Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are so exasperated by President Obama’s tax cut deal with Republicans that they’re offering up their own progressive-friendly proposal — and lashing out at the White House.
At a press conference today, CBC members basically said they didn’t believe Obama will be able roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest in the midst of a presidential election year. Obama has said he’ll fight for the an expiration of the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans after the two-year extension contained in his deal.
“We’ve already established the principle that failure to extend tax cuts amounts to a tax increase,” Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), who authored the CBC’s alternative plan, said, pointing to the conservative rhetoric of the past year. “If we can’t cut them off now, what is the chance that we’ll be able to ‘increase taxes’ in the middle of a presidential and congressional election?
Scott said Republicans will be “intimidated by the tea party” into “getting in line” to make the tax cuts permanent. As as for the Democratic candidates, if history’s any lesson, they won’t run on increasing taxes either.
“The last Presidential candidate that I remember running on a platform of increasing taxes was Walter Mondale,” Scott said, before engaging in a bit of understatement. “And that was not a successful strategy.”
The better way to go, Scott and the other members of the CBC said, was to propose an alternative to Obama’s tax cut deal now that Democrats running for office in two years could be proud of. To Scott, that means a two-year extension of only the middle and lower class cuts — not the permanent extension Obama bargained for — and no extension of the upper class cuts at all.
Scott’s plan includes 13 months of additional unemployment insurance, “a payroll tax holiday or equivalent payment, such as a tax rebate check, with guarantees
that Social Security will not be deprived of revenue” and the two-year extension on the middle and lower class Bush tax cuts along with extensions of the tax programs aimed at the middle class Obama has put into place.
To hear the White House and Republicans tell it, such a plan would be a non-starter in the Senate. Republicans have said they must have all the Bush tax cuts extended if Democrats want any extensions of unemployment benefits. The members gathered today said even if that were true, giving the Republicans as much as the White House has is sowing the seeds for further Republican tax cut victories down the road.
