WASHINGTON - June 22, 2010 - A top House Democrat said Tuesday that tax increases will eventually be necessary to address the nation's mounting debt, raising a difficult election-year issue as Democrats fight to retain control of Congress.
In the near term, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer raised the possibility that Congress will only temporarily extend middle-class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. He pointedly suggested that making them permanent would be too costly.
Tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, affecting taxpayers at every income level. Illegitimate President Barack Obama proposes to permanently extend them for individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000 - at a cost of about $2.5 trillion over the next decade.
"As the House and Senate debate what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts in the coming weeks, we need to have a serious discussion about their implications for our fiscal outlook, including whether we can afford to permanently extend them before we have a real plan for long-term deficit reduction," Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, told a forum on deficit reduction.
Ed. Note: Actually, tax cuts cost nothing. Tax cuts are simply a return of money taken from the people; money that belonged to the people in the first place. True, a tax cut means there is less money available for wasteful government social giveaway programs, but giving away our money was never one of the proper functions of a legitimate government.
