentage of poor people) and a lot more rich people, and its rich people are a lot richer. The middle class in Manhattan makes a little more money (say 1/4 more) than the middle class in the delta, and they have very different trappings of middle-class-ness, but someone making $60k in the delta would only be making $75k in Manhattan, and while some people may prefer the middle class trappings $60k gets you in the delta, others prefer the middle class trappings in Manhattan (and when they get sick of the middle class trappings in Manhattan, they move to the outer boroughs or the exurbs, and take up the middle class trappings of those areas instead).
$25k may be median income in Mississippi, but it isn’t actually middle class. It doesn’t buy good health care or a new car, or long term savings. It isn’t what a doctor or a lawyer or a school teacher makes (a school teacher in MS makes 28-63k, a school teacher in Manhattan makes $40-90k). $120k may be the average income in Manhattan, but it is at the very top of the middle class (just as it is in the delta). It isn’t what a school teacher makes in either place, but it is what a household made up of 2 school teachers can earn.
$25k/year will probably let you buy a house in MS, and $125k won’t let you buy an apartment in Manhattan, but that is a matter of the specific trappings of class varying from place to place, not a matter of class varying.
The labor market in the US is sufficiently national that there isn’t that much variation in the wages from state to state (there is certainly some, but certainly not the factor of 5 that comparing average incomes suggests) or city to city. If someone teaches high school in Manhattan and chooses to live in Manhattan, it is partly because they prefer the trappings of middle class life in Manhattan to the trappings of middle class life in Mississippi.
I found a rather nifty resource for this, although it isn’t designed primarily for this purpose, so it is easiest to navigate it by just modifying the urls rather than following links:
http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Manhattan-New-York.html
http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Pierre-Part-Louisiana.html
http://www.city-data.com/income/income-New-Orleans-Louisiana.html
Thene,
I agree with the first part of this description, but I have a lower opinion of why Robert does what he does on Alas than you do. I don’t think he talks nonsense and then claims we are missing the point when he is called on it because he wants to believe the nonsense. I think he does it because he likes stirring things up and getting them to argue with him.
You think he is deluded. I think he is a troll.
Please discuss the issues, not the posters. Thanks.
Robert, please explain what the phrase “relative poverty” means. Yet again, surely either I can make ends meet or I can’t, I can get luxuries I want or I can’t. The median income in a place has a small effect on prices , but how much money my neighbors make has pretty much no bearing on whether I’m rich or poor or in between.
And you don’t get to back off $250,000 this side of convincing Congress and the President to do the same.
Everyone seems to be piling onto Robert‘s laughable nonsense about a quarter-mil a year barely buying your way into the middle class in Manhattan, but I’d like to address this other, equally dishonest, bit.
The Bush tax cuts were passed with a sunset clause because, though they were insane economic policy, they would be too insane even for the Republican machine of the early 2000’s to pass if they didn’t have an endpoint on them. The policy was enacted back then, cuts and “increases” alike. It’s profoundly dishonest to pass the policy back in 2001-2003 only because it will expire, then argue against the expiration a decade later because, darn it, that’s a tax increase.
If it was disastrously insane economic policy then, it’s disastrously insane economic policy now. It’s grotesquely dishonest from a political viewpoint for Bush to have eaten all the candy and left his successor with the stomachache. The fact that everyone seems willing to play along brings it beyond horror, into farce.
It’s also a standard right-wing meme. Ryan Ellis, Tax Policy dude at Americans for Tax Reform, apparently showed up on comments at The Washington Independent to flog this meme. (I don’t know if it’s actually him, but he certainly reads like the sort of guy who’s not used to having his ideas challenged, and who writes for a think tank.)