Obama To Let Bush Tax Cuts Expire
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Bush, History, Money, Taxes
This would be instead of raising taxes on the top tax bracket and giving the middle class a new tax cut. Instead, he’d reup the tax cuts the middle class has and not touch the top ones.
Obama adviser Bill Daley says Obama will “more likely than not” postpone a tax increase for the rich until 2011, when the Bush tax cuts expire, rather than pushing to repeal them now.He made the comment on Meet the Press, and it’s a suggestion that Obama will tailor his initiatives to avoid burdening the struggling economy — even at the cost of a widening deficit.
Again, this is another move that signals Obama is no economic ideologue and hardly the socialist boogeyman the right-wing painted him as.
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November 23rd, 2008 at 12:17 pm
Actually he was hinting at this even before the election. I first heard it on his interview with Bill O’Reilly, which the media ignored, and the Obama campaign was happy to get the political benefit of class warfare against the rich, while quietly leaving their options open to a more moderate policy.
But I too am glad to see him make this move. I just don’t think you can blame the right-wing for making him seem like a “boogeyman” for raising taxes on the rich. Actually I think its interesting that the tax issue has basically fallen off the radar after the election, given how big an issue it was before the election. It seem to me the policy proposals that occur before the election are just an audition, and aren’t really linked to what really happens after the election. But maybe I’m being too cynical.
November 23rd, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Well folks, if Obama does get off on a good start and is able to hold off rants from both the left and the right he’s going to win again by a landslide in 2012 whether it’s Palin, Hucklebee, Rudy G or Romney.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:42 pm
This is, of course, a good sign, but only in that Obama isn’t doing what he said he was going to do (which I predicted!), at least not now. It didn’t take the right wing for Obama to promise raising taxes on the rich, and then “spreading the wealth around” by giving 1000$ rebate checks to people who don’t pay taxes. Or raising capital gains taxes to 30%, or increase taxes on businesses that expand overseas, or create a “patriotic corporations list,” or promise to bankrupt the coal industry, or even create a mandatory civil security force complete with uniforms and barracks.
He has rolled back on all of these promises since he has gotten elected, and as Mike pointed out, even before that. If eventually Obama decides to carry out all of these campaign promises, would then he become the socialist boogeyman the right-wing painted him as?
It seems that you are implying exactly that i.e., because he is only letting tax cuts expire rather than raising them, he is not a socialist boogeyman. I would assume ,then, you are saying, if he DID raise them – “boggedy boogedy boo!”
November 23rd, 2008 at 9:07 pm
So, wait, if taxing the wealthy more is a bad idea in a downturn, what makes it a good idea in 2011? Taxing the wealthy shouldn’t matter, right? It’s the taxes on the middle class that really matter, based on what we heard during the campaign. This dude is making it up as he goes along….