Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Wednesday laid out his ground rule in exchange for agreeing to extend the payroll tax cut for another year: they must be offset with spending cuts elsewhere in the federal budget.
Democrats favor a permanent 3.25 percent surtax on incomes exceeding $1 million beginning in 2013. Republicans are of course loath to that plan, favoring to pay for the extension via a spending offset. Though that does beg the question as to why a tax cut for the middle class requires a spending offset, while a tax cut for millionaires and billionaires, like the Bush tax cuts which are slated to expire in 2013, do not.
