I don’t like taxes any more than the next person, but it’s important to make decisions about the upcoming election based on facts.
Republicans are in favor of extending Bush tax cuts to the richest 2% because they claim it will help the economy. But according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, extending high-income tax cuts is the worst policy option currently available for promoting jobs and economic growth.
Republicans want us to think that President Obama and the Democrat-led Congress have raised taxes. That’s not correct. The stimulus package resulted in tax cuts for 98% of working taxpayers in 2009; no one has had a federal tax increase in the past two years.
Republicans claim they want to help “Joe taxpayer” as much as they want to help the rich. It’s not true. They are against extending enhancements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit that help working families, but for extending tax cuts to the richest 2% of taxpayers. So, with Republicans in control, many Americans would actually pay higher taxes than under President Obama’s proposed tax relief.
Republicans want us to think that the Bush tax cuts were great for the economy. Facts show the opposite. In the six years following the Bush tax cuts, jobs grew by 4.8%. In contrast, following Clinton’s courageous move to raise taxes in order to restore fiscal responsibility to the Federal budget, jobs grew by 16.2%, more than three times better than Bush’s performance.
If you want to live in a fairyland of low taxes and no hard choices, vote Republican. If you want to help the vast majority of Americans who need help, and recognize that some sacrifice by the most fortunate of us is necessary to set our fiscal house in order, vote Democrat.
A good article from which some of my facts were confirmed:
Three Good Reasons to Let the High-End Bush Tax Cuts Disappear This Year, Center for American Progress, 7/29/10
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/07/let_cuts_expire.html
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